FINAL PRODUCTION- CRITICAL ESSAY

 

Critical reflection on my documentary

How do your products represent social groups or issues?

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of branding?

How do your products engage with the audience?

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

 

Amy Evans –

 

Representation is the way in which the media presents different ages, social groups, ethnicities, social issues and events to the audiences receiving their products. My aim was to allow the people seeing my documentary to understand why and how why dance and the arts should be an accessible part of peoples lives and how it can easily become one. Here, I considered John Griersons definition of documentary which is ‘the creative treatment of actuality’ This gave me inspiration to create an honest and entertaining point of view of how dance has been such a big part of my life and benefitted my lifestyle. There is an existing stereotype of performance, just like there is about everything in the world. It is believed that dance is solely aimed at females, that you must be at an elite standard of fitness and flexibility to go far in it, or that it is easy yet incredibly competitive, that dance is a harsh environment to be in. However, I wanted to use my voice and get the message out that this is not always the case. To aim to take this stigma away from whoever is willing to listen. I did this through an interview with a fellow dancer, through clips of me talking and sharing research and archived clips to show how fun it can all be. To remove the stereotypical issues and represent the joyful and inclusive side of the arts.

My overall branding is driven by the key ideas of, who I chose for my target audience, how I wanted to represent my opinion of dance and the way that I wanted my audience to receive it. The target audience for my final production is the younger generation, since they are the people who are going to be able to change the stereotype that lies upon the arts. So, thinking about my audience when I was creating my products, I wanted them to see dance as something that is joyful. I was posting count down updates on my social media page about when my documentary was going to be released, to excite the audience. I used lots of images on my magazine cover and in my social media page. When it came to my magazine poster, I used quite informal language when responding to the questions, in some sentences I used all caps for particular words, I feel as though this is quite a common trait in young people. I used words such as ‘girly’ and ‘fun’. None of the language in it was very complex and the language I was using was creating a fun and exciting feeling about dance. And the majority of things that were spoken on in my documentary were positive things about dance and the arts. These are all things that the younger generation are attracted to and interested in and I feel as though would introduce a joyful and happy sense of branding about dance.

The target audience for my products is people of young age. Specifically, between the ages from 10 to 25. I chose this age range because the aim of my documentary is to show the younger generation why they should have and want to have more access to the arts and in particular, dance. I also chose a younger generation for my target audience because it is less likely that very elderly people would want to start dance, it is the sort of thing which is better and easier to start off earlier in life. To attract my younger target audience, I used various techniques throughout my products. For example, when creating my social media page. I used quite a youthful social media page, Instagram. This is a very common app for people that fit into my target audience age. I used bright colours such as pink and red when I was creating my posts, bright colours attract the eye. Another reason I chose colours such as pink and red is due to my target gender, it is stereotypical that it is more common for females to be into dance. So therefore, knowing this I chose more feminine colours. I used quite young and pretty fonts such as ‘Brittany’ and ‘Lobster Two’. Both feminine and fitting to my target age. When it came to my documentary, first I chose quite an upbeat topic, it is not too informative, and I would say it is a light-hearted and easy watch. As a young person myself, I don’t particularly enjoy sitting through extremely long and heavy shows. In the documentary itself, my introduction shot includes my TV playing Strictly Come Dancing, strictly is something that I thought the audience watching could relate to if it something that they watch. I also have clips of me and my friend dancing in montages, so it is not us talking the whole time. There are new and exciting sections in it.

For my documentary there wasn’t much research that needed to be done on the topic. I of course had to research the codes and conventions of a documentary but other than that, there wasn’t much in detail information to be searched. The obvious code and convention that I used in my documentary is the interview technique, there is a big interview section with one of my dancer friends, Lottie. The interview dialogue is all based on opinions so therefore I didn’t need to search any answers up for that. In preparation for the interview, I had researched interviews that have been published online so that I could get a feel for the sort of questions that I wanted to ask. I also listened to a few podcasts that were on Spotify to feed my inspiration for the topic. For example, ‘Dancing through the pandemic’ By Erin Hughes, this involves people talking about how important dance is for them and how they felt about missing it over covid times. However overall, I didn’t have to look up too much for my speaking sections.