Today we pitched our documentary project to the class. My group — Alice, Anna, Izzi and Zitni — and I all agreed early on in the process that we’ve made several “documentary portraits” already and we wanted to tackle something slightly different, like picking a topic or issue and finding interviewees who would fit into that topic.

Coming up with ideas is my biggest weakness, honestly. I’m pretty confident with my ability to use camera equipment and translate my creative vision to the screen (though I have a lot more to learn there, too!), and I think I’m a good collaborator in that I can develop other peoples’ ideas, but I don’t have a large social network of acquaintances and have struggled in the past to think of interesting subjects to make films about from scratch. (And yes, I recognise that having ideas is fundamental to being a filmmaker…)

Anyway, as a group we came up with the idea of talking to female drivers. At first we were going to base our film around a single driver for the female-only ride-sharing service Shebah, but with help from Rohan we decided that it might be more interesting to compare a Shebah driver to other professional female drivers (taxi and Uber), and see if they have common experiences or outlooks in their life and work.

We have collaborated well so far to develop that initial nugget into a fully-fledged idea — something that could conceivably be turned into an actual film. We’ve got a central question, a structure and some ideas for the visual style we hope to achieve. The biggest question mark is whether we can find not one but three interview subjects who: 1) are willing to be interviewed, 2) are available during our filming schedule, 3) are comfortable on camera, and 4) have something interesting to say. But our initial enquiries have been positive, and I think we’ll benefit from the fact that professional drivers are generally quite personable because they communicate with people all day.

I’m a little anxious that the success or failure of our film lies entirely in the hands of people who we’ve never met, but I want to get out of the comfort zone of only interviewing people I know personally. Here goes!