Critical Self Reflection

Here is my critical self reflection for the documentary project.

Here are the questions being answered:

CR 1

How do your products represent social groups or issues?

CR 2

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

CR 3

How do your products engage with the audience?

CR 4

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

Branding in media is known as the factor that allows the audience to create connections through themes, making them associate multiple pieces of media with one another.  Branding is important because it creates a sense of coherence so that storytelling becomes  more clear instead of confusing for the audience who is trying to keep up with the story(ies). In our project, branding was established as for example, our thumbnail and documentary share some similarities with one another. Firstly, the title text for both of them use the same typography. This is because we purposefully designed the title (especially the Christopher text that was handwritten) to be eye-catching and memorable to the audience, therefore if they see that specific red text elsewhere, they will associate it with this documentary.

Another visual similarity is the character which is Christopher. He is depicted as the main focus in both the thumbnail and documentary, the thumbnail even blurring out the other characters to support this. The main theme we tried to portray was a sense of fear and danger due to the impacts of the crime to the victim, the cool colour scheme we tried to use enhanced this sense as they connote lifelessness and paranoia. 

The thumbnail’s purpose was to hook the audience and make them interested in the contents of the documentary. Our documentary was made to raise awareness for the dangers of sexism in influencing how we react to certain situations, in this case the teenage boy in the documentary let his guard down from the teenage girl, resulting in the kidnapping. By putting forward this issue in our documentary, we are aiming to increase awareness of the dangers that lie between these misconceptions and hopefully prevent crimes like this in the future. Though the acting doesn’t really convey much, the visuals do. For example, the thumbnail picture has all the other student’s faces blurred out connoting  a sense of distrust that the victim will feel forever after the crime. 

For our documentary opening, my team and I decided to conform to some genre conventions such as having the survivor from the crime retelling the story while revisiting the site of the crime. We were inspired by the documentary opening for the Netflix episode of Worst Roommate Ever (2024) as it would be the best way to share vague details of the crime, simultaneously creating suspense as the audience knows that the victim survived, making them wonder about how the victim survived. This use of the Hermeneutic code by Barthes will help to make our audience question all the details of what happens next in the documentary, hooking them in. 

Another convention used by crime documentary openings is also having clips of interviews with the parties involved in the crime. This includes the criminal themselves, those close to the victim and others. In this case for our documentary, we decided to make one of the main focuses the interview with the criminal. Though it isn’t completely revealed, it is heavily implied that Harper (shown below) is the criminal.

This is shown through multiple elements, like mise-en-scene where Harper seems anxious (due to having done the crime) making her sweaty and the acting done by me where I purposely tried to make her act jittery, messing up details when answering the interview questions. The close up camera angle was chosen due to the majority of spontaneous interviews being done with this angle and because this camera angle can capture smaller details like sweat. These all work together to connote Harper is secretive. 

However, we subverted the usual conventions of the criminal being represented as inhuman. Typically, producers tend to dehumanise the criminals due to their crimes, making them alike to monsters instead (Representation theory by Hall) preventing audiences from forming sympathy by isolating them from the lives they lived outside their crime. For our documentary, we wanted to subvert this and instead wanted the dominant reading (Reception theory by Hall) to be that even “harmless” humans can be criminals. We did this by using recreation scenes to show what the criminal did at home, which fit into the usual stereotypes of teenagers, showing that she too was seemingly like the others. We made this decision especially since the criminal is a girl, further making it unexpected that a boy “stronger” than her would fall victim. 

During the research process, I personally thought the research of watching the multiple documentary openings helped a ton as we took lots of bits and pieces of the documentary openings we watched such as some of the conventions mentioned above, combining them into one opening. This was the best method of making our documentary blend in with others in the same convention. Next time, I’ll be more specific with my research, only researching ones that relate to the genre my team will try to recreate (Kidnapping and stalking). This way, we will be able to fit the specific genre conventions better through observation.

As for our target audience, we are mainly trying to target young adults or students from the age of 16 to 25. As the characters involved in our documentary are teenagers, those around their age would find it more relatable. There are many people that are just like the victim, feeling that they can’t speak up or perhaps just have the same personality as him. In this sense, the audience may possibly feel a personal connection (Personal identity from Uses and Gratification theory by Bulmer and Katz), making the documentary appeal to them due to the heightened empathy towards Christopher. Social relationships could also be a reason which attracts the audience as this documentary may also become a talking point between the audience (teenagers), resulting in more people also watching due to curiosity. We are also trying to target the people living in the area of the crime. Due to the proximity of the crime, they may become worried about their own safety since they can also become a victim of a crime like that. In this case, they will watch the documentary for surveillance in order to become more aware of how these types of crimes start and how to avoid getting involved in them. 

As for psychographic, surveillance also applies for those who watch this documentary due to their fear of getting kidnapped. The text in the thumbnail uses the Julius Sans One font aside from in Christopher. This text was created by my handwriting and is meant to impersonate Harper’s writing as she is obsessed with Christopher. For those who don’t know this, they may now be drawn in by a hermeneutic code (by Barthes) as they may wonder why the text is written in such a cutesy manner especially since it is a crime documentary. Wondering this, they may watch the documentary due to curiosity. This code can also be applied to the blurred faces of students in the background. The audience may now wonder if anything also happened to those in the background and may also start to question more as the details of the students are obscured.

Our documentary represents some social groups such as teenage girls and boys.The preferred reading we had in mind for teenage girls is that even though they may act innocent, there may be more than meets the eye. We showed this by displaying the “double life” of Harper showing that she was able to try and hide her crime by lying in the interview, shamelessly while she would be a stalker in private (easter-egg in the recreation laptop scene). Through mise-en-scene such as Harper being well-groomed, this made her also seem trustworthy as the ability to take care of yourself connotes being responsible and safe. 

For teenage boys, we wanted to send the message that men can also be victims. This will mainly be conveyed as the victim himself is a man. Other than that, the victim, Christopher would be represented as stronger as his actor is much bigger than Harper. The use of his clothing also supports this as hoodies usually connote masculinity or a sense of unapproachability. Even as Christopher seems strong, we wanted to show that that doesn’t make him invincible. 

Sexism is an issue we would like to address as misogynistic views make society look down on male victims of crime, calling them weak and incapable. We want to validate male victims as they tend to hide their stories due to being ashamed. The way we chose to portray this was by having the plot twist be that Harper was the criminal since again, it is hard (with sexist views) to imagine that a teenage, younger girl would be the perpetrator. Although this is the case, we didn’t downplay the situation and many were worrying about Christopher. We hope that the audience will take this and understand that Harper is more than just a teenage girl, but a human that like any other is able to hurt others.