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?

Types of Documentaries

1. Poetic documentaries: Which first appeared in the 1920’s, were a sort of reaction against both the content and the rapidly crystallizing grammar of the early fiction film. The poetic mode moved away from continuity editing and instead organized images of the material world by means of associations and patterns, both in terms of time and space. Well-rounded characters—’life-like people’—were absent; instead, people appeared in these films as entities, just like any other, that are found in the material world. The films were fragmentary, impressionistic, lyrical. Their disruption of the coherence of time and space—a coherence favored by the fiction films of the day—can also be seen as an element of the modernist counter-model of cinematic narrative. The ‘real world’—Nichols calls it the “historical world”—was broken up into fragments and aesthetically reconstituted using film form.

Examples: Joris Ivens’ Rain (1928), whose subject is a passing summer shower over Amsterdam; Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s Play of Light: Black, White, Grey (1930), in which he films one of his own kinetic sculptures, emphasizing not the sculpture itself but the play of light around it; Oskar Fischinger’s abstract animated films; Francis Thompson’s N.Y., N.Y. (1957), a city symphony film; Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1982).

2. Expository documentaries: In such documentaries, we speak directly to the viewer, often in the form of an authoritative commentary employing voiceover or titles, proposing a strong argument and point of view. These films are rhetorical, and try to persuade the viewer. (They may use a rich and sonorous male voice.) The (voice-of-God) commentary often sounds ‘objective’ and omniscient. Images are often not paramount; they exist to advance the argument. The rhetoric insistently presses upon us to read the images in a certain fashion. Historical documentaries in this mode deliver an unproblematic and ‘objective’ account and interpretation of past events.

Examples: TV shows and films like A&E Biography; America’s Most Wanted; many science and nature documentaries; Ken Burns’ The Civil War (1990); Robert Hughes’ The Shock of the New (1980); John Berger’s Ways Of Seeing (1974). Also, Frank Capra’s wartime Why We Fight series; Pare Lorentz’s The Plow That Broke The Plains (1936).

3. Observational documentaries: These attempt to simply and spontaneously observe lived life with a minimum of intervention. Filmmakers who worked in this sub-genre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository mode as too didactic. The first observational docs date back to the 1960’s; the technological developments which made them possible include mobile lighweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for synchronized sound. Often, this mode of film eschewed voice-over commentary, post-synchronized dialogue and music, or re-enactments. The films aimed for immediacy, intimacy, and revelation of individual human character in ordinary life situations.

Examples: Frederick Wiseman’s films, e.g. High School (1968); Gilles Groulx and Michel Brault’s Les Racquetteurs (1958); Albert & David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin’s Gimme Shelter (1970); D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (1967), about Dylan’s tour of England; and parts (not all) of Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s Chronicle Of A Summer (1960), which interviews several Parisians about their lives. An ironic example of this mode is Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph Of The Will (1934), which ostensibly records the pageantry and ritual at the Nazi party’s 1934 Nuremberg rally, although it is well-known that these events were often staged for the purpose of the camera and would not have occurred without it. This would be anathema to most of the filmmakers associated with this mode, like Wiseman, Pennebaker, Richard Leacock and Robert Drew, who believed that the filmmaker should be a “fly-on-the-wall” who observes but tries to not influence or alter the events being filmed.

4. Participatory documentaries: These believe that it is impossible for the act of filmmaking to not influence or alter the events being filmed. What these films do is emulate the approach of the anthropologist: participant-observation. Not only is the filmmaker part of the film, we also get a sense of how situations in the film are affected or altered by her presence. Nichols: “The filmmaker steps out from behind the cloak of voice-over commentary, steps away from poetic meditation, steps down from a fly-on-the-wall perch, and becomes a social actor (almost) like any other. (Almost like any other because the filmmaker retains the camera, and with it, a certain degree of potential power and control over events.)” The encounter between filmmaker and subject becomes a critical element of the film. Rouch and Morin named the approach cinéma vérité, translating Dziga Vertov’s kinopravda into French; the “truth” refers to the truth of the encounter rather than some absolute truth.

Examples: Vertov’s The Man with a Movie Camera (1929); Rouch and Morin’s Chronicle of a Summer (1960); Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March (1985); Nick Broomfield’s films. I suspect Michael Moore’s films would also belong here, although they have a strong ‘expository’ bent as well.

5. Reflexive documentaries: These don’t see themselves as a transparent window on the world; instead they draw attention to their own constructedness, and the fact that they are representations. How does the world get represented by documentary films? This question is central to this sub-genre of films. They prompt us to “question the authenticity of documentary in general.” It is the most self-conscious of all the modes, and is highly skeptical of ‘realism.’ It may use Brechtian alienation strategies to jar us, in order to ‘defamiliarize’ what we are seeing and how we are seeing it.

Examples: (Again) Vertov’s The Man with a Movie Camera (1929); Buñuel’s Land Without Bread; Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989); Jim McBride & L.M. Kit Carson’s David Holzman’s Diary (1968); David & Judith MacDougall’s Wedding Camels (1980).

6. Performative documentaries:These stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or experimental, and might include hypothetical enactments of events designed to make us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on the world that is not our own, e.g. that of black, gay men in Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied (1989) or Jenny Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1991). This sub-genre might also lend itself to certain groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, etc) to ‘speak about themselves.’ Often, a battery of techniques, many borrowed from fiction or avant-garde films, are used. Performative docs often link up personal accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities.

Examples: Alain Resnais’ Night And Fog (1955), with a commentary by Holocaust survivior Jean Cayrol, is not a historical account of the Holocaust but instead a subjective account of it; it’s a film about memory. Also, Peter Forgacs’ Free Fall (1988) and Danube Exodus (1999); and Robert Gardner’s Forest of Bliss (1985), a film about India that I’ve long heard about and look forward to seeing.

Documentary Production Houses

Production houses which produce documentaries/ social realistic films:

Cambridge Documentary Films: It is a non-profit organization established in Massachusetts in 1974. The purpose of the organization is to create new perspectives on important social issues and give voice to groups and individuals whose perspectives are ignored by mainstream media. These films have won numerous awards, including an Academic Award. The subjects include: rape, advertising’s image of women, trauma, media literacy, gender roles, the labor movement and other social issues.

Rainbow Collective: it is a British documentary film production company based in London England, which specializes in creating documentaries that highlight and deal with human and children’s rights issue.

Welcome Change Productions: it is an independent documentary production company founded in 1991 by filmmaker Alice Elliot. It specializes in making films that focus on people with disabilities and communities that are reinventing themselves. Their mission is “to lead social change by revealing the big stories hidden in the human heart.”

Scrappers Film Group: it is also a documentary film production company in Chicago, Illinois. It produces educational and socially motivated films about the Chicago area

Documentary analysis (Supersize Me)

Codes and conventions of the documentary “Supersize Me.”

Supersize Me (2004) is an investigative documentary, primarily a cinematic release, on how the fast food industry is killing America. The director, author and onscreen presenter, Morgan Spurlock, aims to find out how thirty days of only eating fast food can affect your body by putting himself to the test. By the end of the exhausting thirty days, Spurlock finds out that he has done the same amount of damage to his liver as a drinker on a binge. Within the documentary you see a mostly negative portrayal of America telling us of the horrors of the American lifestyle.

To understand the codes and conventions used in Supersize Me we have to first explore the codes and conventions used in typical documentaries. There are seven different types of documentary; Docusoaps; Reality TV; Fly on the Wall; Mixed; Self-Reflexive; Docudrama; Fully Narrated. The hybrid documentary ‘docusoaps’ are used to be observational about a lifestyle, individual or a group of people (Eg,One Born Every Minute and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding). Reality TV, also referred to as ‘infotainment’ would be the documentaries which is a mix of authentic material, serious content and commercial aspects (Eg. Real House wives and LA ink ). Fly on the Wall is a documentary where the cameras are unseen(Eg. Big Brother, and Educating Essex ). Mixed would be a combination of interviews, observation, actual footage, archived material and narration. Self-Reflexive documentaries feature people who are aware of the camera and often talk to it (Eg, Teen Mom). Lastly, fully narrated documentaries have a narrator who speaks all the way through the documentary to convey an argument. Documentaries can be a mixture of these types, borrowing aspects from each.

Supersize Me is a mixture of these seven as it has characteristics from: reality TV, mixed, self-reflexive and fully narrated. Spurlock gives information as entertainment, telling us about the risks of fast food whilst being light-hearted and upbeat. He has interviews (formal and vox pop), actual footage and archived material; he speaks to the camera and conveys a clear argument throughout the documentary. The argument which Morgan Spurlock puts across mostly argues that it is mostly McDonald’s and all of the other fast food chains fault that people eat so poorly, but he also argues that other people such as the government and schools play a major role in this too.

In Supersize Me you see that Spurlock has used a number of stylistic techniques through visual and sound to create the investigative genre of documentary. In visual elements we see: vox pops, formal interviews, labels, background images, animations, graphics, camera movement, credits, stock footage and statistics. For interviews it seems that Spurlock chose to use a mixture of vox pops (where he would as the general public) and formal interviews (which were of trained professionals in the relevant field). Spurlock as an onscreen presenter would stop the general public in New York and ask simple questions. For example, at one point Morgan asks a variety of people what a calorie is. This seems to be used to dramatic effect, as the public seem to be completely lost for words at his question. This is shocking to an audience and makes them feel shocked that people didn’t know that information which is spoken about so often, and even shaken that they may not have known it themselves. The camera follows normal convention for Vox Pops as it stays low, there is a handheld camera used for realism and the public speak to Spurlock rather than the camera. Vox pops give the audience a point of view which they can relate to, as they are a member of the general public themselves. These are used effectively in Supersize me and Spurlock never asks a complicated question, and can often be quite funny.

Formal interviews are then used to give an authoritative outlook on the subject, and are often used as a believable and reliable opinion on the subject matter. Although Spurlock does interview a range of professionals, from doctors to detritions, I feel his interviews could have been more affective due to the fact that some of them came across informal as the backdrops were often untidy and the interview often strayed into an informal jokey tone. Apart from this, the conventions of formal interviews are followed as the professional is placed in two thirds of the screen (usually to the right) at a medium shot. Titles are also used on the formal interviews telling us who the professionals are and their job titles, helping to reinforce their reliability and authority on the subject. These usually add to the context of the documentaries, as in Supersize Me we see that Spurlock’s girlfriend is a vegan chef, therefore showing us an assumed opinion from her without her directly telling the audience.

Something else which Spurlock uses, which follows his genre of an Institutional Documentary, is the handheld camera which is used throughout a lot of the documentary where Spurlock appears himself, being filmed as the on screen presenter. The handheld camera is used to create a sense of inclusion and realism, as though they are really therewith Spurlock investigating. This is quite a common feature of this genre of documentary and I feel that this is used effectively within the documentary for this very effect. Whilst Spurlock speaks to the public or eats an entire supersized big mac meal, the camera remains handheld and makes the audience feel the message of the documentary with complete intensity. An example of where this is particularly effective in terms of realism and gut wrenching shock is where after he eats a giant McDonalds meal, Spurlock leans out of his window to regurgitate the whole meal bag up onto the pavement outside his car window. The camera man leans out across Spurlock, giving us a view of the whole picture. The fact that the handheld camera is used for this specific scene makes it seem less staged and more like you are there with Spurlock.

Animations, graphics, photos and archival footage are used to reinforce its explository and participatory modes, as they are used to back up arguments, further explore them and engage the reader in the argument of the documentary. They are used with particular effect in Supersize Me to add to the humour, which is usually associated with Institutional Documentaries. This brings the tone of the serious, hard hitting facts and topics down and brings it to a more light-hearted tone. An example of this would be the funny and upbeat McDonalds adverts, which are clearly there to be made an example of, but are usually laughed at with Spurlock’s witty banter dubbed on over the top.

This leads onto the audio side of the conventions used in Supersize Me. This is split up into diegetic  and non-diegetic  sound. Every documentary will have both of these types of sound within them and they both help to convey the message of the documentary. Within diegetic sound you hear speech and ambient noise. Most commonly you hear the dialogue of the interviews, which is used effectively as it’s always consistent and relevant. The ambient sound of the documentary, though, could be branded ineffective and unprofessional. In one of the interviews, Spurlock sits down with one of the lawyers which he has come to for factual information. Spurlock and the interviewee are sat in a McDonalds, and as they are speaking you can hear the screams of the children playing in the playground around them. I feel that this should have been cut or reshot as it comes across as distracting and takes away from the interview which is taking place. Although, some could argue that this was purposeful and Spurlock was conveying a message about the children of America and McDonalds.

 Within non-diegetic sound you hear music and voice overs, both which I feel is used to the conventions of the documentary and to full effect. Music is often used ironically and perhaps mockingly in Supersize Me as some of the song choice includes ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ and ‘Rock n Roll McDonalds’, ‘Yummy, Yummy, Yummy’ and the official ‘Supersize Me’ song. There is also classical music played when you see surgery being performed on an overweight man receiving a gastric band implant. This is used for irony and makes the scene feel almost funny.

All of these things come together in creating an image of America. This image is portrayed mostly negative as it criticizes the government, schools, parents and most of all McDonalds and food franchises. In particular Spurlock blames the government for the ways in which schools are run, saying that they do not offer enough physical education and food choices are poor. We see Spurlock visit a school in which for lunch the only options are pizza, chips and fizzy pop. Spurlock does appear to give the school a chance to stand up for itself, with the head teacher saying that ‘They have personal choice’ or that ‘if kids are buying loads of junk food it’s probably to share with the other kids’. Morgan Spurlock follows this up by visiting the   young girl who had bought a whole range of junk food, and she appears to be eating it all to herself. At the next school Spurlock visits they simply state that it is ‘much easier’ for them to buy food that is precooked and pre-packaged. Many times Spurlock questions this, asking whether that was the best way to benefit the children, which is usually followed by links to funding they are receiving from the government. This gives the impression that schools in America are lazy or are not being supported enough by the government.

One of the main things which is also criticized in Supersize Me is the ‘No child left behind’ scheme put into place by George Bush. This meant that PE was cut down to a minimum or scrapped altogether so that children could spend more time studying for things such as maths and English. This is followed up with an interview with a school which has physical education and healthy dinner options. The school is a school for delinquent children and they go on to state that the children’s behaviour drastically changed once they were given healthy meals and regular exercise. Spurlock’s intention with all of these things is to shock an audience and show them direct evidence of healthy living on children, which furthers his argument about the government and schools.

 A further shocking scene in the documentary which is shown to speak to people about the state of American schools and families is the scene where Spurlock shows the children various photos of people such as Jesus and various American presidents. The children struggle with all of the history based or well-known faces but know straight off who Ronald McDonald is without prompt. This is quite a humorous scene although it is also used to make people feel outraged and in disbelief. Something else which is harshly criticized is parents and their approach to their children’s health. One particular hard-hitting scene in the documentary is where Spurlock asks some parents if they can sing the national anthem. Though various different tries the parents continuously fail, yet when they are asked to sing the song on the burger king advert the one mom knows that immediately. Other parents who are interviewed say they don’t always have time to cook a meal or go and work out.

The depiction of America is negative to some extent; on the other hand there are a few scenes in the documentary which do redeem some of America’s aspects. Mostly this includes professionals such as doctors, nutritionists and lawyer, being omniscient and all-knowing, as you and Spurlock trust them wholeheartedly throughout the documentary. Also, there is an extract in which Spurlock complements the fact that New Yorkers walk everywhere, and barely any have cars. He also mentions that he would have to cut down on his walking if he was going to fully complete his test.

Overall, you can see that there are many codes and conventions followed by Supersize Me which lead to the mixed representation of American society. The impression of America can be subjective to an audience, although in Supersize Me you can see that the impression it gives is mostly polemical and biased, as Spurlock doesn’t offer a lot of insight into other opinions, and if he does they are mostly used as humour and taken the mick out of. I think that Supersize Me is extremely effective in getting across its overall message about America, as the codes and conventions used are to their full advantage and create a light-hearted spin on a serious subject.

To watch this documentary: https://youtu.be/jAnCOHCVjyU

Timeline

Timeline:

Questionnaire

This questionnaire was tested among 30 people and following are the results.

Budget Planning

Advance portfolio overview (rough)

My Journey Through Advance portfolio

storyboard

Copyrights for the Soundtrack

We hope to hear back from them soon, even if we do not hear a response from them, we will still go ahead with this poetry choice. However, if the record label does contact us refusing the right to use the soundtrack, only then will we have to start again and use another soundtrack.

Their information link: http://www.humnetwork.tv/Contact_Us.html

Subtitles(Educate me)

Subtitle-EDUCATE ME..

Maham: Eman, I am cutting my hair so I can look like my brother, and go to school like him. Let me cut your hair too so everyone thinks that we are boys.

-Urdu poetry translation in English:

Kitni girhein kholi hain mene, kitni girhein ab baqi hain.

How many knots have I untied, how many still remain?

Ab chilnay lage hain hath paun, aur kitni khrashain ubhri hain

Now my hands and feet have begun to develop scratches, and so many bruises have surfaced

Kitni girhein kholi hain mene, kitni rassiyan utari hain

Since I started untying the knots, and freed myself of so many ropes.

Interviews:

Question: Did you ever go to school?

Minahil: When I was young I used to go to school, but when I grew up my father said that in villages when girls grow up they don’t go to school. I always wanted to have education specially now when I see girls in the city going to school, I want to join them too.

Aisha: I asked my father to send me to school but he refused and said that he did not have enough money to afford my education.

Question: What did you want to be?

Minahil: I wanted to be a doctor or anything else but I never wanted to depend on others.

Aisha: I wanted to be a teacher.

Minahil: My parents let my brothers go to school and sent me here to work and earn for living. I never got a chance to stand on my feet.

Location Research

As my package for the advance portfolio is a documentary which is completely based on reality, so I was supposed to shoot my production at a realistic and natural set. Artificial setting or studios were not suitable for a documentary.

I planned to shoot the film in a village near my house. It was convenient for me to shoot there as my servant was a resident of that village so they made it easy for me. My group member Rabiya and I went to the village to find a mediocre school for the school shots; we also took along our actors (Maham and Junaid). The school we found was a low profile, average school named as Hope Public School. On the Day 1 we did all the school shots, we called a few children from the village to help us shoot as we needed some students in the scenes.

For the rest of the shoot, which were supposed to be done at a village like setup representing the girl’s house. We went to my friend’s cattle farm where we also had a bedroom to take all the acts taking place in the bedroom (hair cutting, waking up, getting dressed). This kind of a setup and location was the most suitable for our documentary. 

Other scenes where the girl is working as a servant were done in my house. The interviews by the girls who did not get education (Minahil and Aisha) were also done at my house.

These locations were chosen very carefully to match our documentary's theme and representation. Choosing such realistic and natural locations helped us creating a more effective and strong documentary.

Evaluation Questions

1. How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do they represent social groups or issues?

All types of media products have a certain codes and conventions to follow and similarly our documentary about women empowerment have its own codes and conventions too. The use of lesser known, unpopular and untrained actors is a typical convention of a documentary, furthermore making it more realist and relatable to the audience watching. Many actors used in documentaries are not of a high status in the industry or are not even professionals and many depict the same lives to their characters in the documentaries. Similarly in my documentary I have used non-professional, untrained actors so it is more relatable and realistic. I have tried to make it simple and close to real life experiences so audience can relate to it.

Documentaries also cannot afford celebrities as they are usually with low budget. My documentary is also a very low budget production. Documentaries are usually shot on location. It is highly rare for them to be shot in studios as they present artificial locations. To present gritty settings, locations such as council estates, parks, homes and other natural locations are used. By filming on location rather than in a studio it presents a sense of social realism more as the character and the audience can see the conditions of the location. My documentary is also shot on location with a very natural misc-en-scene. I have shown all the scenes in the exact location of happening. I have shot all the school scenes in a public school and similarly other scenes are shot in the character’s actual house to create a sense of realism. The lighting used is also normally naturalistic which means it does not uses lenses or soft lighting. In my documentary no such artificial lights are used. It is all shot in natural light as most of such social realistic productions are with low-key lighting.

Special effects are not used lavishly in documentaries. The audience generally does not expect the titles to come jumping onto the screen. This is because documentaries revolve around simple lives. Simplicity is the operative word here, and because social realism relies a lot upon the interactions between people, distracting titles are not desirable. Instead, effects such as simple fades or wipes are used. Mostly, titles will simply appear and disappear. This is why most of the documentaries have simple editing and sequences. In my documentary the editing is also more likely to become montage-like and simple in order to reflect the emotion or seriousness of the situation. Cross-dissolve editing technique helped me the most in creating the simple look of my documentary.

Documentaries usually reflect real life issues. They tend to be events that take place in everyday life but they may also portray issues that have not been highlighted and shown to the public. Such issues involve poverty, child labor, prostitution, and gender discrimination. The storyline of the wider social issues usually take place in a documentary that captivates an individual’s life and focuses on a single issue. I have also represented such a social issue in my documentary where we try to convey how females are deprived of their rights of education, along with an element of child labor for awareness among people.

In some documentaries enigma codes are highly used to convey a certain message to the audience. The audience is often left to wonder why characters behave in a certain way, film makers make people think about the issue. In my documentary the act of girl cutting her hair with a scissor is a very strong way of describing her feelings about the discrimination of rights between her brother and herself. In this way my documentary relates to some codes and conventions of a documentary.

In my documentary I have described the contrast between the rights of males and females. I am conveying a message that girls do not get equal rights similar to the boys. In our society girls get a very limited chance of exposure and education. Inequality of rights in education is the basic and main concern represented in my documentary. I show how the girl expresses her feelings and point of view about her rights of education. The divergence between the rights of girls and boys is clearly visible in my documentary. The girl is lack of the exposure her brother is getting. Her brother is being educated but she does not have an opportunity to avail the same rights. My story is based on a family of lower, social class who has very limited expenditures and income. They have a highly conservative mindset. 

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 rights to study. The most highlighted topic in my production is women empowerment. Gender discrimination and lack of rights of girls is very obvious in my documentary. I also show that the girl is bound to work as a servant at different homes as a source of income due to her parents forcing her. It describes child labor and how she is working at such a young age, another element of lack of rights of girls. In this way my documentary conveys its representation.

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

Branding is one of the key elements found in almost all the media product. Branding does not limit to the logo of the product, however the postcard, website, social experiences and also its online store can be categorized under ‘Branding’.

To begin with my project , I planned the production process before hand by making a shooting schedule that helped us divide our work between me and my partner Rabiya in a proper way. We had first decided to create a short film but both of us produced different ideas and plans for the advance portfolio and ended up creating a documentary on women empowerment. This is how we finalized our Synopsis. Our product mainly focuses on the concept of lack of rights of women to get education. It highlights how she is not granted with her basic rights unlike her brother; a contrast between genders is shown. As it is a topic not discussed by mainstream media, it has an impact on everyone watching it. It does not have a specific target audience but captures a wide range of audience. It targets the whole humanity. It is completely close to reality and very natural so more audience relates to it.

 We did all our research and planning, creating storyboard and shot list before the shooting so it made the process easier for us and carry out production without wasting anytime on what to do at the time of shooting. The shooting for our documentary took place in three different locations, a school, a village representing the girl’s house and a house where she works as a servant. On the day of shooting we took various Camera angles, shots and movements as planned according to the shot list.

At the beginning of the documentary, the girl who is our main character, is cutting her hair using a scissor, this scene creates a sense of curiosity and suspense and makes people think that why she is cutting her hair. This keeps the audience interested in the documentary. After this scene the dialogue she speaks is also very powerful. It has a high impact on the people listening. It gives a very emotional and sentimental theme to our documentary which grabs attention of the people. The background music and the Urdu poetry part also help making audience get emotionally attached to it.

In order to attract audience and create a sense of branding, making of Postcard plays a very important role in it. It is a direct way of making your product popular. It is a way of inviting the audience to come and watch it. Posters are captivating and intriguing in order to attract audience. Creating a website for my documentary was the most suitable way of branding our product. We created our website on which our documentary was available for audiences to watch.

Location of shoot plays a very important role in creating a sense of branding. My package is a documentary which is completely based on reality, so I was supposed to shoot my production at a realistic and natural set. Artificial setting or studios were not suitable for a documentary. Choosing such realistic and natural locations helped us creating a more effective and strong documentary. Keeping in mind the codes and conventions of a documentary, we also used non-professional actors to people can relate to them. Using professional and known actors might have not created the sense of reality. Acting had to be natural.

3. How do your products engage with the audience and how would they be distributed as real media products?

Audience in the present time is very active on all the platforms, they are no more passive and are able to accept or reject any media text they consume. It is very important for me that our target audiences are able to engage and relate to our media text. In order to ensure this we conducted a questionnaire survey to get into the mind of our audience and understand what they want to see or like to see in our documentary.  A media text has to be successful to make money.

Other ways to engage with the audience is social media, nowadays social media is accessible and available almost everywhere. It is an informal way of staying in touch with the audiences. Any worthy production becomes popular and viral on these social hubs rapidly. Twitter and Facebook are very widely used and are most suitable for this purpose. Twitter has a trending page through which people can see what the latest craze is, and what people from all over the world are talking about. Creating Hashtags is also a very successful way of making your product available for the maximum audience. We are also starting tweeting under the name @educateme and creating our own Hashtag #EducateMe in order to attract audiences. We are using facilities like ‘Retweet’ and ‘Favourite’ to share @educateme tweets on our own accounts so that our friends and followers may read about it.

Facebook has the facility to ‘Like’ page and receive update , and share posts with friends as well as publicly. Facebook pages also allow you to sponsor your posts and build an audience, which also helps in marketing certain products in an effective way. When one person likes or shares something it automatically appears on either their friend’s and follower’s newsfeeds. Some people may get intrigued and share those posts which starts a chain reaction thus promoting the post even further.

I have chosen “Geo Films” as the distributor of my media product. As it is one of the most well known media institutions in my country Pakistan, owned by Geo Television Network which is based in Karachi. Popular movies like Bol, Dukhtar and Khuda ke liye, that are based on social issues that surround us in our everyday life are commonly distributed by this company. So it is even more suitable for me as my documentary is also based on reality and a social issue. In this way I will be engaging with my audiences and will be distributing my documentary.

4. How did you integrate technologies- software, hardware and online- in this project?

At the beginning of my advance portfolio I wasn’t aware of the technologies the way I am now at the end of it. Due to my foundation portfolio I had some information about adobe photoshop and how to use it. It was just the basic knowledge I had. Advance portfolio was the first time I experienced and learned to edit videos. For this project I chose the documentary package. The main search engine throughout our project was Google.com. To do all the research for the documentary I watched different short documentaries on YouTube and DailyMotion. These two were the basic sites to provide me with films and videos. While surfing through YouTube I came up with an Indian advertisement based on women education which gave me the basic idea of my documentary. This ad was the major inspiration we carried out in our documentary. Other research work was done on different blog searches, I went through various media blogs. Websites such as slideshare.com, prezi.com and emaze.com also provided me with the most of information and content for my research and planning and the complete project.

To learn all the basic editing techniques I watched editing tutorials on YouTube. I also learned how to shoot and film videos with the use of different camera angles and movements and identified which ones were the most suitable for my project. All the research and planning was done using my HP Pavilion laptop.

I used professional DSLR’s to shoot the scenes. There were two cameras used to produce different angles of a similar act. (models of dslr). I used DSLR because they provide you with a cinematic coverage, high definition and quality, functions such as shutter speed, focus pull and aperture. It gives you an overall pre defined control. I also used a tripod stand to fix my camera on, it provided me with stability and the desired angle. The voiceover was also recorded for one scene where the girl speaks a dialogue, it was recorded on Samsung Galaxy Note 5 voice recorder using an external microphone to reduce the ambient or surrounding noise and echo. I muted all the clips as the documentary was supposed to have a non-diegetic, fluent background music. The music I used throughout my video was a random downloaded file named as “Marvel”. Another poetry audio was also downloaded using a mobile application “Vidmate”. There was no music cover available online or on SoundCloud.com so I had to use the original soundtrack of HUMTV’s drama serial (kitni girhain baqi hain) “How many knots are left?” OST by singer Gulzar. The lyrics and Urdu to English translation of this poetry was taken from Krithya.wordpress.com. While editing I used Audio WAV so it does not require Render.

For the final editing of my documentary I used Adobe Premier Pro as it has the latest and professional features.  It provides you with functions like color correction and makes clips transitions easier. The Cross-dissolve editing tool was used the most throughout my project while scene shifting. It gave a very fluent and on-going effect to the documentary. It represented the sadness and gloominess of the storyline. As it is a slow pace product so no complicated editing tools were used.  It creates a sense of realism in it. Other than Cross-dissolve I also used simple cut edits. In the slides consisting the statistics I applied the Zoom in and Zoom out fx to the text. The font style for the text was Kino MT. As the dialogues were all in Urdu, I had to apply Subtitles to it. The subtitles were given in the font style Arial in bold with black background in 50% opacity. At the end of my documentary I have added a quotation which is in font style Cambria. In the split screen scene I used the crop effect and then centralized both the screens moving them to the left. I also applied Fast color correction effect and increased the saturation of the whole project. In this way I have integrated software, hardware and online technologies in my advance portfolio.