ADVANCED PORTFOLIO CRITICAL REFLECTION

In this essay, I have written about all three of my products. My documentary, social media campaign and my magazine article. All three of my products are branded in the same way to create unity between the three to make them appeal to my target audience. I discuss simple techniques and ideologies that I have used to make the documentary extract as entrainment filled and engaging as possible. 

FINAL ESSAY...

John Grierson’s definition of documentary is ‘the creative treatment of actuality’, so I made sure my documentary was a truthful but entertaining view of the current issues during the pandemic. I was inspired by watching ‘Battleship Potemkin’ (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925) as it showed me the impotence of montage. Montage is a key part of my documentary as it helps provided meaning by the tempo and speed of the clips being shown and the emotions created. I have used montage to show the difference between the elderly who are stuck at home very lonely during the pandemic, for example in the sequence of the elderly man putting on his slippers and choosing his stick, which encodes the idea of frailty as an emotional experience for the audience.  I used the typical conventions of documentary, for example interviews, to be able to really understand how the elderly felt, but I also challenged this accepted filming of interviews after watching ‘The Social Dilemma’ (Netflix 2020).  This added a twist on the typical interview by including the informal preparation of the interviewee before they begin answering questions, so I followed this idea. I researched ‘Bridgerton’ (Netflix 2020) social media page as the TV program shares the same target audience as my documentary. The social media had hooks to engage the audience which I have used In social media campaign, so I posted about teaser release dates and unseen footage to engage the audience’s interest. I researched many magazines and analysed them to pick out the main codes and conventions, I chose to use ‘Cosmopolitan’ magazine as I really liked its simplistic format and it was the perfect magazine for my target audience. I have slightly challenged some codes and conventions of magazines, as my image is left of the centre and goes over the double page spread which is uncommon in magazine but I thought the unique format would make the article stand out and attract readers.

Throughout all my products I was conscious of the hegemonic stereotypes of old age which centre around vulnerability and weakness and used reference to these to engage the audience’s sympathy at the start. In doing this I was conscious of my study of Robert Flaherty’s work  and how he felt free to manipulate the situations he filmed  in order to create clear representations which supported his ideology and viewpoints.  I deliberately filmed my Grandad shoe-horning his slippers and reaching for his walking stick, an image echoed in my social media campaign, to engage the audience’s emotion and convey the vulnerability of old age. My interviews and cinematography show their limited quality life and loneliness, positioning my audience to ask “what is the priority for humans? Is it the quality or the length of life?. One way in which I did this was by my use of lighting, for example using a lamp to create low key lighting for the first interview with my grandfather, creating a sad and isolated mood, or using the daylight ambient lighting outside to contrast with darkness inside for the long shot of my grandmother gazing out the window. In contrast to their portrayed vulnerability, I used a clip of my grandfather using a modern piece of technology to connect with his family. This challenges the stereotype of older people being out of touch and unable to cope with the modern world and offers a sense of hope.  I then used Levi Strauss’s ideas of conflict created by binary oppositions in my use of archive footage of the younger generation recklessly not conforming to the lockdown rules, in a fast paced chaotic montage scene (Sergei Eisenstein). 

The name of the documentary, The Lost Generation, is repeated within all three of my products and reflects the ideology that the isolation of the elderly is a loss to society. The main purpose of my products is to create empathy for the elderly people suffering isolation in lockdown in my younger target audience. I have used this ideology to create a strong brand connection between all three of my products. The use of modern san serif fonts in the documentary captions maintains a link with the young, and I continue the use of a bold colourful sans serif font on my social media platform. All of my social media posts share the same subtle, pale colour palette to reinforce the ideology of the documentary and also the emotional shots of the elderly interview subjects help the target audience to empathise with the old people. I use images from the documentary with light hearted captions on my posts, to promote the documentary in a comical way to emotionally draw in the target audience. The magazine article for Cosmopolitan, whose readers are my target audience, also promotes the documentary with an interview with the documentary’s maker, offering them the use and gratification of personal identity with someone nearer to their own age. I feel the main USP of my branding is the fact that all three products show the content in a modern youthful way to engage the younger audience with the difficulties faced by the elderly.

I aimed to give the younger generation an insight into how the older generation have felt and reacted to the current lockdowns due to the pandemic. My primary target audience is both men and women aged 18-30 who are ABC1s who aspire to be educated and could be categorised as social reformers. My secondary audience is those of the older generation who can personally relate with the issues being portrayed. My documentary is being broadcast on BBC Three. The service's remit was to provide "innovative programming" to a target audience of viewers between 16 and 34 years old. There are many key representations that the different age groups can identify with, for example my documentary starts with a montage sequence from new years eve parties, with an overlay of Becky Hill’s, ‘Wish You Well’ which is a piece of music and images that will be familiar to my primary target audience. This is my initial hook to engage them. I have chosen Instagram for my social media campaign, as this platform is used predominately by my target audience, and I use hashtags and gifs to try and further appeal to them. The emotive images and language used throughout my products reflect the ideology of my documentary. My magazine article engages my target audience through its bold bright pink colour palette, this colour connotes strong female empowerment connected with the female film maker. The articles main image of a young female adult offers the use and gratification of personal identity (Blumler and Katz).