PLANNING: Newspaper Advertisement/Poster

PLANNING: Listings Magazine Double Page Spread Flat Plan

RESEARCH: Designer Brand Reputations

In my research I started to think about how big designer luxury labels have their exclusivity filtered down when ordinary people buy the brands. For instance I found this interesting article about soap star Danniella Westbrook wearing head to toe Burberry.

 Burberry have had to work very hard to get their luxury reputation back due to this occurrence. However, they have managed to get their high status reputation back as explained in this article. They had to find the balance between having the brands items fall into the wrong hands and becoming too niche where the rich will turn their noses up instead. The brand was taken over by two American businesswomen who are high up in the fashion industry who focused on the history of Burberry and managed to bring the designer name back up to one of the top 5 luxury goods brands in the world.

RESEARCH: Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall is a Cultural Theorist who looked at the role of audience positioning. He came up with a model which suggested three different ways which an audience can interpret a media text, these include; a preferred reading, a negotiated reading and an oppositional reading.

A preferred reading is when the audience interprets a text in the way which the author intended. In my documentary I intend the audience to interpret fashion and designer clothes to be a positive thing and something which people use to express their individuality.

A negotiated reading is where they mostly accept the preferred reading but sometimes changes it slightly due to personal experiences and interests. A negotiated reading which may be interpreted from my documentary is that the audience can see where designer goods can aid people to express their individuality but they don't agree on spending ridiculous amounts of money to do that. You could easily express your individuality by buying normal high street clothes too.

An oppositional reading is where the audience completely rejects the authors preferred reading due to their social place. An oppositional reading which could come from my documentary is that someone finds designer clothes to be a very negative part of the retail world as it separates society and creates an unfair hierarchy which is dependant on how much money an individual has and can spend on clothing items.

PLANNING: Organising my Interview with a Fashion Designer

PLANNING: Planning Questions for my Interviews

I will be conducting 2 interviews now instead of one, at first I believed one interview to be enough but since researching into documentaries I have found there is a minimum of two different interviews. Therefore I planned to conduct two interviews, one with a Fashion Expert and one with a Psychologist. Before I conducted these interviews I needed to plan what questions I would be asking my experts which can be seen below:

I have made sure my questions were all open questions as this will allow for discussion during the interview, therefore I would be able to draw out as much information as possible from my interviews.

RESEARCH: Statistics & Facts

As I was researching for statistics of spending habits within the fashion industry I found this interesting article. This article has really good statistics which I would be able to use in my documentary such as:

1. The average British woman will spend over half a million pounds on fashion over their lifetime.
2. The British fashion industry is worth £26 billion to the economy.
3. Women between the ages of 30 and 45 spend on average £1,200 on fashion items per month.
4. There are 3 categories of 'Wardrobe Wealth'. Category 1 - 'The major must have's', this includes pieces which are hot right now but will soon go out of fashion. Category 2 - 'Contemporary Classics', designer items which retain their value, designer pieces you would wear to work, the investment into timeless pieces. Category 3 - 'Lifetime Luxuries', designer items which will rise in value over time e.g. a classic quilted Chanel handbag .

I also found out from this article that a website called covetique.com had been set up where you could buy or sell designer clothes from other people, unfortunately this site has now shut down.


As I continued with my research I looked at comparisons of the annual revenues of high street vs designer brands, here is what I found:

Designers...
*Chanel -  5.2 billion USD
*Louis Vuitton - 10 billion USD
*Cartier - 6.1 billion USD
*Burberry - 2.515 billion USD

High Street...
*ASOS - 1.158 billion USD
*New Look - 1.528 billion USD
*River Island - 925.8 million USD
*H.Samuel - 3.665 billion USD

My documentary is based on the reasons behind why people buy and wear designer brands, so I wanted to find some facts on this, I found 2 articles on this. One from the guardian and one from college candy, these articles had opposing opinions of designer brands, one for (college candy) and one against (the Guardian), below are some interesting points I have taken from these articles:

The Guardian...

1. They are brand snobs and think flaunting the name of he shop where they bought their clothes makes them cool.

2. People who wear designer brands fail to see that they are being used by the brand as a form of free advertising.

3. They are paying more money for clothes just to be an advertisement.

College Candy...

1. Product quality is much better than the quality of high street store clothes, they use better materials and stitching.

2. Consistency within brands, people end up swearing by one designer and staying committed to that one brand.

3. Different designers give their own certain representations, they can give their consumers an identity and can represent who they are.

4. You feel and become part of an elite group, those who can afford the designer clothes.

5. You are much less likely to see someone else wearing the same item as you, designer products are much more rarely seen.

6. Celebrities wear them, lots of people identify with celebrities and want to be like them which includes wearing the same clothes/designers which they wear.

Finally, I found a website called Fashion United which has many statistics for the UK fashion industry which will be very helpful to use within my voiceover of my documentary. Go to this website here.

PLANNING: Documentary Plan & Structure

PRODUCTION: Contact Sheet

PLANNING: Initial Ideas for Ancillary Products

Listings Magazine Double Page Spread

*Main image of high fashion women stood together
*Main image of designer products
*Main image of high street (where you can see the high street stores)
*Main image of London street of designer stores

Newspaper Advertisement/Poster

*Minimal poster with one main image of designer shoes
*Poster with lots of different images that are used within the documentary
*Use 2 or 3 images for the poster

PLANNING: My Script

PLANNING: Getting to London to Film for my Documentary

I wanted to film parts of my Documentary in London as it is one of the fashion capitals of the world, this meaning that it is home to lots of designer shops and high end brands which would be perfect for me to film due to the nature of my documentary.
Below you can see where I have organised a date to go up to London with a friend in order to film in this location, also you can see my planning of how to get from one street to another whilst in London.

PLANNING: My Storyboard

RESEARCH: Minimalist Subculture

My target demographic tends to fall into the minimalist fashion subculture, this is a category where fashion is stripped down to its most fundamental features but whilst keeping a chic and high-fashion style and flare. As I was researching into this subculture I found an interesting article on the subculture and on how there is a current rise in sustainable and accessible high fashion. See this link here.

RESEARCH: Shots in 1 Minute of a Documentary

Whilst researching for my documentary I wanted to know how many shots I will roughly need to fill my 5 minute extract. To do this I looked at a fashion documentary and I counted how many different shots were in the first minute (0-1) the 31st minute (31-32) and the 55th minute (55-56). Here is what I found...

Minute 1 - 30 shots 

Minute 31 - 22 shots

Minute 55 - 11 shots

I found that there were different amounts of shots in these different minute due to what part of the documentary it was. The first minute had the most shots as it was the opening and it was setting the scene for what the whole documentary was going to be about. Minute 31 had slightly less as it started to get into an informal interview so less shots were used, and finally minute 55 only had 11 shots as it was a formal sit-down interview so it was more focused on the interview than using lots of different shots.

See the video below for the documentary I used for this research:

RESEARCH: Generic Conventions found from my Textual Analyses

Generic Conventions Found in Fashion Documentaries

1) Interviews used - 4/5 interviews in a whole documentary, 1/2 interviews used within a 5 minute extract.

2) A title screen used with the same font then used throughout the documentary

3) A variety of shots used - medium, long, close etc.

4) Location shots used

5) Voiceovers or Dialogue used

6) Background music used - usually no lyrics

7) Shots of shop signs and shop windows

Links to my textual Analyses:

Textual Analysis 1 Link

Textual Analysis 2 Link

Textual Analysis 3 Link

Textual Analysis 4 Link

RESEARCH: Textual Analysis 4

RESEARCH: Textual Analysis 3

RESEARCH: Textual Analysis 2

Textual Analysis 2 from Francesca Harrington