Newmarket Horse Racing Documentary - A Sporting Chance
To get an idea of what shots and how I am going to present my documentary I started looking at mini horse racing documentarys that are already out there and look how they are presented asking myself questions like have they just got a voiceover? Have they got a presenter? What shots are used? What are the positives and negatives about these documentarys?
At the very start of the video it shows a long shot, sunset in the background showing horses running also has a title: A film by Aric Averkiou with tense music as the background sound. This brings another question I have to ask myself do I want my titles at the beginning or the end of my documentary?
Then it goes on to show a shot of the horses walking round with the jockeys riding them at the stables. Then again it cuts to another shot of a close up of horses heading out their stable doors looking down the stables showing more than one horse which is a side shot.
Then more titling is shown with a black background and white writing asking ‘The Trainer, tough but fair or just tough?’ engaging the audience and also asking the audience a question bringing it into a debate showing the documentary is revealing something about the trainers and leaving it up to the audience to decide.
Then it cuts to a mid shot of what seems to be a trainer, with horses in the background with a voiceover of his voice but showing him talking to the jockeys. Which is clever as it shows the man who is the voiceover in action.
Then again it cuts to show a jockey untacking his horse in a mid-shot and then cuts again showing more horses in the stables and walking, with the voiceover stopped. Then it cuts again to text again with a black background and white text asking ‘The jockey lives for racing but can he make it?’ to create the same effect.
Again it cuts to another mid shot of a jockey walking and the voiceover is brought in again of the person who is on the screen and another cut is made to show someone picking out horses hooves as a close up then cuts again showing a jockey mounting the horse and riding off showing the transition of the preparation of the horse to the riding of the horse then again another cut is made showing the jockey riding round with the other horses in the yard still with the tense music in the background then again a cut is made to show the horses walking and the voiceover is introduced again. Then it cuts to in a car with the trainer in the front of the car and the horses along side the car trotting to show this more closley it cuts to again a close up of the previous jockey and trainer we saw before trotting at a side view. Through the rest of the documentray it does the same cutting from close ups and mid shots of the trainer, jockeys and horses. With changes of music when the horses pace gets quicker to add atmosphere showing the horses racing along side each other to create that adrenaline through the music. They use an effect when showing a close up of the faces horses running using slow motion to capture the face pace, using a lot fo panning shots when filming the horses racing. It also shows an interview with the trainer and jockey that we have seen throughout the mini documentary, diffrence betweeen the two interviews is that the jockey is grooming the horse when the interview is been taken place. This could be another thing to consider when creating my interviews with the jockeys and trainers in my documentary, how am I going position them, what will they be doing when I am asking them questions? Do I want it to look like a set up interview? Another interesting element in this mini documentary is to the end of the documentray there is an interview with attenders of the racecourse asking their views.
They end the documentary with a slow motion shot of the horses racing and the production company’s logo with the interviews ended the fast pace music in the background fading out.
Here is link to the first documentary I decided to analyse called Newmarket Horse Racing Documentary - A Sporting Chance which I found on Youtube. It is a 5 minute 17 second video.
Here is a clip..
