We are individual (Consumers)

Personal Critical Evaluation

This documentary has been a real challenge for me. As on it’s production it seemed like it was changing every week, even today we dramatically changed the structure of it in order to give this documentary a purpose, and make it more meaningful and hopefully have a greater impact on it’s audience. On our original vox pox shoot we had poor audio and visual shots. Also the content, or our questions to be more specific, was not up to standard either so we remade the questions in order to get the answers from the footage which covered the theme’s we are discussing in this documentary. We also used a tripod to have a more static and clear shot, we also used a rifle mic which enhanced our audio quality.

The main problem we had was to create a purpose to this documentary, a message we wanted to leave with our audiences. Our original film looked at how we are victims of capitalism through following celebrity culture, but the response to this was that we represented the theme in an imposing, non-educational manner to the audience leaving them with a negative impact from the documentary, when we wanted to educate them. So today we have structured our documentary to show how we are victims of capitalism through advertising shaping our thoughts. Then from this we go to vox pox of people saying things they enjoy, and what they want to do with their lives before they die. Through this we hope to show audiences that it’s never too late to follow your dreams, and rather than invest your money in the products featured in advertisements, spend it on reaching these goals and having these experiences, becoming true individuals rather than the proposed individuals the adverts make you believe you will become if you buy into their products.

I have had a large input into this project. It was created originally from my idea of making an societal observational documentary on how we are all victims of capitalism, and so I felt I had a big responsibility to my group to make it the best we can. I was involved in every aspect of its production, from the planning, to the filming, to the editing as well as creating the youtube mash ups we use at the start + end of the film, as well the audio featured in the middle of the documentary which helps aid in getting the message we want the audience to take away with them from this documentary. I worked well in this team, it helped that we are all friends as it ment we could honestly say what we thought about the idea’s, methods used in this producing this documentary without causing any drama in the group. We all worked well creatively together, continuously bouncing idea’s off each other which shaped this documentary, and I think it was because of this that we had this problem of reaching a straight forward narrative for this documentary, but I do not regret this as this documentary now has so many influences and layers it has become a sophisticated look on the effects and construction of advertising, and now hopefully shows its arbitary connection to our lives in a non-patronizing way. I learnt from this you can never have to many influences be it art,documentaries, the people you work with whatever that influence may be, as it brings a sense of originality to your projects by collaborating different influences, and using them in a different way to make them your own. So from this you can conclude that in any documentary research is key. I never knew how influencial documentaires could be then I consider how different this documentary would have been if I had not have watched Rip! A Remix Manifesto. It would have been very different, I would have never thought about the you tube mash ups.

From this project I learnt some major lessons about documentary genre, it does’nt have to be about one focal character it can be about everybody, infact to some extent it does not matter how good your character/characters or story is but how you convey it to the audience. I experimented with and learnt how to illustrate points of view in original ways i.e. Through the mash ups I created a story taking the archive out of it’s own context, and constructed it how I wanted. This is especially true of the ending mash up where I have used capitalist figure’s/images to convey an anti-capitalist message to our audience encouraging audiences to not buy their products but save their money and to have more meaningful lives by using their money to live their own dreams. The technical experience I have gained from this documentary through experimentation is invaluable. But the most important lesson I learnt was relevance of the content. It seems obvious but becomes hard when editing your documentary when you have content you want to include, but you have to be strict with yourself and if it is not relevant, or useful in sending a message to it’s audiences do not include it.

Inspiration and Influences

Again as said Rip! A Remix Manifesto was a great influence to this documentary. Mainly I liked how it broke the classical structure of documentary focusing on a few focal characters, and instead focused on society looking and looking how copy-write effects so many people. So we imitated this style of focusing everyone rather than a few individuals through vox pox and with use of the actor we have addressed the audience and basically said look this effects your lives, do something about it. I was influenced into focusing on victims of capitalism and using society as  whole for the ‘character’ by the speech in fight club where he discusses how media wants you to think you are individuals when in fact your not they just want you to buy into their products. The groups enthusiaism motivated me greatly as we were/are still exited about making this film. It has changed so much since we started but we are all motivated to keep changing it in order to get the message across.

Sources

Originally as stated this documentary was influenced by British sounds. after watching clips in our lecture I watched it in several clips on youtube. I had Fight club on dvd. We went to Sheffield where by completly luck we ended rip a remix manifesto which shaped alot of this documentary. We liked it so much we brought the film of the creators of it who gave a compelling speech about some of the major problems with copy-write after the documentary was shown. But all my other film sources came from the internet. After creating the script we found an actor walking around the ellen terry building, and met up with and filmed him the following week. I used youtube alot to find sources what we created the opening mash up sequence and will use youtube clip again with the ending scene with the similar style. And the vox pox what our documentary heavily uses to illustrate our point came from people walking around coventry. We selected younger people as this documentary is aimed at younger people.

Experimentation + Exploration

This documentary was definitely influenced by a documentary I watched at Sheffield called Rip! A Remix Manifesto in terms of its pace and editing style. It also encouraged me through enlightening me about the burocracy e of copy-write to push the boundaries and mix up text to have a new message + meaning which are enjoyable to watch and both sets and will end the pace of this documentary. The idea for this documentary orginated upon watching and british sounds and its provocotive look on the class system and capitalism/communism. But I found this hard to watch due to a jumbled/un-structed narrative, so became influenced by the ideologies shown in fight club, especially the speech on how the media views us. So paying homage to this speech we created a script about anti-capitalism and the de-humanization as a result of it. But this technique seemed too ranty and audiences were not effected on consumption of the documentary as we hoped. So now we have added influences from all of these productions and techniques we have us along the way. Hopefully producing a multi-layered easy to watch documentary with the simple message of encouraging the audience to not put money they earn back into the hands of the people they earnt it off, in an intelligent way.

Process

As a whole our group worked very well, I think this was due to a lot of communication and shared inputs. The original vox pox footage we captured were bad quality both visual + audio, so we reshot them But with a tripod, rifle mic and more structured questions which gave us more insightful answers. We have changed the whole film round and its own concept has changed. Initially it was about confronting the public about what is capitalism, which changed too showing the public how we are victims of capitalism through being victims of materialism and celebrity culture. Now we have structured our documentary in a more almost Todorov style, with the beginning showing that we are not treated as people but as consumers, then we show how we are effected by this advertising. Right now were working out how to end the documentary, Its proving very hard. We got a lot of positive comments about the opening sequence, so we are making another mash up to illustrate the views of the vox pox. I think the real breaking point for this documentary is wether we can keep up the fast pace this documentary originally starts off, and ending it on a positive point, showing audience’s hope now that they know this they can reduce their consumeristic needs and be a person again.

Comments

Sound + audio differences, too confusing a structure.

Some of the actor scenes good, interlace/mix this within the documentary.

Where too go from here?

-good opening scene’s keep tv mix up,pigeons/people

-can use actor, edit scene’s so he is elaborating on the points we are making putting it like ‘on the table’ for the audience to put the to clips together and take it how they like.

-Have a focal point of capitalism

-Re-shoot vox pox

Ruff version of our documentary, criticism welcomed :)

Shooting Script

Shot 1 – a mixture of YouTube clips mixed together to give a sort of narrative telling the audience what we are going to do, this will be shot over the shoulder of someone watching T.V Audio
The sound of the T.V giving the audience the narrative and telling them what we’re going to be talking about.

Shot 2 – a visual conflict between people and animals these shots will compare people to animals e.g. pigeons or cattle. Audio
The audio from YouTube clips talking about materialism using the visuals to aid the audience

Shot 3 – Shots of people worshipping celebrities, using tacky images placed onto archive of people worshipping in the style of “RIP Remix” showing how celebrities produce materialism Audio
The same as above, still talking about materialism but also the cult of celebrity using visuals as an aid for the audience

Shot 4 – another visual conflict shot, involving a shot of an animal documentary, possibly a peacock, conflicting with a celeb in a beautiful dress or even an actor in drag to give comedic relief. Audio
This audio will be from the documentary of the animal mixed over both the doc’ and our shot of the celeb or drag.

Shot 5 – Vox pops of intrusive questions to the public about their clothes and why they spend so much on clothes etc. Audio
Audio from people bring interview non-diagetic music in the background , girl talk the band from “RIP remix”

Shot 6 – Ending shot, businessman in full suit on white background giving the idea of an internal monolog giving an aggressive speech on materialism and how we don’t need it Audio
Audio from the businessman’s speech and non- diagetic music form girl talk.

Vox Pox questions

the interview question cover captialism in terms of materialism that i feel is a by-product of capitalism. Does branding effect your choice of clothes? Does what celebrities wear effect your choice of clothing? Do you choose a style to dress to – if yes what determines your style? Why do you think there is such a focus on fashion? Do you frequently buy clothes to catch up with friends? Who do you think creates trends? Does your choice of clothing make you individual – if yes how do you feel when others wear the same clothes or buying high street clothes? Do you feel that materialism is a bad thing? – how do you think it effects others e.g. third world countries lower classes? these question will be filtered down into a few good questions which stick to the focus of our documentary and will be integral to getting the answers and questions we want to give people who watch our documentary.