20.9

In this class we brainstormed about our documentary: the pre-production process/planning. We wanted to film our documentary on the topic of local schools and international schools; differences, similarities and student's own perceptions/thoughts/experiences.

FOCUS QUESTION: What are the similarities between local schools and international schools? (Including school life and after school life e.g. after school activities, homework hours)

We want to to shoot at different schools to compare them with each other. We're comparing school environment and students lifestyles. We would also like to see if we can follow one specific student from each school to film their after school activities, as co-curricular activities such as tutoring or sport teams are a big part of secondary school.

POSSIBLE SCHOOLS TO FILM:
(One person from each school)
HKIS
CIS
St Stephens
Chekiang school
(GSIS)
(FIS)
St. Pauls
Sacred heart

Because we want to film school environment during school hours, maybe film how a class is taught or how a class goes in different schools, we need to ask permission from the school beforehand. We might have to look at changing our focus question slightly in case it would sound offensive to anyone, but when we were brainstorming it was quite challenging for us to do that, so we might need a little more thought put into our question.

List of possible interviewees:
Jamie Yeung
Samantha Cheng
Boris But
Parents of Jamie Yeung
Teachers (yang lao shi)
Kenny Liu
Alison (Jamies friends/contacts)
LMY

We need to find more possible local students to interview or follow because we have many connections in international schools, but not so much in local schools. The documentary would look biased if we focused too much on international schools, and it wouldn't really help with the leading question as we wouldn't have much to compare with.

Possible Questions:
(students)
1. How many after school activities do you do a week?
2. How long do you spend doing homework?
3. Do you have tutors/tutoring centers (for what subjects)?
4. How long are your school hours (start time and end time)?
5. What subjects do you take and what are your favorites?
6. How long are your classes for?
7. How do you get to school, when do you get to school(footage as well)?
8. What time do you go to bed/wake up?
9. Which is your preference?
(teachers/parents)
9. What are your perceptions of local vs international schools?
10. Why did you choose to teach at an international/local school?
11. Why did you choose to send your kids to the school they are attending?
12. Which is your preference?

We didn't want our documentary to be solely based on interviews because that would make it very boring, just listening to people talk. So we tried focusing our interview questions mostly on personal experiences/thoughts, things that we couldn't show using footage that wasn't part of an interview.

What we are going to film (footage):

How different students get to school

Film school life (classes/surroundings/break times)

After school life (activities and transportation)

When we are filming (schedule):

Mid-term break
Weekends
Class time (during school)
Before school
After school

"What we've got here is a failure to communicate." - Cool Hand Luke