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Home / Thoughts / Sean's Thoughts / Looking for TV Documentary participants

Looking for TV Documentary participants

Written by Sean on Thursday, August 10, 2006

I was approached several weeks ago by Shirley Jones of the Two Four Group, and independent television company out of London, UK. They are interested in making a documentary about (wheelchair??) pretenders, and are looking for participants. I am always gun shy around the media, and have exchanged several lengthy emails with Shirley before making this post. While one can’t be sure of anything, I am reasonably confident that they aren’t aiming to make a sensationalist piece.

From her original mail:

I think it’s really important to firstly stress that the documentary is to be from the viewpoint of the pretender and secondly that we are not interested in the devotee aspect i.e we are not looking at this from a sexual view point in any way.

We are solely interested in ‘pretenders’ – why do people become pretenders, has there been any research into this area, what is the explanation the psychologists offer, the difference between a pretender and a wannabe, how a pretender lives day to day life, equipment used – how to select and learning to use the equipment, going out in public and so on.

This is not a sensationalist documentary and as such the most important people are the contributors – the pretenders.

In another mail, she defines what she wants a bit more:

In terms of contributors - I am ideally looking for two or three who are willing to appear on camera and it may be that we can talk to others and disguise their faces and/or voices. We would travel to the contributor - I think it’s important to see that person in their own surroundings, to see how they live their life - whether they pretend at home or in public.

Caption: Image of a man being
interviewed on tv.

One often has to question motivations for anything the media does (yes, I’ve been burned before…) Shirley explains:

I arrived at the idea of this documentary because I have friends involved with the fetish scene and through that you meet many devotees and through that you hear of many different groups. Documentaries such as this give the audience the chance to see areas of human life that they may not have known existed, that they are then given chance to understand and you cannot underestimate the amount of people that may be in the same situation but feeling alone and suddenly feel they are not alone, there are others like them and places they can go to share and support.

Though this is a nice sentiment, and I actually believe in it, I suspect it can’t be the only reason. Independent TV companies don’t launch into productions without expecting to see return on investment. But perhaps that’s a given to be accepted before any other discussion takes place. As such, I decided to go with the given explanation :)

So, there it is!

This documentary could be very good. Of course, it could be a problem. I can’t begin to list the risks involved in appearing on camera, even with disguises, blurrs and all that stuff. But maybe some of my visitors will be willing to go forward with it. We’ll see. If you think you might be interested, please contact Shirley directly or contact me

Tags: Television, Documentary, Pretender, Wannabe, Participants, Transabled, TwoFour