Article Draft + Final

 This part of my blog will be for my article's development

Behind the Scenes

 This section of my blog will be for the behind the scenes of my magazine photoshoots

Learning Summary

This part of my blog will be a summary of everything I am learning so far during my self-studies to keep track of my academic progress in AS level media studies

A Level Media Studies - Documentary Final Submission

 Final Thumbnail

Final Documentary

In case the link malfunctions, here is the Google Drive link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IK1mrj4wqQwQDvDg2Pdl_ma744h-g8PR?usp=sharing

Critical Reflection

 This section of my blog will detail my critical reflection

Since the format is not functioning properly on my blog, I've provided the link to my critical reflection inGoogle docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qKRAPdLSHcndQOuk6DG81RssEi9Sr8uL-HQh9AVKg1o/edit?usp=sharing

In media, branding creates a sense of identity in products which helps attract target audiences effectively making it a crucial part of any good film. Through branding, we can also better encode the meanings we intend for our audience to decode (as according to Stuart Hall’s reception theory. Medicine and education are pursuits that are associated with purity as they are things that help the human race advance as a species. However, we wanted to show how such things could also be tainted through human desires. This is because our preferred reading is to convey the message that students should be treated fairly or they could fall victim into doing harmful actions out of desperation as they too are human and to be human is to be imperfect no matter how ‘pure’ our pursuits are. This meaning shows in the branding we try to create. Both our thumbnail and our video feature white/blue colour palettes as they are often associated with medicine and education (white symbolises purity, blue symbolises trustworthiness) which we contrast with darker elements. For example, in the thumbnail, a white & blue prescription paper is placed in a dark setting with a spray of blood tainting it. The blood here is more symbolic than it is literal, as medicine tampering does not cause bleeding, to show the lives that have been lost due to this incident. The prescription paper can also symbolise the school and the field of medicine and the way it’s been stained by the incident. As you can see, the prescription paper is in fact blank rather than a used one from one of the victims which shows that this incident will still affect the future due to the mark that’s been left by the incident. As for the video, we start by showing the school in a positive light before it abruptly cuts to the news reports of the poisoning to communicate how sudden and unexpected this was for the school. Then, towards the end, our lighting becomes darker as the mood shifts completely which shows the originally positive untainted environment being changed by the poisoning incident

To better understand how we could ensure the meanings we are trying to communicate gets decoded by the audience, we did research into the crime documentary genre (especially into the medical crime documentary subgenre). We noticed that there were certain conventions that commonly appeared and decided to conform to them to appeal to our target audience. These included:

• The usage of interviews as they allowed a narrative to be formed through the different perspectives of characters involved allowing the audience to deduce it themselves which creates a strong sense of engagement that’ll keep our audience watching our video. It also creates a sense of tension and mystery as the audience isn’t directly told the information

• Archival content. We used fake news headlines and news reports from similar cases to not only make it appear more realistic but to take the audience into the perspective of what happened when the events were unfolding which creates a direct mode of address that can subtly invoke suspense.

However, we chose to subvert from these conventions as well. As according to Steve Neale’s genre theory, by subverting from genre conventions, it ensures that a media text stands out and remains interesting. We did this by:

• Using our colour palettes. It’s common for crime documentaries to use darker palettes as the audience would associate it with the darker content. However, as mentioned previously, since ours involved the ‘noble’ pursuits of education and medicine, we decided to show how that has been tainted by using blue/white colours which we then contrasted with darker lighting and colours

• Lighting. We used bright lighting as medicine and education are ‘bright’ pursuits and showed how the event has ‘darkened’ this by shifting our video’s lighting darker the closer we get to uncovering the suspect towards the end as they are being revealed

The subversions are inspired by medical documentaries such as Our Father and The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley as I found it interesting how they were able to create a meaning regarding the ‘purity’ of medicine and the way it’s changed after a crime.

Thumbnails are very often the first impression imprinted onto a viewer therefore we recognize that this is a deciding factor in attracting our target audience and we need to create a thumbnail that can attract our audience effectively. As we want to attract audiences who enjoy thrills and mysteries (especially students, educators and medical professionals that do) our thumbnail features a dark background that illuminates a sense of darkness associated with mystery. The spray of blood may become a hermeneutic code as we imply that something terrible has happened which may provide a sense of thrill to the viewer. The usage of the word ‘Deceit’ implies to the audience of a concealed truth which further amplifies the mystery. Meanwhile, the usage of the word ‘Prescription’ as well as the prescription note may attract the attention of those interested in the field of medicine.

Representation is an important step in ensuring that our meaning gets decoded effectively by the audience since according to Stuart Hall’s representation theory, media creates meaning rather than reflecting it through representation. The most important representation we present in our documentary is the student’s representation. Our preferred reading implies that they are relatively normal people just like everyone else so when they feel desperate they may also do bad things which we show by including other students in the video that the audience can compare. The one shot we have of him is a close up that does not include his face which makes him more mysterious. Another important representation is the nurse. Through her, we represent people who have been wrongly accused. We use a medium shot to best highlight how much being wrongly accused has impacted her as the audience can observe her body language and expressions better. We also try to avoid stereotypes to create depth and realism in our meanings, however, we did show the school investigator as the stereotypical detective. We felt this was best in order to satisfy the target audience through a stereotype often found in the mystery genre.

Statement of Intent

 This part of my blog will detail the statement of intent our group has created for the documentary

• The statement of intent was really helpful, especially since we're working as a team, as it helped us put our ideas down and understand the direction we wanted to be heading in for our documentary
• We had a preferred reading of "treat your students well or it may push them to be desperate and do stupid things" which I don't think carried on very strongly. This is due to prioritizing the tone we were trying to create with our intro. An intro is a crucial part in any sort of film as it's where an audience is first introduced to the film which means we need to give them reasons to stay so, as this is a crime documentary, we prioritized introducing the overall plot while maintaining a good sense of suspense. In the end, our message became a little neglected. 
• I feel like this is also partly due to the perpetrator not actually having any lines or showing up beyond faceless reenactments. As we prioritized the sense of suspense, we kept them faceless and let them live through the words of other characters and the audience's own deductions which encouraged mystery but through this we have neglected their personhood and experiences. Through that, we were unintentionally dehumanizing them therefore not really allowing the audience connect with that message

Filming Schedule

 This part of my blog will detail our filming schedule

Reflection:

• Our original schedule was too packed together which caused some issues as we discovered that some actors/team members were not available on that day which caused us to have to continuously change filming dates and rush towards the end of our recordings. There should've been more communication on this part between parties involved
• Although there were a lot of changes, the filming schedule gave us a starting point and a rough idea of what we should be doing which kept us organized