Contents
Introduction Chapter 1: Documentary Theory Chapter 2: New Technologies Chapter 3: Genre Chapter 4: Narrative Chapter 5: Representation Chapter 6: Audience Conclusion
4
7
10
13
16
19
22
25
Introduction
Jak Edgley Student ID: 6459365 Documentary Link: https://vimeo.com/145483193 “Documentary is the presentation of factual information about real people, places and events, generally portrayed through actual images and artefacts.” (Bernard 2004:2) In 1895, the Lumiere brothers released a short film titled “Un Train Arivee”. This film simply contained footage of a train arriving at a station. However this was the first time moving footage had been shot on a camera. At the time, audiences were fascinated at how the train was moving across the screen, a concept they would have never imagined witnessing. At the time, this concept was known as “actuality”. While this represents the very early stages of documentaries, it possesses the core concepts that documentaries today still have, the main one being the filming of reality. In 1926 John Grierson refined the term “documentary” in a review of Robert Flaherty’s ‘Moana’. Documentaries became further prominent through the work of Dziga Vertov, a pioneer documentary filmmaker. His documentary “Man with a Movie Camera” was arguably the first time actuality had been put together in a feature length film. Prior to this, the concept of filming reality was limited to short clips for most people at the time. Vertov’s work was ground breaking as it unearthed a new type of media that is still avidly consumed today. Documentaries can be categorised into sub genres, according to Bill Nichols. These genres are known as expository, observational, poetic, participatory, reflexive, performative and poetic. Each documentary can be placed into one of these sub genres based on their conventions, or how they are structured. Due to the increasing number of documentaries in the media today, having various sub-‐ genre is beneficial, as it helps consumers categorise content more easily. Our group’s documentary follows the daily life of students, and the emotions involved during that day. It can be categorised into the observational sub genre. To fall into this genre, the documentary must present an objective reality with the filmmaker as a neutral observer. Our documentary fits into this sub genre best as each group member shoots our footage themselves while they are doing tasks they would normally do throughout the day. Furthermore, some of the filming was completely spontaneous, which further emphasises how an objective reality is being portrayed, because in these sequences, nothing was staged or pre-‐planned. The documentary itself does not include an extortionate amount of fancy edits or transitions. This is because it would stray out of the conventions of an observational documentary. The footage from our documentary was shot
entirely on mobile phones giving it a more natural feel, which coincides with the sub-‐genre our documentary falls into. The documentary doesn’t have a specifically set narrative, as the main goal is to get an objective portrayal of student life. To plan a narrative would require certain footage to be staged, which is not what our group was looking for. We sought to create an objective portrayal of reality throughout our documentary.
Documentary Theory
Lam Yuen Shan Student ID: 6461597 “It depends on the portrayal of sound and images of actuality to distinguish documentary” (John Corner, 1995). To be more specific, the purpose of documentary is to report reality with evidence. “It contains authentic footage and rebuilding of events and situations to provide proof or contrast with the interviewee’s account” (Naborough, 2013). Occasionally, documentary may involve narration to regulate meaning and sometimes may rely on the unseen narrator. Bill Nichols, an American documentary theorist, distinguished the six types of documentaries. The first is the poetic documentary, which focuses on emphasizing the lyrical, rhythmic and emotive side of documenting, it is also somehow against the filmic routine, for instance it has a fix time and space to investigate the correlation between pattern, portraits and objects. As for the observational documentary, “it attempts to observe aspects of the historical world as they happen” (Willcox, 2013), it normally does not have a voice–over commentary, no supplementary music or sound, no behavior is repeated and interviews, objects are seen in their natural setting. To be more specific, it is quite similar to some reality television shows. For instance, the British reality TV show “ Big Brother”, one of the main conventions is the hidden camera that are placed in the Big Brother house, hence their conversations and actions are totally unpredictable and natural. The reflexive documentary is the most self-‐conscious and subjective within all kinds of documentaries, It don’t see itself as a transparent window on the world; conversely it draws attention to their own construction, and the fact that they are representations (Willcox, 2013). Consequently it is highly contradictory of realism, the main purpose of documentary. One of the famous example is the documentary “man with a movie camera” that was filmed in 1929, at that time this documentary was defined as “a story about a story”, after the term “documentary” was defined and this is the first one. The film is in black and white and silent with orchestra, basically there is no story and characters within, and it proposed to film the motor evolution and industrial revolution over that period. According to Burton (2007), performative documentary focus on emphasizing the personal subjective experience and response of emotion to the world. They are strongly alternative, it might be poetic and/or experimental, and might include unrealistic hypothetical presentations of events proposed to make us experience how it would be if we hold another specific perspective on the world that we are not living in, it often has a correlation with personal experiences in political, historical and realities. “Tongues untied” in 1989, the performative documentary about American black gay culture and the racism and sexual orientation discrimination that black gay experience in society, it intended to put audience face on the issue, make them emotional and arouse the sympathy and empathy
The expository documentary is rhetorical, it could also be call the “voice of god” since it always has a presenter to speak directly to the audiences. In this case, images has become minor important than the voice of narration, it serves to illustrate or act in the counterpoint of what is being said by the presenter, the presenter often brings up a tough argument and standpoint. For example, the documentary “ America’s Most Wanted” is about a reporter presenting wanted of escaped criminal that committed any crimes etc. kidnapping, murder, robbery, child abuse and sexual violence. In a participatory documentary, the production team will also become the subject of the documentary, one of the biggest advantage of this kind of shooting technique is it is able to give audience a more realistic sense of what it is like when the filmmaker was in the given situation and how that situation alters. In the documentary, A Day Full Of Emotions, the production team was involved in the creation and filming. The attraction of this documentary is about daily life that teenagers all experience, therefore it would be able to arouse the echo of audience’s heart since. “Super size me”, an American participatory documentary that’s about the filmmaker recording how is his physical and mental health going to change after one month of only eating Mcdonald’s food. This is a very successful documentary, since it had brought awareness to public about the obesity and overweight issue and unhealthy food culture, in America it had also implicitly challenged Mcdonald’s of producing harmful fast food so it has gained the whole world attention. Although we all remain on the same timeline, we are in different places and experiencing different feelings and emotions, for instance while someone is being poorly punished by their boss, another person is happily having a fine dinner. The production team of A Day Full Of Emotions has individually filmed about what is each of them doing and feeling at several fixed time, which means their daily routine. It could be analysed as the production team has chosen this kind of documentary since it could be able to strengthen the power of arousing audience’s empathy. The traits of this type of documentary, for instance hand-‐ held camera-‐filming style; voice-‐over by the filmmakers and most importantly the participation of filmmaker can make the documentary look informal and relaxed. By using these traits, It could be estimated that the production team A Day Full Of Emotions aimed to attract the audiences by making the documentary feel easy-‐ going and flexible, so that it might be able to make the audience feel pleased and stress-‐ released, they found the traits of this documentary would be the best sort to present their idea.
New Technologies
Caroline Blaxland Student ID: 6158479 “The factor, which has exerted the greatest impact on urban society during the last thirty years, has surely been the development and spread of telematic technology through the convergence of communications and computers.” (Brotchie, Batty, Hall and Newton 1991) Technology in the 21st century has developed rapidly since the 70s and 80s, this development meant that a lot of Hollywood filmmakers made documentary’s changed for the better. For example the film ‘A man with a movie camera’, the first classified documentary is based on a man travelling around a city with a camera filming the urban life. This shows that back in 1929 the producers did not mind about the lighting or setting they simple just wanted to make a film that worked. Now high-‐end movie producers would pick a location, light and setting just to film the perfect shot if that shot did not work they would have to rethink the location. This is due to the development of technology that was given in 1929 to 2015. “New technology enables further sophisticated forms of organization”. (Tom E. Burns 1961). As the development of technology has become so large many people have lost their jobs, as they are not needed for production of films, for example they no longer need Line Producer, as using less technology means that you will not go over your budget which means the Line Producer does not need to worry on budgeting. Charlie Brooker argues that ‘the representation of the real is a blurred boundary.’ This is suggesting that many different texts are available on a number of interactive platforms, which has made people question what is real and what is not. With this theory, the production group, D3 felt that their documentary was representing the real idea of a ‘student’s life’ in emotions. They made this noticeable through the violent language and the stereotypical representation, for example the laziness of not getting up at 7am or the going out clubbing on a Tuesday evening. They had a very clear demographic audience with a socio-‐ economic of C2-‐E, 18 to 24 year olds due to the setting of the clubs. During the pre-‐production, the production group (D3) looked at ways to get the best quality of film without using high-‐tech cameras. In the end, the group decided to film from their smart phones. This was mainly decided as the production group wanted to follow the forms of the film ‘Tangerine’. This film was the best at The Sundance Festival and consumers where shocked that it was filmed on a iPhone 5s thus allowing the idea of David Gauntlett’s theory of the prosumer creating a world of independent media producers, as they were creating their own type of media with their own technology. The idea of using an iPhone makes the whole documentary almost feel like its being portrayed through the eyes of the iPhone. However there are problems whilst using IPhones to record. For example in the production development for D3, they noticed the wind being in the background with some of their recordings which would cause the audience to have trouble hearing. However this can also
be a plus for the group as the audience may not even notice the wind in the background due to the audience relating to the whole documentary. Using an iPhone allows the group to be able to upload their documentary onto YouTube or other social networking sites, which allows them to gain a wider and global audience, as people will share and like the video allowing the documentary to become apart of the global village. By having access of new technologies, the group was able to follow the conventions of an observational documentary. This was chosen because the intention of the documentary was to capture ‘the day in the life of teenagers and their emotions throughout the day’ from their perspective. Using a smartphone captures the intention of the documentary as it gives off the idea of becoming a ‘vlog’. This was the way the group wanted their documentary to be portrayed, as it was their own perspective not how other people see them. The way the group decided to film the documentary allowed the process of bringing it all together much easier. In the first scene they woke up at 7am to film how they felt in the morning, then they filmed at 12am to show the dramatic change during our first scene. In the documentary many people said that the group followed the commercial conventions as it was almost to true of a representation of how teenagers are making it relative. This linear narrative made it make sense and flow easily into one documentary. As the entire group videoed on iPhones all they had to do was download it onto a computer and start editing on ‘Premiere Pro’. The editing part was the hardest part, as the group all wanted to help out, however, there is so much one can do to help. During the editing the group decided that it be a good idea to put the times listed at the bottom of the scene so then the audience would understand what time the current clip was playing from. In the end the Media and Production students decided they would finalize the whole edit and the other students used different types of computer-‐aided technology to help add in different effects. Overall, the developments of new technologies have allowed many people to try new and different things. As the production group has used Smartphones instead of high-‐tech cameras, it gave them chance to step out of their comfort zone, but it showed the portrayal through the filmmaker’s eyes of their phones. The group really had to think about the pros and cons of using such device’s as many things could of gone wrong with just using smartphones, for example the lighting might have been off or the camera would have caught the footage blurry, however this documentary portrayed the new technologies extremely well, it displayed great quality of footage.
Genre
Toby Read Student ID: 6261517 When it comes to film genres, there are multiple various and in-‐depth subgenres. Films often fit into multiple subgenres, for example, action/sci-‐fi or thriller/horror. Deciding on a genre and subgenre are important before producing any form of media, it makes the objective and intentions clear and can help keep production on track. Documentaries have six main subgenres and categories they can fit into They are poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive and performative. Poetic documentaries lack a clear narrative sense. They can often seem abstract and sometimes even confusing. They tend to have a deeper meaning than other types. Expository documentaries are factual and informative. They’re made to teach and give the viewer knowledge, and give a right and wrong answer rather than being based on opinion. Observational documentaries attempt to show the message through the film with little to no intervention from the filmmaker. Participatory documentaries try to include the filmmaker into the documentary and merge together to create a different angle to look at things from. Reflexive documentaries involve everybody learning, you will often find the filmmaker learns as much as the viewer from a reflexive documentary – they’re often seen as experimental. Lastly, performative documentaries, these types of documentaries often report on conflicting subjects. The filmmakers are openly biased about their point of view, and do not try to hide it. For the group’s documentary – ‘A Day Full of Emotions’, getting the genre right was important since there was a clear target audience. Different genres often appeal more to different people. The target audience in this instance was teenagers. Although the documentary could fit into multiple subgenres, the most suitable in this instance was the observational genre. Observational was chosen since the intention of the documentary was to capture the day in the life of teenagers and their emotions from their perspective. The documentary was filmed on each group member’s phone, like individual ‘vlogs’. After much planning and discussion, the group came to the conclusion that this was the best idea. It shows life from the filmmaker’s perspectives, rather than how other people were to see them. It was felt that this was the best way to show what life was like for that person. It allowed the filmmaker to dive into the deeper parts of their lives that would usually go unnoticed by others. It allowed the filmmakers to be more descriptive as they knew exactly what was going on and how they were feeling on the inside, something that can only be described by that person. This very much put it in the observational subgenre of documentaries – the viewer was literally observing the filmmaker’s lives from their perspectives. There was no narration; subtitles or any other form of intervention after the footage was put together besides background music for immersion, a basic timestamp at certain points of the video to make the documentary understandable and emojis to show the emotions that were felt at that point.
Using emoticons was a clever thing to add since it fit well with filming on smartphones, especially as it was a documentary for teenagers. The group wanted the viewers to see what their lives were like exactly as they were without any extras. A narration or any intrusive form of intervention would have taken away from the immersion. There was also no need for a narration – it was quite clear what was going on through the filmmaker’s explanations and timestamps. A narration or subtitles would have seemed almost futile. Another subgenre the documentary could arguably fit into would be expository. Since the documentary was informative and factual towards the lives of the filmmakers. The documentary wasn’t biased towards any subject or individual, everything said and shown was factual. The point of the documentary was to inform the audience of the lives of the filmmakers, and that’s what it did. Therefore, one could argue that these factors make it in various ways an expository documentary as well as an observational one. When thinking of a documentary to make, several ideas were listed down and developed upon before the final decision was made. There were three main ideas the group came up with, each differed slightly in genre. It was important to have more than one idea so that if it came to it and one idea could not be completed there would be something else there to fall back on. Locations, times, dates, etc. were all factors that needed to be kept in mind. If something was unable to be worked out and there was no way around it, then a backup would have been necessary. Different ideas are more appropriate with one specific genre over another. This was something that needed to be taken in mind when developing and working on all the ideas, and something that was thoroughly discussed once an idea was chosen. Luckily, the initial idea worked out and the other two were not needed. Expansion was needed on the idea discussed, some people were able to film at certain times – others were not. Filming was permitted in certain locations and special permissions were required in some cases among other things. This all had to be taken into account before going out to film. Whilst the documentary didn’t have a full narration or story, it still made sense and flowed well. Times were listed at the bottom left of the screen to make sure the viewer knew what time it was when the current clip was playing. This was implemented because otherwise the clips would have jumped from 7am to 12pm for example, and it would be difficult to understand what was going on. This was a decision that a lot of thought went into to make sure it was the right thing to do. Since it may have looked tacky and pointless if it wasn’t needed – the viewer may have already known what was happening. Overall, the genre that was chosen functioned well with the target audience of teenagers and young adults. Relating to the audience is one of the most important aspects of any film, and this documentary did it well. It displayed an interesting perspective that engaged and captivated the audience. The subgenre was arguably one of the most interesting subgenres out of all the documentary subgenres, and this was indicated by a positive audience response.
Narrative
Josh Solomon Student ID: 6450410 It is very important to know the difference between narrative and a story. A story is a sequence of events that tells us what is happening. Stories will contain many different themes, genres and have specific targeted audiences. Narrative is the way that the story is constructed. It takes all the elements used in the story and carries it out to the audience. A narrative can be structured in different ways and in doing so it will achieve various different reactions. A common structure type is known as ‘Linear Structure’. This is when narrative orchestrates a story and runs in chronological order, from beginning to end. This technique is the most simplest to portray out of all the techniques and is more than likely the reason it is used quite frequently in the media. There are five defiant stages to a narrative that helps the story develop. The first stage would be the ‘Equilibrium’, which is a state of peace of harmony. Like in our documentary, everything started in the morning where everybody is waking up. There is destruction to this, which then gives birth to a new state of peace that would emerge at the end of the story. Just like how in the documentary when all of the subjects (actors) went back to bed after a long eventful day. This is known as the ‘New equilibrium’. Other techniques will feed a story to its viewers in a different way. There is a technique that is designed to make the viewers wonder what is going to happen next and in doing so they can question the story itself. This type of narrative can and in some cases will make the story more enticing. This technique is known as ‘Open Structure’. The last way narrative can be structured is by letting the audience know there is going to be a definite ending to the story; these are quite commonly used in Hollywood films. This technique is called ‘Closed Structure’. Theorist, Vladimir Propp, analysed narrative and suggested that characters took on specific roles of narrative that fulfilled the purpose. From a complete analysis of stories, Propp came up with seven different character types: The hero, the villain, the donor, the helper, the princess, the dispatcher and finally the false hero. Propp’s narrative theory uses these seven types of characters so that audiences can easily identify the characters in the film/TV show. In A Day Full Of Emotions, the characters were never molded our characters in such a way. They wanted to show the audience a real portrayal of teens. To define our characters the way Propp did we would have had to script each character, by doing that it would of created a false platform and that would have contradicted the whole point of the documentary. A story can be told differently but have the same original foundation. It would all depend on the narrative. A really good example to use would be ‘Dracula’. There are serial different Dracula movies, each directed by different people. However they all have the same core foundation. Except the narrative is never the same, therefore giving the audience a different feel and reaction to each ‘Dracula’ movie produced. The same methods apply to every ‘Frankenstein’, ‘Peter Pan’ and ‘Planet of the Apes’ movies. Everyone has a different feel to each of those movies, that’s why in A Day Full Of Emotions they have many different subjects
involved to help the audience have a different feel to the film. Narrative is not just something that applies to films. It applies to anything that has a story to tell. Whether it would be a news report on a world crisis, other documentaries or even a fictional feature film. The same rules apply to any genre a story is being directed by narrative and put into use. A documentary is required to not be biased and portray the truth to an audience. It must be “objective” and not be slanted in a particular way. That’s why with A Day Full Of Emotions nothing was scripted or staged. We kept everything purely real and shot it on our phones to reinforce that everything shown was true. So going into the 72-‐hour challenge the group, as a whole was set on what story they wanted to deliver. One thing we all did have to keep in mind was that the aim of any documentary is to teach things the rest of the world will not or may not have known about the emotional changes a typical student may face in one day. The structure of narrative that was used was linear. However this structure wasn’t planned on being used because; there was no real pre production involved. In this documentary the target audience was roughly around ‘eighteen to twenty five’. Instead of focusing on just one teenager’s day, the group focused on multiple. By doing this it would keep the documentary enticing to the audience. In post production, texts and pictures were used to define each individual emotional change that the subjects (actors) were representing. This did in fact help the narration flow quite well and by doing this, viewers could see how different the teenagers who were being documented are to one another. In the end narrative can be seen as the voice a story is being told through. It presents a story in which people understand what is going on. By doing this narrative also has control over how people feel and react to what is being shown and the aim of the documentary was, to make everyone feel like they had a bit more of an understanding of all emotions the different teenagers/ young adults might face at different times throughout the day. Judging from the response given, it was clear that the narration of the film had succeeded in its task.
Representation
Alexis Carrington Student ID: 6347279 The documentary, A Day Full Of Emotions highlights the changing emotions and experiences someone may go through in 24-‐hours. Focusing on eighteen to twenty-‐two year olds the production team, D3, use stereotypical signifiers that identify this specific age category to the audience. One of their main signifiers used within the documentary and to produce the documentary was a smart phone. This instantly connotes young people and technology to an audience, as it is stereotyped that all young people are ‘glued to their phones’. D3 believe smart phones are the eyes of the young people and used this to capture their every move, fortunately their audience ranged around the same age as the participants in the short film. This made the documentary relative for the viewers, which all possessed a smart phone. A documentary’s purpose is to inform, explain or cover issues from multiple perspectives highlighting the media’s intake on reality. A Day Full Of Emotions is a documentary that covers the life of young adults from the perspective of a young adult, suggesting our perception should be accurate for the audience. When the Lumiere brothers created the Exiting The Factory film there were no staged characters or situations, the producers placed the camera in one position and filmed what was in front of it. Although they have chosen to place the camera in that particular place, by focusing on that scene without interfering with what is happening, the Lumiere brothers were able to capture reality in it’s natural light. This is called actuality. Though now, cultures, social groups and ideologies have massively changed and are still currently changing. Therefore, during the pre-‐production and production process of creating a media text it is not as simple to represent someone or something as it once was. In D3’s documentary, creating the stereotypically young adult was difficult as not all are the same and some of these old ideologies we used associated with them are no longer in place. Representation is the portrayal and process of construction that is not innocent. There are three main levels of representation: Level one identifies the “reality” of the text; what is happening? And what are people doing? It can either be a situation, a character or a setting. This is then developed on to level two, where the media use technical codes such as lighting, camera angles, editing techniques and sound to re-‐present what is being shown in the text. By doing this, the media are able to create social and cultural ideologies that are accepted by an audience and alternately by society. Using this theory audience(s) subconsciously learn how to read media texts. For example, you wouldn’t cast an elderly character to participate in a bar crawl during a romantic film. The audience(s) would have been familiarised that these are not conventions that fit together by watching previous media text, nor could they relate it to their reality. An elderly character would be stereotyped sitting in an armchair knitting, something all audiences can understand and more importantly, believe. Props, Non-‐verbal communication, costume, setting and
sound are signifiers coded within media by the producers, so the audience is able to read and understand the text properly. In the opening scene of A Day Full Of Emotions the participants from D3 use a hand-‐held camera, which is their smart phones to record themselves waking up at 7:00am. This creates an intimate scene for the audience where they have a close up view of the characters NVC, that connotes them to be moody and lazy, this is further enforced using diegetic sound where one of the participants says “Fuck that” whilst looking at the time. Although this stereotype is not particularly true, D3’s audiences find these exaggerated stereotypes amusing, being likely that they have had close experiences. Throughout the documentary there are iconic props that would be associated to a young adult such as alcohol, gaming consoles and junk food. These simple items connote irresponsibility, laziness and immaturity, which are all stereotypes embedded by media for the wider audiences. Although the participants that made the documentary are the same age the audience, you would question, “Why the need for stereotyping then?” well the media understand social groups and cultures through ideologies and conventions, not all positive. However, this is beneficial for audiences that are not particularly knowledgeable of the some content within a programme, so these ideologies and conventions make it easier for them to decode the text. The audience(s) makes sense of media by responding to familiar elements of reality that are portrayed through media outlets. D3 have communicated their intake on reality to their audience by exaggerating real scenarios. Using hand-‐ held camera shots to capture each of the characters in a club scene, this method of filming enhances the club atmosphere making it appear more manic. They further developed this by editing different shots together using a split screen; this requires the audience to focus on more that one scene showing them how manic clubs can to be for young adults. The eighteen to twenty-‐two year old audiences that D3 aimed their documentary at can relate to this situation more than the wider audience(s) because it is likely they have shared the experience the character is portraying, to a certain extend. However, it is still required to emphasise these negative and positive stereotypes (depending on how the individuals from the audience take it) because it’s aim is to amuse the targeted audience and the wider audience(s), for example international audiences will be able to understand what is going on through the exaggerated conventions. These ideologies of young adults using explicit language, partying and being lazy are conventions constantly used within media texts to represent that category. The more the audience(s) read text and understand these codes, the more they become desensitised between reality and the representation of reality, leaving them to think in this case, “Is this what all young adults are like?” Yet, A Day Full Of Emotions shows a range of different stereotyped young adults that each member of their audience could relate to in different ways, representing the group accurately.
Audience
Edward Towers Student ID: 6285041 Audience is a term that can be defined in a various amount of ways. “Audience for any media product is simply those at whom the text is aimed at or those who are likely to watch it”(Dawkins and Wynd 2010: 12) or a “silent mass of people, attending to some powerful text”(Branston and Stafford 2010: 379). With the technology we have now, every media text that is produced will have an audience. New technology, such as smart phones allow an audience consume the text and also produce media this is known as the “pro-‐sumer”, a term that has been suggested by a range of media theorists. For our documentary, the group decided that we wanted our primary target audience to be students aged between 16 and 21 whereas our secondary audience would be anyone who have access to watch our video. Our documentary A Day Full Of Emotions follows seven young students experiencing different emotions at different times of the day, beginning at 7 o’clock and ending at midnight. As it has been discussed in the previous chapters, when creating any media text, not just a documentary, all four of the key concepts i.e. audience, genre, narrative and representation all need to be considered during all stages of production. These are used to gain full attention from an audience. For a media text to be successful, the writer needs to have a specific audience, which the documentary will be aimed at. “Audience has increasingly been seen by both academics and producers of media texts to be much more complicated”(Dawkins and Wynd 2010: 12). Audiences are constantly changing as every member of the audience has their own preferences such as a specific genre or actor. An audience can be influenced by a leader of a higher social class which is proposed by the “two step flow theory “ which was used to “describe the important influence not of the media but of local networks and opinion leaders”(Branston and Stafford 2010: 379). Modern audiences has moved away from this theory as they have become active rather then passive. The term ‘passive audience’ addresses members of the audience who don’t question any of the information they are being given from the media. The hypodermic needle theory suggests “meanings are ‘injected’ into the single mass audience by powerful, syringe-‐like media”(Branston and Stafford 2010: 382). One of the main aims of a documentary in my point of view is to either entertain or educate the audience, so therefore the information in the documentary needs to be accurate and correct so that the audience doesn’t move from a passive audience to an active audience. Our documentary requires a passive audience, as we wanted students to agree with what they are seeing. “A day full of emotions” consists of footage recorded from each member of the group at the beginning of the student’s day at 7 o’clock and concludes at midnight. We choose these times as they are specific times of the day which have a key effect on the emotions which students are experiencing, therefor the target audience will be able to relate to the students in the documentary which will encourage the audience to continue watching. Our target audience will be able relate to the students in the video on the other hand, the secondary audience may negotiate with the preferred reading which occurs when the “meaning
arrives at a result of a process if give and take between the reader’s assumptions and the ‘preferred reading’ offered by the text”(Branston and Stafford 2010: 438). From talking about our target audience being able to relate to the content of the documentary, brings up one of the key audience theories, which is still being criticized up to date. The is the uses and gratifications theory put forward by Bulmer and Katz “an active model of audience behavior, emphasizing the uses to which audiences put even to the most unlikely texts”(Branston and Stafford 2010: 444). The theory suggests that the “power lies with the individual consumer of the media”(Branston and Stafford 2010: 388). The audience can choose why they want to watch the text. For our documentary we used ‘emojies’ signs, which appear alongside the time to help enforce the different emotions, which the students are feeling. Our target audience will recognize these as are they are cultural factors, which they can recall from their background. Our secondary audience may not be able to acknowledge what the emoji’s mean as they weren’t part of their teenage life. An audiences needs to be gratified by a text can be “diversion, escapism, for information, comparing relationships/ lifestyle’s of characters with one’s own and for sexual stimulation”(Branston and Stafford 2010: 388). With our documentary our target audience could compare the characters within our text to their own lifestyles. The audience could touch on their personal identity with the documentary as well as their social identity as the audience may feel like they can use the documentary for communication with their social group. As I have discussed, when creating texts in the media, it is important to have a target audience in mind throughout the whole production. Whilst this is a necessity there are drawbacks to having a specific target audience. Thought about where the video will be viewed needs to be considered as how will the video be able to viewed by the target audience. As our target audience is teenagers aged between 16-‐21, we distributed our text on Vimeo and Facebook as this age group commonly uses these sites. Our video was described as ‘vlog’ unlike most documentaries which makes our video different which will appeal to the younger age group as a common phrase used to describe documentaries is ‘boring’. Students have received a variety of stereotypes, which we have portrayed in our documentary but the interesting thing about the recordings is that none of the takes were scripted. It was just how we felt at these specific times but its up to the audience to believe the stereotypes. With these stereotypes, the humor and informative narrative, I believe that our group has put together an effective short documentary.
Conclusion
Jak Edgley Student ID: 6459365 Throughout this book, the documentary has been critically analysed and picked apart using various theories within the media. The documentary itself has been analysed using documentary theory. Some of this includes the concepts of sub genres within documentary, and how our documentary fits in with specific sub genres. The chapter in question focuses on all documentary sub genres, not just the one that best fits our documentary. This is to ensure that the key theories surrounding documentaries are fully understood. As a result, the group could justify their decisions easily using the relevant theoretical content. New technologies were also a key component within the documentary. Due to the fact the documentary was shot entirely on mobile phones, it became essential to discuss the impact of new technologies. Because of this, the group could justify why mobile phones were useful in the documentary. The real-‐ life feel this style of filming had, made it perfect for the sub genre that was selected. Furthermore, the difference between the types of technology is a good talking point. Technology has undoubtedly developed, and the fact the documentary was filmed on mobile phones proves this idea. Genre was also covered. Similar to documentary theory, this looked at sub genres and how they fit into the larger genre that is the documentary genre, which bases itself on factual information. Understanding the different sub genres was imperative for the group, as it allowed us to identify what sub genre the documentary best fit into. As a result, the final product was polished and it is clear what was trying to be accomplished. While the documentary doesn’t have a set narrative, it is still important to understand this key concept. Some documentaries do have a narrative that is followed, but in the case of our documentary, there was no explicitly set narrative, as most of the filming was spontaneous, a “fly on the wall” approach. The group clearly understood this, which means the way the documentary was set out was entirely intentional and was planned by the group. Representation was also a key concept to consider during the production of the documentary. In particular, identifying the target audience is absolutely vital. If the target audience is wrong, the documentary won’t represent their interests, rendering the whole documentary pointless. This is arguably one of the more important key concepts, as knowing who you are trying to represent goes a long way in successfully targeting your target audience, something the group did extremely well. It became clear from the outset that students were the target audience, subsequently; the filming reflected this, with the use of shots, language, locations etc. Overall, the group collaborated successfully throughout the entire process of creating the five-‐minute documentary. All of the key concepts were clearly understood, which made the whole process much easier as time wasn’t wasted
having to go over the key concepts. The finished product has incorporated all of the key concepts, all of which have been critically analysed in this collaborative book.
•
Bibliography Branston B and Stafford R (2012). The Media Students Book. 5th ed. London: Routledge. 379,382,438,444,388.
•
•
Brotchie, J, Batty, M, Hall, P, Newton, P (1991). Cities of the 21st Century: new technologies and spatial systems. London: ARRB Group Limited. 1. Burton A (2007). Creative Multimedia: Documentary Form. London: ARRB Group Limited. 34.
•
Corner J (1995). Shaun Goodwin A2 Media Studies: Notes on Documentaries. London: Routledge. 56.
•
Dawkins, S and Wynd, I (2010). Video production: Putting Theory Into Practice.
•
Naborough, E (2013). Theory of Documentary. London: Routledge. 45.
•
Tom E. Burns (1961). The Management of Innovation. University of Illinois at Urbana-‐Champaign's Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership Historical Research Reference in Entrepreneurship: G.M. Stalker . 123.
•
Willcox, E (2013). Bill Nichols -‐ 6 Types of Documentary. London: ARRB Group Limited. 56.