Treatment 2: Liverpool Waters (My Backup)

Our Idea is to produce a documentary behind the recent proposal of the Liverpool Waters Project, which is due to be approved on Tuesday 6^th March 2012. The project, by Peel Holdings, is to improve the northern docklands of the city, by adding features such as 9000 apartments, hundreds of offices, hotels, bars, a cruise terminal and the 55-storey Shanghai Tower. The council has recommended that the city’s planning committee approve the £5.5 billion project to ensure a great change in the city’s future. Our project will be based around official views, of those involved, as well as the public view on the changes to their city, what they think of the change, the amount of money being spent, and what the change will mean for Liverpool. Even though the project is in favour of approval, there are those who are against the project going underway, such as ‘conservation watchdogs’ English Heritage and Unesco, who believe that the project will have a large impact on the city’s World Heritage Site. So in conclusion, our idea is to investigate the city’s views on the project, as well as official views from both those for and against the project, to allow the audience to decide for themselves whether they think the project will be successful for Liverpool or not.

The piece will be 5 minutes long to fit the brief. The format of the piece is DV-PAL, 25 FPS/QuickTime. The audience for the piece may be the general public of Liverpool, who are still unsure as to the changes in their town, as well as a general audience on a vast scale, to see how the changes in this city may affect their own, or may even affect their country. The piece is to firstly inform the audience of the project, as well as offer arguments for and against the project to allow the audience to come up with their own opinion or conclusion on the project. It will allow each angle of argument to be brought forward and considered. And if the project is approved on the Tuesday, what people’s views are on the approval.

Media coverage has been quite quiet for this project because of its lack of approval. The website offer an animation video for the audience to see what the changes will be like, however there aren’t any views presented or anything related, so our work may have a big impact on making people nationwide aware of the project and the different views regarding it. The approach were taking is both professional and personal. We want the audience to know the facts about the project, however we also want them to engage with the general public’s response to it, so the audience can empathize with the Liverpool population.

Peel Holdings are the group in charge of the Liverpool Waters project. They have done similar projects, such as the Chatham Waters, which proved very successful. The company have been involved in a number of projects similar to the waters one, which means that they are reliable and favored to succeed.