CRITICAL REFLECTION
From my research I learned that the interview is a fundamental code and convention of most documentaries. For example, when watching Jeff Orlowski's ' The Social Dilemma' (9th September 2020) docudrama, I found that the way he used the interview effectively using a range of experts filmed in a casual way with relatively informal mise-en-scene, giving a sense of realism and appeal to young audiences and also the expected validity of experts.
However, I liked that The Social Dilemma begins with some behind the scenes footage, such as preparing for the interview, setting up the background and checking if microphone is working or not which is not a usual convention on tv documentaries. I thought this shows the audience that they have nothing to hide and gains the audience's trust, so I copied this too. Behind the scenes footage sometimes comes up at the end of documentary and film, but in this case, they are at the beginning. I learned about John Grierson’s ideology that even documentary can be a way of telling message, but it still has to be done as an entertaining way (‘the creative treatment of actuality’) so this was another reason for making the boys laugh and joke and also for the montage sequences.
In The Social Dilemma, those experts were wearing casual clothes during interview, and the background were set as a casual place as well and this challenges the typical conventions, as people would’ve thought those experts will be wearing formal working clothes such as suits and interviewed in working place, like an office. Therefore in my documentary, I decided to let my interviewee wear casual clothes and interviewed in their room as well, to reveal a feeling of friendly to the audience, instead of letting them feel they’ve been told by someone who’s condescending.
The lighting in The Social Dilemma has passing a sense of natural to the audience, which gives them a feeling of realism. However, I decided to challenge the typical convention, instead of using ‘natural’ light, I used low key lighting to let my character stood out in the black background, therefore binary opposition is created to attract audiences and telling them the danger and the addictiveness of social media, by showing them instead of telling them.
My audience for this documentary will be between age 16-24 yours old, with B/C1 backgrounds, who highly have interest on social media. My primary audience would be young higher educated international male students as all my interviewee are A level and IB international male students therefore they would engage my products by its representation through the use and gratifications of ‘personal identity’ and ‘Information’ (Blumer and Katz). My target psychographics would be Explorers and Reformers. As my documentary would be about challenging and questioning social media, I believe my product would engage these types of audience, for example at the beginning I referred a quote ‘I see that all of us who live are nothing but images or insubstantial shadow’ by Sophocles. Reformers who concerns about society would recognise the quote therefore engage with my product as appealing to their intellect. And also with Neil Postman’s ‘Amusing ourselves to death’ this ideology in mind, I tried to not let my documentary become just an education serious product, but I tried to make it attractive and nor boring, which my audience would engage and found in my product. As my young audience are highly interested with social media, I’ve created a Instagram account to promote it. I believe visually colourful image would be attractive to my audiences, therefore I’ve used consistence style of image and also lots of recognisable social media logos to make sure audience will engage with my product.
Considering the construction of representations, I realised that my documentary is talking about how powerful and dangerous social media could be and how it is affecting teenagers themselves without realising it, as all my interviewee are international male student, therefore representation of young people has become a key convention of my documentary. It is a hegemonic stereotype that teenagers are always engrossed in social media, which is reflected in the way I have represented them, for example the teenage boy at the start wearing all black and a hat in a bedroom with low key lighting represents this negative stereotype and challenges the idea that social media is a convenient tool for people to communicate by suggesting it creates social isolation. This is exaggerated by the use of binary oppositions between the natural outside world and the badly lit bedroom. The use of real-life examples such as the sad case of Molly Russell relates the issue of abusive social media to the real world and the photograph of her in her school uniform emphasises the youth and experience which is trying to deal with dangerous online material. I have used music to anchor the meaning of sections of my documentary and give it an emotive as well as an intellectual appeal, for example the start scene of the teenage boy in his bedroom, I have chosen to use a very low-key slow tempo cello sound as my background music, which reveals a feeling of danger and sadness to the audience.
Throughout my social media, documentary, and magazine, I need to make sure they all heavily emphasise the ideology of the danger of social media and create a sense of branding. Therefore, I’ve chosen my colour palette as dark colour, such as black, blue, but also white and carried this across all three products. This is because my primary audience would be mainly male, so my colour palette needs to be stereotypically ‘masculine’, but also because dark colour palette will represent ideas of danger, loneliness, sadness, and connote shadow; something social media has become, a shadow over our mental health and well-being. For example, on my social media page, I’ve made each of my post images extremely large, and most of them contain visually colourful images of social media brands with dark blue as background colour, which reveals a sense that we are surrounded by this overpowering and threatening technology which is made to look innocent and fun. This approach also appears in my documentary, for example, in one scene, a teenage boy is wearing all black and a hat in a bedroom with low key lighting. This highlights and supports the message that social media can be dangerous and in terms of colour palette, sees that there is a consistent style alongside message throughout.
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