Sunday, April 18, 2021

Creative Critical Reflection

Creative Critical Reflection

For the past 8 weeks, I have worked on my AICE Media Studies A Level project, "________ American", with my partner, Colin. We completed the documentary package, with the topic about the immigrant experience, and how people learn their cultural heritage, when not originating from its original location. When expressing people’s cultural identities, we focused the documentary on our interviewees, to get unique perspectives on their identity.

To achieve this topic and tone, we conducted some genre research. In doing so, I understood that documentaries are educational, contain interviews, and graphics. Some common genre conventions are narrator voice overs, handheld cameras, and spoken event reenactments. I researched the documentaries “Explained” and “Headspace: Guide to Meditation” and understood the importance of colorful graphics and chronological ordering to keep the documentary engaging and comprehendible. In our documentary, we follow all these genre conventions, but not in a traditional way. Due to COVID-19, we could not record these interviews in person, and used video chat to record the interviews. Even though we did not use a handheld camera, a computer camera worked well to display and capture our interviewees verbiage. Also, we followed the convention of reenacting events, by layering stop motion scenes over interviewees responses. We thought it is an engaging choice and create another layer of depth to the production. In our stop motion scenes, we used chess pieces to represent people. The interviewees parents were the king and queen, and the child was the pawn, based on size differences. This choice helped represent a family and their relationship, based on the direction they move in the frame.

Early in the process, we decided our target audience to be Generation Z. In my post “Genre and Target Audience” and “Week 3: Meeting: Excerpt Structure and Representation”, we chose this target audience because of the relatability our topic has to those people. Generation Z is known as the most multi- cultural generation to date, meaning learning and establishing cultural identity Is a familiar experience. This fact guided our choice of interviewees, which were all Generation Z people that originated from 5 major continents around the world. We wanted a representative body of people because each ethnicity has a distinct experience of immigrating to America. Historically, immigrates who came to America first have a more pronounced collective identity in the U.S, than immigrants later. Therefore, we chose interviewees, to understand varied immigration experiences their parents, or the interviewees had. That experience can dictate how people learn culture, `which is a theme Colin and I wanted to cover. In the blog post, “Interviewee Questions”, we discuss how our selection of questions highlight themes of assimilation, Americanization, and overall self-development. These topics are related to the Generation Z audience because they are still developing their identity and individuality. Additionally, the structure of our documentary considers ours target audiences’ behaviors. Because Generation Z has a shorter attention span than other generations of viewers, we made sure to edit sections shorter in the documentary. In my blog post “What we did today”, I highlight the target audiences’ behaviors, that dictated our structure of the series, specifically Episode 1, covering history of immigration.  

With our entire production, we wanted to create a tone that was positive and upbeat, but serious at the same time. This is because the stories told by our interviewees are very candid and personal, and we wanted to treat their stories with the utmost respect. Therefore, we decided the documentaries concept as e a scrapbook or storybook look and feel. With our documentary, we were visually chronicling the experience of immigration, that evolved our 5 interviewees personal and cultural identity. To create this aesthetic, we used cursive writing, beige backgrounds, and a varied graphics. In our documentary, we used the beige background and cursive writing for our title cards, and incorporated graphics in our history section, as well as introducing our interviewees. Also, we used name cards to define our interviewees, that mimicked the style of a documentary. In our social media, we used the beige background and cursive writing in most of our posts, with a table of contents, to simulate a scrapbooks aesthetic. The posts are graphic intensive, to attract our intended Generation Z audience. In all honesty, we came up with the concept for the social media before the documentary and attempted to incorporate as many scrapbook elements in our documentary as possible. It was not what we intended to do but we are satisfied with the components.

In our production, we used our scrapbook components to complement the heartfelt and candid stories of our interviewees. The interviewees in our documentary were an explicit example of representation, to display as many experiences of cultural and identity as possible. Otherwise, the experience would not be depicted accurately. With our interviewees, they represent ethnicities from 5 major continents around the world: American, Hispanic, African, European, and Indian. This was an explicit choice, and helped convey similar and conflicting opinions, on how to develop a dual cultural identity. These social groups provide their unique opinion about cultural identity, based on when most of those people immigrated to the United States first. For example, I covered in my blog “History of Immigration to America”, I covered that the Irish came to the United States first. Therefore, they would have a more pronounced culture in America, due to the extent they have been present in the country. We explored ideas of Americanization and cultural homogenization, that presented social issues to our interviewees.

In the end, I felt that the components worked well together, and made the project engaging. We could have added more engaging elements, such as music or specific framing of shots. Though, we were not able to attempt those correctly, and decided to stick to what we had. Also, our documentary and component work to create branding, though it could have been stronger. In the end, I did the best I could, and cannot wait to see what people think of our work.


Documetary and Minor Tasks

I have attached below my documentary and minor tasks. 

This process has been so rewarding. I have seen a great improvement in myself, in terms of creating ideas and time management skills. This topic of this documentary is something meaningful to me, and I am so glad we were successful with conducting five interviews. It has been a great 2 years in AICE Media Studies, and I feel I can take many skills with me, as I enter the new phase of life. 

Documentary

Social Media

Instagram: @_________american

Magazine Article

Saturday, April 17, 2021

Final Reflection

As our project comes to an end, I wanted to provide a brief reflection of this project. 

From the start, Colin and I knew our topic of cultural and dual identity, because the topic was something personal to us. We understood that the experience of learning an ethnicity, while not being in the country, is an experience that greatly affects ones personal identity. Also, this experience is very common in Generation Z, which made this topic easy to achieve. Therefore, we decided to use this topic, before the project even started. In terms of choosing a documentary package, we felt that our performance in our documentary school project was proof that the documentary package would be the best for us. Also, we liked that we had to create a 5 minute excerpt, and not the entire documentary. This alleviated a lot of stress from Colin and I in the beginning, and gave us confidence that we can complete the project to the best of our abilities, with the time given. Colin and I have worked on AICE Media Studies projects for almost 2 years, so we have developed a great synergy and partnership, which gave me confidence that we could complete a good final project. 

With our actual documentary, we decided to rely heavily on our interviewees experience. The content of our entire series was to establish a history of immigration, interviewees who have learned their ethnic culture from America, the effects of this experience, and how they maintain their culture. We structured our episodes in that way, and decided to create an excerpt from the first episodes. With this structure, we thought getting the perspectives of our multi- cultural peers would be necessary. We picked our 5 interviewees, who were from the 5 major continents around the world. This was an explicit choice, to reveal the differences in the establishments of collective identities there are, based on how long the culture was present in America after people immigrated. In retrospect, we should have given more attention to other parts of the documentary, and establish a distinct structure to follow from the beginning. This would have made the process of organizing and editing easier for Colin and I 

In terms of the magazine and social media, we decided to split up the tasks. Colin is experience in magazine and article writing, so working on the magazine was a relatively easy process for him. He was able to produce a quality product, that included everything we needed. I was in charge of creating the social media, and decided to make the concept like a scrapbook. I felt it fit the topic of the documentary, which involved peoples personal stories, and their development of their personal identity. This structure of the social media evoked a sense of chronology and series of memories, that our documentary is trying to display. I feel happy with the result, and think it came out well. 

I cannot believe this project is over, but I am happy with where my project. I always feel things could be done better( just my personality), but I am so happy with how many interviewees we got, and the representation we could create in those moments. I hope you enjoy as much as I did!!!

Sunday, April 11, 2021

Last partner meeting

 In our last meeting, we came up with engaging scenes to add

We had elaborated on this topic in previous meetings, but we decided to use stop motion for our pieces. We decided that we needed another type of shot in the piece, to keep the interviews engaging for the audience. The use of stop motion would be a way to visually represent what the interviewee is saying, as if the interviewee becomes the narrator. Though, we did need to discuss what entities would be there to represent our interviewees stories. After further thought, I thought using chess pieces could be a good idea. This is because the size and structure of them could resemble different people in a family. An example is having the queen chess piece, acting as the mother. When speaking with Colin, he thought it was a good idea too. 


This was the plan I originally thought of.( Please excuse the drawing, I am not really good at it). Specifically in Danielle's interview, she spoke about her perception of religion, and her difference in views, than compared to her parents. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to have an overhead shot of a queen, king, and pawn chess piece, surrounding a cross. Later, the pawn will walk away, and find her "own" path. I thought this would depict Danielle's narration the best, because it shows her, represented as the pawn, finding her own path and meaning towards religion. 



Friday, April 9, 2021

Voiceovers & Magazine

Recently, we worked on our voiceovers for the history section

We had decided early on to have a history section of our documentary, to establish context to our interviewees. I did research on a series called Explained, which I will link here. I found inspiration from the varied use of graphics and voiceovers( diegetic and non- diegetic sound) to teach about the evolution and widespread influence of Korean Pop. Therefore, we decided to use our voiceovers and various photos and graphics, to effectively establish history of migration. 

We decided for the voiceover to be 30 seconds, to keep it concise and following genre conventions of our target audience. Though, we did have some miscommunication about how the voiceover needed to be done. I thought we decided to purposely speak really fast, but coherently, to add a lighthearted tone to the piece. I had recorded my voiceover that way, but after discussing with Colin, he had wanted it to be in a more medium speed. Therefore, I had to complete my voiceover again. Also, we realized that we may not have time to cover all the events I researched in my two posts. This is because of time, as well as the context of the events not being applicable to the piece. Therefore, we decided to focus on events that displayed sharp increase or decrease of immigration, to focus on the beginnings of collective identities forming, and link it to present time. 

Also, we finished working on the magazine. Primarily Colin worked on it, because he has experience with writing articles and various pieces. I am currently working on the social media, and planning out the 20 posts we are required to do. We have already made a social media account, so after our planning, we will get ahead to posting our content. We are almost at the end of the project, and I am very excited to see how it turns out. 





Monday, April 5, 2021

Meeting with Partner #2 Continued

We talked about adding B- roll footage and drawn letters in our production. 

In our last meeting, I had some realizations about the interviewee part of our documentary. Due to time constraints, we decided to organize our documentary in 3 parts: history, interviews, and analysis. We were planning to have analysis in between certain parts of the interview. Though, this previous plan has stopped us from making progress on the last minute. Therefore, this change is a better option because it allows us to proceed to plan and complete the rest of the documentary. I discussed this with Colin, and he agreed with me on this. I got inspiration from the film, "Enola Holmes", which had insert titles to explain the changes in the plot. I will insert a picture below. 



Another idea I have which was using B- roll footage of our interviewees, as a way to introduce our 5 people. I thought would be a good idea, to keep the tone of the piece a bit lighthearted and fun as well. Our documentaries intention is to inform our target audience of Generation Z people, but it is necessary to have engaging and personable moments, to keep the audience interested. I will insert a piece of our group meeting below. 


In this meeting, we were discussing about using written text lettering, to introduce the questions we ask to our interviewees. This idea came to us because of a mistake I made when interviewing some of the people. In our video call software, I forgot to pin the user in the call, which would have made the recording focus on only the interviewees. Therefore, some of the recordings focus on my video chat icon, which I did not want to happen. I was thinking of a way to mitigate this situation, and I thought of the written text idea Colin and I came up with before. Because I have a touchscreen and 360 turning laptop, and pen to write on my laptop, I am planning to write the text myself. This text will be placed at the beginning of some interviews. 



Sunday, April 4, 2021

Meeting with Partner #2

I finished work on the logo and written introduction portion. 

With the logo. I finished tracing the Earth and the continents. I presented this to Colin, and he really liked it. I had traced the world from another picture, and filled it in with the specific colors we wanted to have. We had the original idea to make the continents each a different color, and have those colors converging in the center. Therefore, I thought it would be best to have arrows, that point to a different part of America. This would show the varied migration occurring from all parts of the world, and a historical origination of our topic. My partner also liked the idea, and we used 3d arrows to show this image on the drawn logo. 



I attached the logo above. I think it came out well, and foreshadows to a portion of the documentary about immigration, and the various experiences the interviewees had. I will feature the introduction text and sequences in the next blog post. 




Creative Critical Reflection

Creative Critical Reflection For the past 8 weeks, I have worked on my AICE Media Studies A Level project, "________ American", wi...