This is our primary - Scott Cooke who adopts his alter ego at night - The Statesman. He will be our main focus in the documentary. He patrols the streets of Birmingham and we will travel to him to film him as he walks the streets protecting civilians.
This is our backup primary - The Dark Spartan. His real name has been revealed as Will, he has revealed no further information. He patrols the streets of Torbay much like Scott Cooke does in Birmingham. We have contacted various groups and pages dedicated to him to ask him to be a part of our documentary and we are waiting for a reply.
Synopsis
The idea is to create an informative expository documentary into the lives of Britain's own Superhero vigilantes, with a voice of God guiding the audience through the narrative. The idea is to follow them in their everyday lives as they patrol the streets in England helping others in need. Of course we could not show any form of vigilantism as it is illegal and as a film crew we would be partaking in illegal activity. But we can argue that because it is decisive moment, that we have not gone out with the camera with intention of vigilantism that we did not provoke any dangerous acts.
We would film them as they go out on their everyday lives and give an insight into their alter egos. If in fact they do fight crime in a violent way, we could easily re-create the scene with hired actors and create it so that it matches the style of the classic Batman and others. With the stereotypical KAPOW, ZOOK, WHACK, CRAAACK! A nice signifier for us to use would be to introduce each character as a marvel style comic strip character using photoshop and then cross dissolve it to real life, blending the two realities.
Influences will be taken from the documentary 'Superheroes' driected by Mike Barnett, with the style of the documentary and how the characters are followed during their everyday tasks. Exploring why they chose the lives they did, how they act as a superhero, why they chose their names and costumes.
Influences can also be taken from 'Grizzly Man' directed by Werner Herzog, his 'voice of God' technique is really useful in posing questions about life and reality in using the documentary as a metaphor. When we compares the bears aggressive nature to the nature of our own. It would like to apply the same technique to our superhero concept: What does it take to be a superhero? Could anyone of us be a superhero? Is it a costume that separates heroes from superheroes? Finally we are to create our own superhero and send him out onto the streets to promote our documentary and we will decide a name for him/her through conducting a survey and getting the audience to name him. This makes our documentary both expository and participatory.
- John Bird (Synopsis Page)
