The Academy Selsey Pavilion Film Project Report

We are students from The Academy, Selsey. We have volunteered to be part of Selsey Pavilion Trust’s video project, working with Millstream Productions to create a short 15 minute documentary about the Selsey Pavilion and its history. This project has been made possible thanks to The National Lottery Heritage Fund and The F Glenister Woodger Trust.

To become part of the team each of us wrote a 500 word essay on why we are interested in the Selsey Pavilion and what we would bring to the team if chosen. Twenty of us were selected from years 8, 9 and 10.

In our very first meeting we were given a timetable of the project and Keith Batchelor gave a presentation and insight on some of the Pavilion's history.  We were then introduced to film language and looked at the different styles of documentary film. We watched an engaging video accompanied by a detailed presentation that thoroughly explained what a documentary is including its key elements as well as the essential steps involved. We looked at a general overview of the variety of roles involved in film production and this project in particular and carefully made our top 3 choices based on our discussions.

We also went on a visit to the Records Office in Chichester.  We were greeted by the Archivists and invited to see the strong rooms and also got to see how documents are preserved and restored for future generations. The Archivists had kindly laid out documents and materials related to Selsey and Selsey Pavilion which were very useful for our research.

The next stage of our project is continuing pre-production activities which include research, oral history, planning and screenwriting as we build the content for our film.

Pupils of The Academy Selsey