Poster

Introduction

My name is Arooba Abid and for my advance portfolio i have worked on producing a documentary. At the initial stages we planned to produce a short film based on the same concept but creating a documentary was a better option. The topic for my documentary is the women's right to get education and women empowerement. It shows how women are deprived of getting their basic rights. We have shown a girl's story where the contrast between her brother and her life is shown. For this project I have been working with my partner Rabiya Zulfiqar who is also a media studies student.

Final Website

This is the final website we created at the end of our production.

WEBSITE(EDUCATE ME)

#EducateTheGirlChild

The Main Inspiration

An Indian advertisement on rights of girls for education which inspired us the most towards the production of our documentary. The key concept is taken from this advertisement. It clearly shows the contrast between the rights of young girls and boys. It makes people aware about the rights which are not granted to girls in our society. Males are still dominant and powerful than females are. Every girl wants and deserves to go to school and get educated and in our society they are not given their right to study.
In this ad, the girl is aware that education is only for boys as she has never seen a girl get educated, this makes her want to look like her brother and go to school. In this ad gender discrimination and lack of rights of girls to get educated is very obvious. It promotes people to get encouraged and stop this from happening. Our documentary also represents the same concept.

to watch this ad, go to link:

Importance of Education

Why education is important for women along with men?

Education contributes directly to the growth of national income by improving the productive capacities of the labor force. A recent study of 19 developing countries, including Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, concluded that a country's long-term economic growth increases by 3.7 percent for every year the adult population's average level of schooling rises. Thus, education is a key strategy for reducing poverty, especially in the MENA region(countries and territories included in the Middle East and North Africa), where poverty is not as deep as in other developing regions. According to the United Nations Population Fund, countries that have made social investments in health, family planning, and education have slower population growth and faster economic growth than countries that have not made such investments.In the increasingly open global economy, countries with high rates of illiteracy and gender gaps in educational attainment tend to be less competitive, because foreign investors seek labor that is skilled as well as inexpensive. Various global trends pose special challenges to women who are illiterate or have limited education. Economies' export orientation and the growing importance of small and medium-sized enterprises create opportunities for women, but women need the appropriate education and training to take full advantage of these opportunities. In addition, the benefits of female education for women's empowerment and gender equality are broadly recognized.As female education rises, fertility, population growth, and infant and child mortality fall and family health improves. Increases in girls' secondary school enrollment are associated with increases in women's participation in the labor force and their contributions to household and national income. Women's increased earning capacity, in turn, has a positive effect on child nutrition. Children — especially daughters — of educated mothers are more likely to be enrolled in  school and to have higher levels of educational attainment. Educated women are more politically active and better informed about their legal rights and how to exercise them.

Documentaries-describing social issues

“When people and communities are armed with information, imagination, and the ability to engage with one another, we can change public will, our actions, and impacts.” - Eric Friedenwald-Fishman

Documentaries can arm audiences with information, imagination or an opportunity to engage with the real world in a new way. In this diverse medium, documentarians have different intentions for their work. Some are most interested in the creative journey. Others act as investigative journalists or advocates, revealing information and creating opportunities for an audience to engage with an issue. Some filmmakers explicitly develop a social issue campaign, putting documentarians into journalistic roles, to reveal the truth about the human rights issue, or an advocate’s role, to connect viewers and show how to join efforts towards making a change. 

Codes and Conventions of documentaries

Codes And Conventions Of Documentary:

1.  Voiceover: The voiceover will usually be authoritative in some way, encouraging the audience to think that they either have some kind of specialist knowledge or, as in the case of people like Michael Moore and Nick Broomfield: ‘the right’ opinions that people should pay attention to.
2.  ‘Real’ footage of events: Documentary is essentially seen as ‘non-fiction’ although there are debates around this. However, a convention of documentary is that all events presented to us are to be seen as ‘real’ by the audience. Documentarians often go to great lengths to convince us that the footage is real and unaltered in anyway, although editing and voiceover can affect the ‘reality’ we, as viewers, see.
3. Technicality of realism Including ‘natural’ sound and lighting (note Nick Broomfield’s use of this in ‘Biggie and Tupac’ when they ‘run out’ of sound.
4.  Archive footage/stills: To aid authenticity and to add further information which the film maker may be unable to obtain themselves.
5.  Interviews with ‘experts’ Used to authenticate the views expressed in the documentary. Sometimes, they will disagree with the message of the documentary, although the film maker will usually disprove them in some way.
6.  Use of text/titles: Text, watch out for the use of words on screen to anchor images in time and space.  Labels, dates etc tend to be believed unquestioningly and are a quick and cheap way of conveying information.
7. Sound: Listen out for the use of non-diegetic sound.  Has music been added?  Why what effects does it have?  Is sound used as a bridge between scenes and if so what meanings are made?   For example look at “Supersize me” – how does the use of childish music undermine McDonalds?
8. Set – ups: Not just reconstructions of events that happened in the past but also setting up 'typical' scenes.  So if you want to quickly convey 'classroom' you might ask a class to put their hands up like there's a lesson going on and the teacher's just asked a question.  Strictly speaking what you're showing is not 'true' the teacher didn't ask a question, but it is a way of cheaply getting footage a crew might have had to wait fifteen minutes for if they had just waited for it to happen 'naturally'. There is an issue here however because if crews make a habit of using set ups they will only be using images of 'reality' that audiences already recognise (confirming stereotypes perhaps) and producing fresh images/ ideas about 'reality' will be impossible.  There's a sort of vicious cycle here.  If I show you radically different images from inside a school you may reject them as atypical or 'unreal' but if I can only offer you a 'reality' you already know about how can I change your opinions?
9. Visual Coding: Things like misc en scene and props.  Is that doctor any less a doctor if she's not in a white coat and wearing a stethoscope?  Has someone been ambushed in the street to make them look shifty?