Pre-production- Review The Boy Who Was Born a Girl- Real Stories

The Boy Who Was Born a Girl is a documentary about 16 year old Jon who lives in the south of England, he's was born a girl how ever after suffering from gender dysphoria for years the documentary follows him on his journey becoming a man.

In terms of access the doc has access to Jon's house allowing them to become apart of his life, they also go with him to Doctor appointments. This allows the audience to become apart of the journey for Jon and through that become educated about being trans. The use of archive footage/photos of Jon as a child are also important as he is able to share his opinions about his mother's struggle calling him a boy.

It also sees Jon go to support meetings and interviews members of those meeting.

Interviews either range from being conversations between Jon and his mother to set up constructed conversations with the camera. These interviews with the camera also show what it's like for Jon's mum to have a trans son and how she is transitioning from having Natasha to having Jon.

The conversations allow it to loose some form of formality and become relatable to the audience, while pieces to camera are where the audience can learn about thoughts, feelings and opinions. The documentary takes Jon into a constructed photo shoot were he can be as masculine as he wants, this is similar to our documentary as we are constructing a show for Tanya to perform in. It sees Jon go through big phases of being trans in buying binders, talking about having a mastectomy, and finally ending with his first day of school as a boy.

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Overall from this Documentary I learnt:

• It's reaffirmed the idea that the more educated we are about the topic we are filming the less likely we are to upset contributors, in this doc Jon gets upset with his mum that she is calling him and girl. We'd avoid this by sending research questions to contributors asking if they have any preferred pro-nouns or anything they'd like us to take note of.
• As filmmakers it's important to remember that this is a major life event, in our case it's a big thing for Tanya to perform with other Drag Queens while in this case it's a big thing for Jon to go to school as a boy. This needs to be remembered as emotions can run high, this would be calmed by constant communication and reassurance.