RAISED BY QUEERS REVIEW

Channel 4 produced a the Documentary Raised by Queers which follows Hollyoaks star Kieron Richardson as he looks into same-sex parenting and also talks about the birth of his own twins. Kieran is a gay dad and he and his partner had a surrogate who carried their twins which we learn about through the documentary as well as being introduced to his new born twins. What's different about this documentary compared to the others I've already reviewed is it's a lot more hands on and observational in the sense we're following someone, we have a presenter here and someone who not only wants to learn and talk to others about same-sex parenting but is waiting for his surrogate to give birth to his own children.

Presenter documentaries are always interesting as long as the presenter is both interesting and relevant to the story. In this case, Kieran has both the popularity of his fans and his own story to go alongside the documentary. This documentary is a huge inspiration visually for me as well as being more relevant to our chosen topic (the LGBT community). As it hasn't been decided yet whether or not we're going to have a presenter for this documentary I feel it's good to plan out visuals in case that choice is made. Looking through first, the visuals with the presenter;
Kieran is seen throughout this documentary, interviews are all done with him, he's guiding us through the entire story and for this reason, the camera is almost glued to him. There's plenty of coverage of him driving and walking for the edit but what I've really taken from this documentary is the interviews with the contributors. Talking with the first couple about their experience, from 5:51-9:05 in the documentary, we see the three of them and the couples little girl sat in a kitchen, I'm assuming from the camera work it's single camera. The set up for this interview is with the couple sat either said of Kieran and one feeding the baby, this would normally be a very complicated interview but the editing is seamless and it flows perfectly. What's also very interesting is that the camera isn't on a tripod, this entire interview has been done handheld. Below as some screenshots of this interview:

The way this interview has been cut up is by cutaways relevant to the interview such as shots of the child being fed, shots of Kieran nodding (most likely got after the interview), shots of the couples reactions and nodding which could be either from different parts of the interview or filmed after the interview. Later they move into another room and this changes into a 2 shot interview as can be seen below;

After this there's a small interview with just Kieran outside talking about some of the issues he'd discussed with the couple. Once this has past we get more traveling shots with Kieran, helping to break up the documentary and also to move onto the next interviewee.

The footage throughout this documentary is the same style of handheld both coverage, cutaways and interviews and it's a really classic style of documentary which I feel fits with this story as well. This story wouldn't suit stable/tripod footage with a narration. The handheld footage mixed with the happy and energetic presenter works much better. There's also a large amount of traveling and moving in the documentary so with the camera moving it works along with the storyline and style of the filming.