- How do your products represents social groups/issue?
- How do your products engage with audiences?
- How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
Our media product represents social issues as we are targetting those withing the teenager-young adult category (ranging from 13-25), we feel as though people within this demographic get affected the most by this issue and it would be prevelant to target them. ED’s in the media are often surrounded by several stereotypes, including those with ED’s to only be fraile and skinny whereas ED’s don’t only cover people dealing with anorexia for instance but other multitudes of by-products from the ED umbrella. ED’s also often get overlooked as for instance, in the modelling and Hollywood industry, beauty standards penetrate the issue further as the promotion of unattainable beauty pushes the narrative to audiences that they have to go to extreme measures to achieve beauty. This happens to both genders yet, most of the media only discusses regarding females with this issue yet, the same isn’t highlighted with men alike. Our documentary’s representation challenges common media as it puts another approach, an approach where we aim to highlight the issue to more social groups as well as sharing people’s stories and become more relatable to the audience that way. Identity theory by David Gauntlett, highlights this view. Gauntlett believes that while everyone is an individual, people tend to exist within larger groups who are similar to them. He thinks the media do not create identities, but just reflect them instead. By creating a documentary that relates to the people and share experiences from the people who have suffered the issue, we hope to paint a more positive outlook where there is hope in breaking free from the disorder.
Our media product engages with the audiences as its target audience, set mainly within our ages. The issue of ED’s affect teenagers and young adults the most, as they are more prone to being influenced by the allure of these heavy beauty standards placed on them by society. Eating disorders typically begin in adolescence or early adulthood. Anorexia and Bulimia rarely begin before the age of puberty; 90% of cases are diagnosed before age twenty, while fewer than 10% of all cases occur before age ten. Our choices depend on the culture of the audience we are targetting. For example, teens who want to get into Hollywood and the glitz and glamour of the modelling industry don’t often realize certain damaging affects the industry can perpetuate in the youth. We aim to use certain visual elements in the section such as, dramatic lighting, tense music, fast paced editing to create the tone we’d like to set in the documentary. We aim to use relatability as a strategy as, the interaction and engagement of spreadin resources alongside creating a community where audiences feel at peace to share their stories could create more engagement and buzz towards our documentary. Uses and Gratification theory by Bulmer and Katz explores the different reasons why we seek out particular media products to satisfy our needs and desires. Our media product aims to target surveillance where audiences could become more aware of the surrounding world and issues that are starting to form in our youth today and find ways to spread awareness for any potential victims to not fall into the perplexing issue. Our thumbnail aims to add mystique with a title that could invoke hermeneutic code (5 Narrative codes) as it is titled “Diet Or Die”.
Our media product is informed by our research through the way it subverts from mainstream media’s view on eating disorders, often times portrayed in it being positive which is why it continues to become qite harmful for the youth. The research I have compiled details other documentaries from similar and different genres, this was helpful in ensuring that our media product contains elements of what we are trying to display to the audince. Research has also benefited the product as we were able to use certain elements and subvert from genre conventions. As I took inspiration from crime documentaries like The Rain Coat Killer or American Vandal, where the interview scenes were shot in a fixed position with a medium shot combined with a dark tone, the research really informs our documentary in terms of defining the health documentary by adhering to the general conventions. By demonstrating the awareness of well-known social media with billions of users on what happens if you type eating disorder, the Health documentary helps audience understand how serious is eating disorder in this social community. This is done by studying how to open a documentary, general mental illness problem, thumbnails, and participants' experiences. Furthermore, including some disclaimers on people who have eating disorders to consult reliable services demonstrates how important the problem that we bring up throughout the documentary. The study also assists me in determining what the target audience expects to see in health documentaries or in documentaries in general. Using cultural references such as Korean beauty standards would make our health documentary more approachable to the audience. Using Tiktok as a way to gather montage reels of Kpop Idols, we were able to give a broader perspective regarding the Korean beauty standard and the comments bursting up concerning praising the Idol for their skinny bodies as this will significantly emphasise the significance to bear the Korean Beauty standard like Jennie in our documentary. about the other hand, if an Idol, such as Liz from IVE, does not meet Korean beauty standards, there will be a lot of hate from the public, as evidenced by some critical remarks about Liz.
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