Documentary
Assignment
For the first assignment in the second year of this course I have been
tasked with creating a documentary. I have decided that I will focus on the
story of the monkey hanging in the town I am from, Hartlepool. I will construct
a sort of tongue-in-cheek documentary about this subject, showing the facts
behind a veil of humour and jokes. I will still show the facts and make it a
factual documentary, but due to the humour behind the story it only makes sense
to show the facts with a hint of humour. I will use re-enactments of certain
scenes from the real world to show what happened in a brighter light, while
still showcasing how silly the whole subject is. I will also cover certain
other aspects of Hartlepool, such as its rich ship building industry from way
back when. I will do this because everyone who lives in Hartlepool, myself
included, say there isn’t anything going on here and that it’s a very boring
place to be, when in actual fact there are a great many things to do, such as
the maritime museum and the many different marine areas to explore. I will also be looking at the things that
arent there, or that have been removed from Hartlepool, and will be looking at
how this has had an impact on the way hartlepool looks to the rest of the
country. I will be interviewing people to add to the evidence and testimonies
about the way hartlepool was or how it has changed.
Was a Monkey Really
Hung in Hartlepool?
‘’I dunno, probably, we were pretty
weird back then. I mean, we’ve elected the football club’s mascot as town mayor
3 times so….’’
http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/The-Hanging-of-the-Hartlepool-Monkey/
http://www.gyreandgimble.com/productions/the-hartlepool-monkey/
http://www.gyreandgimble.com/productions/the-hartlepool-monkey/
Start: The start of this documentary will first go over the mythology
surrounding the story of the monkey hanging in Hartlepool. It will go over
when, where and why it supposedly happened, and the details of what apparently
went down. It will go over the facts that we know about the story and will use
interviews with older people to back this up, although nobody is alive today
who will have seen the hanging, getting stories of old Hartlepool from old
people seems the smartest idea.
Middle: The
middle section of my documentary will focus on the facts surrounding the story
of the monkey. This will be things like a song that was written by a traveling
entertainer. A song written about a monkey washing ashore in Hartlepool and
subsequently being hung after being accused of being a spy. I will go over both the
facts for the hanging and those that go against it. I intend to go at this
story in a purely unbiased way, as I am actually from Hartlepool so discovering
the truth about this is quite exciting to me.
End: The end
of my documentary will recap the first 2 parts and will collate all the facts
and stories together in a concise way and will give a final verdict on what they
all show. The whole of my documentary will have a comedy feel, because it’s a
hilariously daft story, but will be based entirely in fact. It will play out
sort of how the Horrible Histories shows play out.
Back during the Napoleonic wars, around early 1800’s, there was a lot of
tension between England and France. It was around this time that Hartlepool got
its ‘monkey hanger’ name from, well, hanging a monkey apparently. The story
goes that during the wars, a French ship washed ashore on the old Hartlepool
beach, and was surrounded by locals in seconds. They saw that the only survivor
was a monkey and, having never actually seen a Frenchman before, assumed he was
a French spy, confusing its chittering as French speaking. As you do. They
promptly decided they should hang the spy so as not to let the secrets of the
old Hartlepool beach fall into French hands, not that there was much going on
there.
My documentary will look at whether Hartlepudlians are
actually proud of Hartlepool and its heritage about hanging monkeys and whether there is
anything else going on in Hartlepool that could be seen as another claim to
fame. Shipbuilding industry? Tongue in cheek documentary. Where is the story
from? Re-enactments?
Post-Release
After I began filming and editing my documentary I quickly
realized that it had changed a fair amount from what the original idea was. This
isn't a bad thing by any means, it simply means that in have to explain how and
why it changed from the original idea.
One of the main reasons it changed is because I started to
realise that there are things that I simply wouldn’t be able to talk about and
discuss in my film, such as the dock area and the shipbuilding industry, due to
time constraints or a lack of communication with the people I wanted to talk to
and about. An example of this happening would be when I was trying to include
Gyre & Gimble in my film, discussing the play they were making about the
monkey hanging story. I was liaising with the directors and after a few weeks
of back and forth they stopped emailing out of the blue, so unfortunately I was
unable to include them in my film. The same happened with trying to get an
interview with Stuart Drummond, the legendary mascot of Hartlepool’s football
team. For some reason, nobody seems to know where he is or what he’s doing, so
again, I was unable to get this interview. These are both quite a shame that I couldn’t
get them to talk but it opened the door to allow me to talk about other things.
Another way my documentary changed is that it went from being
about the monkey hanging and everything to do with that, and turned into a
documentary that was about the town as a whole, showing off so much more from
the town than just the Headland and the monkey hanging. I was originally
planning to talk only about the monkey hanging and discuss the people and
places involved in that, both then and now, and discuss the idea and story with
people from the town nowadays and see what they had to say about it. This obviously
changed, partly because I realized it would end up being a very linear and
straightforward film, and partly because of the reasons stated above, among
others.
In the end, it seems that my original idea would have made a
great documentary, but the film I made was greater.
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