If I Made a Documentary

In honor of the upcoming summer games in Beijing, I decided to dream up a documentary about the summer Olympics. My documentary would focus on the incredible amount of planning that goes into making the games a reality. There is a lot of glam and hype about the Olympics in the weeks shortly preceding them and during the handful of days that they last, but for the most part, the games go unconsidered for the better part of four years at a time. In my documentary, I would work to highlight the numerous committees committed to planning—everything from the location, and all that goes along with the process of “applying” to be an Olympic site, to the team of judges that select the athletes to compete in the team events. How do the athletes end up at the Olympics? How do cities become hosts, and how do they make the necessary facilities available? These are some of the questions that I’d want my documentary to address.

It would be great to include interviews with actual committee members—both people who are currently working towards the Summer 2008 Olympics (or the 2012) as well as people who have worked in previous years. The people who work “behind the scenes” likely have great insights and could comment on the realities of the games that go unseen. The preparations in Beijing have been in the news from time to time, but by hearing from people who actually have a hand in the preparation will let viewers get a more well-rounded version of all the conflicts, sacrifices, and controversies that people from all over the world face while making decisions and plans. Possible questions: What is your role in planning the Olympics? When did you first become interested in taking part in this process? Describe how you became involved—did you have to apply? What is one misconception that you feel the general public has about the Olympics? What is the most challenging aspect of making important decisions?—and so on. While it nice be a nice touch to add some voices from athletes, I’d want to stay away from having the majority of speakers being the faces that we always see in association with Olympics. One possibility, for example, would be to list all the sports included in the games—typically, only a few events get a lot of attention, but there are dozens of sports represented.

I think it would be a challenge to fully portray all that goes into planning the Olympics in a two-hour documentary---or even a week-long, 10-hour special. The planning literally takes place for at a decade or more, and it would be hard to pick and choose which decisions to center on or which elements would most accurately portray the long process. Another huge challenge would be what time period to focus on. It would easiest in terms of interviewing to focus on the planning process during recent decades—but the process likely changed greatly from the time that the Olympics began, and that could be another whole documentary itself. Overall, I think one of the key elements of a good documentary is finding interesting, accurate information that provides a fresh viewpoint—often, I feel like this is a hard thing to judge before the final product appears.