Project Doc: Critical Reflection

Here is the critical reflection for my documentary project. This blogpost is written by me (Audrey).

I will be answering these questions for my critical reflection (not by sequence):

1. How do your products represent social groups or issues? (CR 1)

2. How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’? (CR 2)

3. How do your products engage with the audience? (CR 3)

4. How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions? (CR 4)

    As outlined by the brief set by our teacher, Mr. Nick, we had to create a 3 to 5 minute crime documentary opening. My team, Chelsea, Kalista, Rara, and I, had agreed to create a crime documentary with the subgenre of true-crime involving a murder. The plotline and events follows a murder of a teenage girl who is about to enter a new beginning of getting into a university with her best friend however involved in online dating which led to her uncanny death. In this critical reflection essay, I will discuss further on our product including the production stages and how we incorporated technical elements to conform and subvert conventions within the genre as it appeals to our targeted audience.
    The use of branding is crucial in order for a media text to be recognised as it strengthens the public perception of how they infer our intended messages. According to Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory, meaning isn’t simply given by the producer for the audience to accept straight away. The audience plays an active role in how they interpret, respond, and decode  to the messages. Our intended preferred reading was that we should be careful with toxic friendships. The technical elements used to convey this message was through the use of real footage such as vlogs and hand-held camera movements which connotes realism and authenticity implied from the bond between the two leads. Moreover, the overall theme of our documentary was ‘nostalgia’ which can be decoded by the audience through the use of vintage color gradings and video effects. We chose this as it is one of the recurring themes, popular amongst the young adults community which would be the demographic to our target audience. This mood conveyed was also kept consistent on the documentary’s thumbnail. Our thumbnail includes layered photobooth tabs of the same image including the two leads within a mix of effects, this would connote different realities and/or perspective from one story. This follows the theme of digitized media platforms in our documentary including social media pages, phone calls, and view of a desktop that is being portrayed in our project creating a visual similarity between the thumbnail and the documentary. This theme was chosen specifically as we targeted an audience who are knowledgeable and have access to modern media which may have personal experience evoking a connection between the narrative and reality. Another visual similarity identified for the audience to recognise is the use of typography on the thumbnail and the end of the opening scene (title card) of the documentary.

The text was purposely written in all capital letters as we found that it is one of the conventions of a crime documentary. We decided to conform to these conventions as according to Neale's Genre theory, a media text must be similar to be recognised by the target audience. In this case, from Netflix’s search page, we found so many crime documentaries with monochrome, all capital and bold text titles, this is because it is easier for the audience to spot and click on the thumbnail which increases the audiences’ engagement. To elaborate further on Neale’s Genre Theory, a media text must also be different in order to be distinguished with other products to appeal to the audience and remain interesting. Here, we subverted the usual narrative of crime documentaries by not specifying and revealing who the assailant was in our narrative. This keeps the audience guessing as the messages conveyed acts as a hermeneutic code (Barthes Narrative Theory) which raises curiosity keeping the audiences engaged throughout the narrative.
    Our own crime documentary opening research helped us to further explore the conventions of technical elements in a crime documentary helped us decide which elements to input to add suspense. Firstly, our documentary had used a fair amount of real footage and clips (CCTV/surveillance camera and archival pictures) of the events and associates, along with the documentation which connotes realism and authentication evoking a sense of trust of the audience connecting us, the producers, to the audience allowing messages to be conveyed and decoded easily. In this case, there are easter eggs included in screen-recorded scenes. Here, the use of the number ‘4’ which is commonly associated with death in the Chinese-Indonesian group which were heavily represented in our documentary. This implies that something terrible, death, had happened to the main lead (Sasha). According to Hall’s Reception Theory, the audience does not fully interpret media messages as whole, our audience are able to interpret these technical elements and decode them as we provided a meaning. 

    Our documentary revolves around South-East Asians (Chinese-Indonesian) leads. In the media world, the majority of media texts such as movies, TV programmes, documentaries, and others are commonly presented with the conformation towards Hollywood/Western traditions which dominates the entirety of narratives, reflecting a strong and dominant image of Western cultural groups. Our documentary subverts this stereotype as the portrayal of a minority group (Asians, specifically South-East Asians) becomes the central focus on the narrative. South-East Asian aren't popular to be represented in media texts, traditionally, this ethnic group are underrepresented as leading roles are less likely to be given to Asian casts with less hegemonic power. South-East Asians are commonly given background roles in the media as they don't play a significant role in media which increase awareness and avoids invisibility and ignorance of the group. However, our focus on the narrative perspective through South-East Asian would give the audience more attention to the reality which evokes a connection from the audience from our story. Moreover, this media text subverts the depiction of the group for being represented just for diversification of casts to appeal in modern media to appeal to the public's recurring interest in integrated diversity themes. This prevents the issue of tokenism from being arised from our product as our South-East Asian leads weren’t portrayed overly exoticised and used for diversifying cultural background as we focused on the complexity of the individuals. To start, the main lead (Sasha) is depicted to be friendly, genuine, and gullible which was connoted by the often use of light-coloured clothing (Mise-en-scene) which symbolises innocence. This was a juxtaposition to her best friend who was the actual killer, presented with dark clothing which symbolises her darker intentions. Lastly, the love interest was purposely intended to deceive the audience into believing that he was the killer when he’s not. This may be decoded through his name ‘Kyler’ which we intended to make it sound like ‘killer’. This was further implied by the character’s personality that is dishonest and suspicious as he serves to represent the risk of online dating for teenagers. Overall the main theme of this documentary is trust which is a common issue faced by young adults which may reinforce a connection from the audience to the narrative. The decoding of the message may relate to the Uses and Gratification Theory by Stuart Hall as the messages serves as the Personality Identity aspect of this theory which the audience may feel connected and empathise with how their group is represented and reflected reinforce identities are valued in these era of Western culture dominance.