Final Treatment

Final Treatment

Our documentary explores the town center of Liverpool through the eyes of the buskers that perform there. We have a number of key characters who will share their busking experience and allow the audience to peek into this aspect of their lives. The characters will all be different from each other in terms of appearance and experiences which will add depth and variety to our documentary. We aim to include all kinds of buskers and not just musicians and singers.
The core subject matter of our documentary is to help the audience look at buskers in a way that humanises them. Buskers are often seen as a 'nuisance' and are often dehumanised by the people walking by. Through this documentary, we will try to portray the real people behind the performers and get an insight on the daily struggles of these hard workers by asking them personal questions and understanding their side of the story. Buskers, very often, are talented people who have experiences in life that many people don't have. The main inspiration behind this documentary is an article we read about the changes in busking laws. These changes meant that a few laws were scrapped including the need for a permit costing £20 and the 'Simon Cowell clause' which meant a busker could be 'unplugged' if they were not good enough. We plan to ask the buskers about their views on these changes and whether or not the previous laws affected them.
The overall mood of our documentary will be cheerful and merry as we intend to show the audience how even though the buskers work hard and may have problems in their personal lives, they still deliver something uplifting and vibrant to the people and make the streets come to life. Our documentary will include some emotional interviews, however, which means there will be more than one mood to the documentary. Our documentary style is observational with interviews, however the interviewer will not be heard in the final piece. We will also include iconic shots of Liverpool as transitions between the different buskers' interviews. This will reinforce the fact that our documentary is set in the town center and streets of Liverpool, as well this, they will work effectively as transitions. The interviews with the buskers will be done on the streets of Liverpool, where the busker was based that day. We will be using DSLRs to record our documentary as we think they will successfully capture the vibrant nature of the Liverpool town center. We will be using two, one for recording the main interviews and performances, and the other to capture close up shots and other details. Also because we will only be in Liverpool for 3 days, we want to capture as many iconic shots of the town center to use in our documentary. We will take tripods just in case, however, we want our documentary to be shot handheld to emphasise the 'street' nature of the film. We will use the performers' own music as the soundtracks after getting consent from them. As we aim to record a large variety of street musicians, I think this will work really well when the mood of the documentary changes. Atmosphere sounds will be a big part of the soundtrack of our documentary as it will add to the busy and fast paced mood.
The main, initial inspiration for the idea of the documentary was 'Dark Days' by Marc Singer. This documentary follows the lives of homeless people living in an abandoned tunnel. Our documentary, even though it'll be much shorter in length, aims to follow these buskers and allow the audience to get a feel of their lives. Also, by including what the buskers have to say about the people walking by, it allows us as the audience to understand them on a more meaningful level, similar to what Marc Singer successfully does in Dark Days. Many people's only source of income comes from busking which emphasises on how the buskers and the people featured in Dark Days both live each day as it
comes. Our second main inspiration is a documentary called 'Buskers: For Love or Money' by Chad Taylor. This is a very interesting documentary, as similar to our idea, it explores the lives of street performers in a way that the audience may not have seen before. It also raises the question of whether they busk for money or for the love of performing which we also aim to explore to some extent by asking the buskers why they do what they do.