Evaluation - Kunal
For my practical production, I worked in a group of 4 in order to produce a documentary which we titled “Dot com”. It is a documentary which explores how the internet has become much more popular than how it used to be in terms of the usage of social networking websites such as Hi5, Bebo, MySpace etc. As you can see by reading the title of the documentary it can clearly be acknowledged that our documentary has something to do with the world wide web, this therefore relates to our primary target audience of teenage girls because most of their time is spent on the internet and therefore alerts our target audience that this documentary tackles certain issues in relation to the ever growing internet and persuades them to watch it.
Whilst we were planning our practical production, we had decided that we are not going to give each other specific responsibilities because we believe that all of the members of the group should be involved in each part of the production because if we all work together there is more of a chance for a successful production. However, this was hard to do due to the fact that the amount of input put in by each group member depended on who was available at the time and the clashes in availability leaded to disproportionate input from the members in the group. On the other hand, whilst we were editing, we did not have a lot of major problems in deciding certain aspects of our documentary such as the structure. This is because we had already explored and analysed a great number of other documentaries and therefore had a good idea of what we were looking to do. I think that my role in the group remained consistent as I tried very hard to meet up and edit whenever I was free and had no extra work to do after school.
Our documentary opens with a fast-paced montage sequence which consists of a number of different shots showing a great number of websites showing logos of social networking sites, along with the profiles of different students, implying how decoratively the profiles have been created in order to attract others to view the profiles. This has been done in order to show the popularity of these social networking sites amongst teenagers and to show how much time and effort is spent in creating these profiles therefore implying how much time is spent on the internet by the target audience. Furthermore, shots of internet café’s have been used from the inside and outside. We have shown shots of the internet cafes from the inside in order to illustrate how much of a high demand there is for the internet and how much it has grown that it is now being sold in the shops to use. We have used non-digetic sound playing over the opening montage sequence; we have used a song called Slash Dot Com by Fatboy Slim as it is a fast paced instrumental and so it would immediately attract the audience and capture their attention. If we used a slow song to begin our documentary, this would not grab the audiences attention as it would sound boring, therefore we have used an upbeat rhythm in our opening montage sequence. Towards the end of our montage sequence, the sound slowly decreases as the voiceover begins explaining how our lives have been taken over by the internet.
We have used a number of different shots throughout our documentary in order to maintain a high standard and to make it look authentic. For example, we have used a silhouette shot during our interview with a victim. Due to this, you can not see the face of the victim who is being interviewed therefore enhancing the authenticity of our documentary as we are respecting the privacy of the victim. These types of shots are often used in documentaries in order to hide the person from the public possibly due to fear or ethical issues.
In our documentary, we have used non-digetic sound over an msn conversation between two people to prove a point, similar to how Michael Moore uses non-digetic sound when wanting to create a point in Bowling for Columbine which we studied in Module 2. The point we are trying to prove is how easy it is for a paedophile to capture the victim into its trap and end up meeting them. Whilst the conversation is taking place, we have the beginning of Usher’s song called dotcom, the lyrics to this song has a lot in common with the thoughts of a man and therefore fits in perfectly with the footage it is played with as the lyrics implicate what a man would sexually want to do with a woman. This song also is used as it appeals to our target audience as a lot of teenage girls listen to Usher’s music and can therefore relate to it.
Whilst we were editing our interview with CEOP, we outlined tips for our target audience on how to stay away from paedophiles, these tips created a problem during editing as we could not decide on a suitable colour and font, we ended up choosing a typewriting font and the colour we settled for was black. This colour was chosen as we wanted a strong and bold colour which is seen as serious as we are tackling a sensitive issue. If we chose a colour such as pink, it may not be taken as seriously by our target audience of teenage girls as they may find it too colourful and therefore could also make our documentary look cheap.
Towards the end of our documentary, we film the girl who goes to meet the paedophile in Ealing town centre, in this scene, although the paedophile does not show up, he is seen as the Proppian villain, this is because we all know what the intentions of a paedophile is and therefore the target audience automatically decide for the girl to be the ‘good guy’ and the paedophile to be the ‘bad guy’, as Propp states.
In conclusion, I think that Dot Com has met its aim to inform, educate and persuade our target audience of young teenagers of the kinds of people on the internet as it uses a number of different documentary conventions which aid the success of this documentary.
KUNAL
Whilst we were planning our practical production, we had decided that we are not going to give each other specific responsibilities because we believe that all of the members of the group should be involved in each part of the production because if we all work together there is more of a chance for a successful production. However, this was hard to do due to the fact that the amount of input put in by each group member depended on who was available at the time and the clashes in availability leaded to disproportionate input from the members in the group. On the other hand, whilst we were editing, we did not have a lot of major problems in deciding certain aspects of our documentary such as the structure. This is because we had already explored and analysed a great number of other documentaries and therefore had a good idea of what we were looking to do. I think that my role in the group remained consistent as I tried very hard to meet up and edit whenever I was free and had no extra work to do after school.
Our documentary opens with a fast-paced montage sequence which consists of a number of different shots showing a great number of websites showing logos of social networking sites, along with the profiles of different students, implying how decoratively the profiles have been created in order to attract others to view the profiles. This has been done in order to show the popularity of these social networking sites amongst teenagers and to show how much time and effort is spent in creating these profiles therefore implying how much time is spent on the internet by the target audience. Furthermore, shots of internet café’s have been used from the inside and outside. We have shown shots of the internet cafes from the inside in order to illustrate how much of a high demand there is for the internet and how much it has grown that it is now being sold in the shops to use. We have used non-digetic sound playing over the opening montage sequence; we have used a song called Slash Dot Com by Fatboy Slim as it is a fast paced instrumental and so it would immediately attract the audience and capture their attention. If we used a slow song to begin our documentary, this would not grab the audiences attention as it would sound boring, therefore we have used an upbeat rhythm in our opening montage sequence. Towards the end of our montage sequence, the sound slowly decreases as the voiceover begins explaining how our lives have been taken over by the internet.
We have used a number of different shots throughout our documentary in order to maintain a high standard and to make it look authentic. For example, we have used a silhouette shot during our interview with a victim. Due to this, you can not see the face of the victim who is being interviewed therefore enhancing the authenticity of our documentary as we are respecting the privacy of the victim. These types of shots are often used in documentaries in order to hide the person from the public possibly due to fear or ethical issues.
In our documentary, we have used non-digetic sound over an msn conversation between two people to prove a point, similar to how Michael Moore uses non-digetic sound when wanting to create a point in Bowling for Columbine which we studied in Module 2. The point we are trying to prove is how easy it is for a paedophile to capture the victim into its trap and end up meeting them. Whilst the conversation is taking place, we have the beginning of Usher’s song called dotcom, the lyrics to this song has a lot in common with the thoughts of a man and therefore fits in perfectly with the footage it is played with as the lyrics implicate what a man would sexually want to do with a woman. This song also is used as it appeals to our target audience as a lot of teenage girls listen to Usher’s music and can therefore relate to it.
Whilst we were editing our interview with CEOP, we outlined tips for our target audience on how to stay away from paedophiles, these tips created a problem during editing as we could not decide on a suitable colour and font, we ended up choosing a typewriting font and the colour we settled for was black. This colour was chosen as we wanted a strong and bold colour which is seen as serious as we are tackling a sensitive issue. If we chose a colour such as pink, it may not be taken as seriously by our target audience of teenage girls as they may find it too colourful and therefore could also make our documentary look cheap.
Towards the end of our documentary, we film the girl who goes to meet the paedophile in Ealing town centre, in this scene, although the paedophile does not show up, he is seen as the Proppian villain, this is because we all know what the intentions of a paedophile is and therefore the target audience automatically decide for the girl to be the ‘good guy’ and the paedophile to be the ‘bad guy’, as Propp states.
In conclusion, I think that Dot Com has met its aim to inform, educate and persuade our target audience of young teenagers of the kinds of people on the internet as it uses a number of different documentary conventions which aid the success of this documentary.
KUNAL
posted by Kunal at 1:48 PM
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