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For Life... Documentary


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This is a piece (the beginning/hook) of our documentary on the Rehoboth beach patrol. We would like to show each section of the doc as we created vignettes that we thought best described this job. It captures eighty five years of history and tradition. Shot and edited over a span of 2 years (2005/2006) former lifeguards and filmmakers Nicholas Crawford and Scottie James show what it takes, both mentally and physically to be a part of this patrol in the small beach town of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
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7 responses // For Life... Documentary

  • Sounds like you've got a ton of footage, plus a few spectacular stories of derring-do... was this clip for Current supposed to be something of a promotional item for your feature length documentary?

    I'm afraid it misses the mark, not by a whole lot. Watching this pod, I wanted to grasp the overall concept quicker. Is this a story about a specific rescue or storm? Or about lifeguarding in general, told through the lens of one beach?

    If you were to re-edit this as a promotional piece, I would focus on telling one of your rescue stories, beginning to end, and let that draw interest to your full-length film. Otherwise, what you have here is a few shots of waves, people on the beach, a random lifeguard talking about a rescue attempt without any context (who was in the water, were there a lot of other guards involved or just him, what happened?). There's no story here, just snippets that don't connect with me or lure me to reach out for more.

    I bet you have a lot of material; maybe try focusing on just one story and giving viewers a chance to identify with some characters.
    RoaringLamb
  • RoaringLamb has the right idea.

    You start off with great footage and a compelling story about a rescue, but then you back off. Why tell a story and not finish it? Frankly, this pod feels like a much longer piece edited down for this venue. If that's the case, it still has to have something of a dramatic structure. If your main point is to emphasize how safe lifeguards make beaches, fine. Build your narrative around that.

    Best of luck!

    J
    jsburman
  • This is the beginning hook to our documentary. We had so much fooatge over the two years, we decided to make vignettes on the areas of lifeguarding that we thought were the most relevant. We guess you could say it is kind of a promotional piece, but we wanted to possibly show the documentary in the sections we created to be able to show a whole doc, but allow the viewers to take it in piece by piece. The documentary is not about one person, one save, or specific area of lifeguarding. Over the 85 years that this beach patrol has been in action we wanted to show not much has changed except the people and faces, overall it is about saving lives. Thanks for the feedback and taking your time to view our pod. CDP
    coverdownproductions
  • Yeah, you captured my attention with the waves and the, 'everyone's going home today' but you never find out what happens, nor is it implied that that's what i'm to learn from the feature-lenth version of this film. So i'm left not really caring.

    Also, your title card is a powerful statisitic, but you need to set it up so that it's really driven home. Something like: Every year 1,500 people drown in U.S. ocean... ...though your chances of drowning with a life guard present are lest than 1 in 18,000,000. Set up like this, the audience is left thinking, 'wow, all those people would not have died if only they were swimming in protected waters'. suddenly the value/significance of the lifeguard is appreciated - and thus, the significance of your documentary.
    souljah44
  • I'm giving this my GL because I like the concept. This particular pod isn't ready for T.V. and the previous comments explain why so I won't go into that.

    That being said, I like the idea for the documentary and hope you can edit somehting together that will fit on CURRENT. The lifeguard story is a good one. I was once caught and pulled WAY OUT. There were no life guards on teh beach and I thought I was done.

    I caught a break on a buoy that was used for a yaught or something, then was able to swim in. If I wasn't a strong swimmer (I was then) I wouldn't have made it.

    Those guys save lives, and if there was one on that beach, I likely wouldn't have had to think about dying,

    GL.

    Please click on my head and check out my latest pod... "small town climate change"

    Thanks.

    asm
    kDrew_Productions
  • Really great footage, I bet you had some awesome camera men! You can really tell that you also had good boom work! I would say that what you have submitted for current tv could be changed into something more synoptic, It needs to be a well rounded overview of the entire movie. Good job!
    mypsalm31
  • where's the story? Good photography but we quickly see there's no purpose.
    blpierceok

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