Subject Research- London Bombings.

Subject Research - London Bombings.

On the 7th July 2005, 4 suicide bombers attacked Central London, killing 52 people and injuring more than 770.
The locations were struck as the morning rush hour drew to a close at around 08:50. Three bombs went off on underground trains just outside Liverpool Street and Edgware Road stations, and another travelling between Kings Cross and Russell Square.
There was then another explosion around an hour later which was on a double decker bus in Tavistock Square, not far from Kings Cross Station. 

The Bombers:

Mohammad Sidique Khan,
30, Edgware Road bomber.

• The oldest of the bombers and is thought to have taken the lead role.
• Raised in Beeston, Leeds.
• His bomb, detonated on a westbound Circle Line train, killed seven people.

Shehzad Tanweer,
 22, Aldgate bomber.

• Lived most of his life in the Beeston area of Leeds.
• Tanweer detonated his bomb on the eastbound Circle line, killing seven others.

Germaine Lindsay,
19, Russell Square bomber.

• Spent his childhood in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, not far from the other bombers' homes.
• He converted to Islam in 2000 and started to associate with troublemakers.
• Lindsay carried out the most deadly of the bombings, killing 26 on the Piccadilly line train.

Hasib Mir Hussain,
18, Tavistock Square bomber

•  Grew up in Holbeck, on the outskirts of Leeds.
•  He was the bus bomber who claimed 13 lives.

Hussain, Tanweer and Khan travelled from their homes in West Yorkshire to Luton in a hired car. In Luton they then met the fourth bomber (Lindsay) and then they got on a train to Kings Cross, once they got there, they dispersed and went to different locations to where the bombs exploded (Edgware Road, Russell Square, Tavistock Square & Liverpool Street). 

To build the bombs, the group rented a flat at 18 Alexandra Grove in the Hyde Park area of Leeds - a student area where they were unlikely to be recognised but equally would not have stood out. The bombs were constructed using materials which were readily available and which required "little expertise" to turn into the explosive devices.
It is thought that each device consisted of 2-5kg of explosive and that the group used details from the internet and also had advice from someone with experience.

It quickly emerged that two of the bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, had spent several months in Pakistan.The official investigation says it is likely that they had some contact with al-Qaeda figures and may have received training.

21st July 2005.

On the 21st of July 2005, exactly 2 weeks after the 7th, another 4 attacks were attempted. Each of these were again attempted on 3 underground trains and 1 bus but they all failed to explode because it was the wrong chemical recipe. 

Three of the suspected bombers began their journey at Stockwell underground station. Failed devices were found on trains at Oval and Warren Street stations and on a bus in Hackney.

The fourth suspect entered the underground system at Westbourne Grove. A device was found on the Hammersmith and City line not far away at Shepherd's Bush.

A fifth device was found in a rucksack abandoned in bushes at Little Wormwood Scrubs two days after the failed attacks.

Yassin Hassan Omar,

24, New Southgate.

Attempted murder of passengers on the Transport for London system

Conspiracy with others unknown to murder passengers on the Transport for London system

Possession of explosives with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property

Conspiracy with others unknown to cause explosions of a nature likely to endanger life or cause serious injury to property.

He was arrested in Birmingham on 27 July, the first of the five suspects to be held.

Mr Omar is accused of the failed attack on the Victoria Line between Oxford Circus and Warren Street.

Ibrahim Muktar Said,
27, New Southgate.

Attempted murder of passengers on the Transport for London system

Conspiracy with others unknown to murder passengers on the Transport for London system

Possession of explosives with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property

Conspiracy with others unknown to cause explosions of a nature likely to endanger life or cause serious injury to property.

Accused of trying to set off a bomb on a number 26 bus in Hackney.

Mr Said was arrested in west London on 29 July, eight days after the attempted bombings.

Ramzi Mohamed, 23.

Attempted murder of passengers on the Transport for London system

Conspiracy with others unknown to murder passengers on the Transport for London system

Possession of explosives with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property

Conspiracy with others unknown to cause explosions of a nature likely to endanger life or cause serious injury to property.

Was arrested in west London on 29 July along with Ibrahim Muktar Said. 

He is suspected of attempting to bomb the Tube near Oval station.

Hussain Osman, 27.

Attempted murder of passengers on the Transport for London system

Conspiracy with others to murder passengers on the Transport for London system

Possession of explosives with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property

Conspiracy with others to cause explosions of a nature likely to endanger life or cause serious injury to property.
 

He is suspected of trying to bomb a Hammersmith and City Line train at Shepherd's Bush.

He was arrested in Rome on 29 July, subject to extradition proceedings                                                        and flown to London. 

Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 32.

Conspiracy with others unknown to murder passengers on the Transport for London system

Conspiracy with others unknown to cause explosions of a nature likely to endanger life or cause serious injury to property.Manfo Kwaku Asiedu of Finsbury Park, north London, has been charged over the discovery of an unexploded device found at Little Wormwood Scrubs park in west London.

Audience Research/ Questionnaire Analysis

Audience Research/ Questionnaire Analysis.

For our groups audience research we created a questionnaire to be able to find the most accurate results in finding who our target audience is and to be able to analyse them.

We also created another questionnaire helping us to identify what the audience want to see throughout the documentary.

The first questionnaire (based on finding the target audience) included questions such as 'Do you have or are you working toward any qualifications?' and 'Do you work? If so, full or part-time?' By asking questions like these we are able to analyse our audience more critically and demographically to see if the types of documentaries that they watched reflected on their social class/status, for example, a member of the public deeming themselves as higher/working class that earns more money,  may wish to watch documentaries that follow the reflexive/poetic mode as it reflects the type of lifestyle they have and possibly makes them feel more 'intellectual' as opposed to someone of a lower class and have a part-time job, they may wish to watch a more observational documentary such as 'Benefits Street' or those shown on Channel 4, again, by possibly reflecting the type of lifestyle they live.

The 'Audience Questionnaire' helped us to create the documentary as it gave us ideas into what the audience wanted to see, by asking questions such as 'How can we show the London Bombings as a sensitive issue?' and 'Do you prefer to see archived footage, the public's own footage, or both?', by asking these questions we were able to begin structuring the documentary. 

Firstly we decided to analyse each question from the 'Audience Questionnaire' and the 'Documentary Questionnaire' so that we could summarize and compare the results of each, shown through bar chats and tables.
The first question that was asked in both questionnaires was 'What is your gender'.  We asked this question predominantly to find out whether our target audience would be mainly males, females or both and whether specific genders social class/status had an effect on the results. 

From the results it's clear the predominant gender to be watching our documentary is females having 15 females out of 24 (62.50%), answering the 'Audience Questionnaire' and 7 females out of 12 (58.33%) answering the 'Documentary Questionnaire', in comparison to only 7 males, (29.17%) and 2 partakers, to whom preferred not to state their gender (8.33%), answering the 'Audience Questionnaire', and 4 males (33.33%) and only 1 partaker, to whom preferred not to state their gender, answering the 'Documentary Questionnaire'. 

The second question that we decided we wanted to ask on both questionnaires was 'What is your age'. We decided on this question as not only did we want to see a specific gender, we also wanted to see if we had a specific age group within that gender. When writing the proposal we predicted that the main target audience would be between 20-60 years old, purely based on the fact that the content might be a little bit more sensitive for younger viewers. 

When analysing the results from both questionnaires it was clear that the predominant age bracket over all was the 16-18 year olds, with 62.50% (15), answering the 'Audience Questionnaire', with 12 of those being female and 69.23% (9), answering the 'Documentary Questionnaire'. 

The questions for each questionnaire now changed, as for the audience questionnaire we needed to be more specific, and ask more demo-graphical questions to actually be able to analyse the audience, and get a specific idea on what sort of person would be watching our documentary rather than questions related to the London Bombings themselves. 

- I have lost the rest of this document, it's on Lauryn's blog or Steve has it in my comb-bound folder. -

Genre Research.

Throughout this report I'm going to be looking at documentaries to give us inspiration when filming our own documentary, this obviously varies due to the fact that some documentaries have been filmed using multiple documentary formats.
I have chosen to analyse documentaries that are based on bombings/disasters and also focusing on how they have been filmed and edited for ideas of our own, for example, the bombings in Syria (October 28^th 2012), and how much they have been affected compared to London based on their poverty and how they have been filmed, looking at the different camera angles and the traumatic footage that may be used.
I have also chosen to use the very recent bombing documentary that happened in Boston on Marathon Day (April 15^th 2013) and again looking at the impact and also looking at the conventions used throughout the documentary.
I am then going to analyse a completely different documentary to be able to show the differences between how they’re filmed.


The Bombing of al-Bara:

This documentary I have chosen to use is a 36 minute long recording of Syria called ‘The Bombing of al-Bara’. Click here for the documentary.
This is a documentary filmed by Olly Lambert, his motive was to film an interview with Jamal Maarouf, he is the commander of the Martyrs of Syria Brigade which is one of the biggest units of the Free Syrian Army and definitely the most powerful in the region that he's been filming in.
Whilst speaking to Jamal himself, a government jet flew overhead and landed a bomb just 300 metres away from where Olly Lambert was. Olly documented the shocking impact of air strikes on a civilian population. The result is a rate portrait of the reality of civil war. Olly narrates this documentary as well as directing it, if you listen to the first sequence; it is just a mellow toned voice for a basic narration, this is taking place whilst he is filming the Martyrs of Syria. 

From the first 2 minutes you can clearly see that this was based around the lives of the Martyrs and how the lived and acted  as well as the interview with Jamal. The documentary was extremely effective because it shows how everybody reacted to the explosion and what happens afterwards we also experience the narrators opinion, how he felt at the time.

The footage is very shaky as soon as the bomb hits as it is live footage, it is clear that it hasn't been edited, there is no cuts and there isn't any point where the filming stops.
There also wasn't really any specific camera angles, but the distance away shows a medium shot.

This documentary uses the expository format; they expose a specific topic and are quite frequently seen on TV. They often include interviews for the benefit of exploring other people’s opinions, which is what Olly seems to be doing.
Expository documentaries are very likely to have narrators too, and are referred to as ‘Voice of God’. Some other examples of expository documentaries would be those that were narrated by David Attenborough called ‘Planet Earth’.

Our documentary will involve a voice-over from a section of the interview with Mark Maybanks, this is so he is narrating his re-enactment of the morning that he had the bomb on his bus. 

We also included a narration and illustrations of where the bombs where placed on the 21st which is the date we focused on but we also filmed our own footage of the locations that were effected on the day that the bombs went off (7/7).

Marathon Day: Boston.

The second documentary I'm going to be analysing is called ‘Marathon Day: Boston’. It’s a basic documentary summarising what had happened on the 15^th April. This documentary is from the perspective of mainstream media; there is also archive footage from when the bomb went off and when it was announced on news reports.
Click here to watch this documentary.

In the first frame of the documentary they have text saying ‘Dedicated to the victims of terrorism’. This is a powerful start to the documentary as it makes the audience think about all of the people that have died, not only on the 15^th of April, but all terrorist attacks that have happened.

 

-We have used something similar in the documentary we have created because it engages the audience, people are likely to read what’s on the screen as it usually informs the audience on what’s going on and what’s going to be shown.-

It then shows some footage the marathon with a clear enthusiastic voice-over from a man and woman explaining that it is a tradition, that there are multiple different people running all over the world and that there are up to 27,000 people contributing. This documentary has many cuts showing thousands running together and then showing individuals depending on what the voice-over is explaining.
We are then shown the finish line, the female voice-over then says 'The crowd are going crazy as they reach the finish line', this is when the bomb explodes. Music is placed over the top of this to emphasise the mood but not completely muting what is going on at the scene, you are able to hear lots of screaming, smoke and sirens. This was so the producers could present to the audience the atmosphere during and after the explosion.

It’s clear that by looking at different styles of documentaries, we were able to confirm exactly what we wanted, and didn't want to include within ours. We knew that we wanted to conform to the poetic/expository mode of documentary, due to the fact that we were documenting on such an informal, controversial, and sensitive topic. 
now clearly established the type of mode that our documentary will convert too, and will be taking into consideration the different effects and styles that we use, and what they could possible connote or represent to an audience once edited.