Creative Critical Reflection
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.
