1000 Word Essay

 

Critical Reflection – Will  Harper

In my research I looked at theorist Steve Neale who said ‘Genres are dominated by repetition, but are also marked by difference, variation and change. In my documentary I aim to keep to the same codes and conventions as the documentary genre to meet audience expectations, for example establishing shots, non-diegetic voiceover and interviews, but change them in a way which suits my style of documentary filming. John Grierson was a theorist that coined the term documentary and he said ‘The creative treatment of actuality’ which means putting a creative twist on the reality that is being filmed in documentary which is what I will aim to achieve although my documentary is very factual and formal which is suitable for the mainstream BBC One audience, based on my research of reports on programmes like Countryfile.

In my research I also looked at the director Ali Tabrizi who filmed Netflix’s Seaspiracy in 2021 and I took inspiration from his work to put into mine as I inform my audience about the topic of biogas as he did with the marine world. I looked at the 2021 BBC documentary Fresh Cops which looks at new British police officers and I researched this documentary because it looks at a working environment which relates to my documentary as what I am filming is in an industrial work environment. For my first documentary that I watched which was the first five minutes of Frozen Planet two episode 3 and I looked at this documentary to see how you would integrate animals into a documentary because I have used cows in my documentary, which I had to learn how to frame them in a way which connotes a story.

My primary target audience will be C2/D/E and reformers and explorers in the 20-40 age group, because I am aiming my documentary at farmers and young farmers but also students who are environmentalists, this is why I talk about the future of the planet in my documentary and how biogas could help with this issue. I am aiming the documentary at people thinking about their future and the planet’s future. I chose Instagram for my documentary marketing as it often has elements of environmental issues and I wanted to bring in those environmentalists into my audience as well as older farmers who are experiencing change as a secondary audience. There’s an element of choosing Instagram because the farming community need more young people to enter the farming industry and using Instagram helps that process, this is another way of me interacting with my audience. The use of a farmer for the interviewee and the mise en scene of the farm offers both audiences the use and gratification of personal identity.

For my Instagram page I put up a post for a competition to win a tractor if they visit my website. This pulls my audience to have a look at my documentary as well as me interacting with them in a form of a competition. My article introduces me as a director for the Biogas documentary and then the article goes on to ask me questions which I answer giving my audience an insight into how I produced the documentary and what contents will be within it. Another post showing the behind the scenes shots of the interview I did with Oliver Kennerley gives my audience a look into what its like to be a producer of a documentary.

With regard to the representation of groups and issues I was keen to construct an image of the farming industry as modern and based on science to challenge the hegemonic view of it as old fashioned. My Drone footage of the digester biogas plant with the farmer I am interviewing talking about scientific terms like what gasses are built up in there represents the farming industry as no longer a small time old-fashioned industry any more, it is a lot more scientific and commercial and that is what farmers have to be nowadays to make it in the farming industry which is struggling as it is and is why this farmer that I was interviewing diversified and made a biogas plant. The documentary brings to light how farming can’t be small because to own a farm in this day and age you need it to be commercial and this is even more apparent now that grants and subsidies are no longer available to farmers which I also talk about in the documentary.

In my documentary I deliberately ask the question ‘Has the Ukraine crisis affected your business in any way?’ He then goes on to talk about the pricing of certain products, this question also brings light to the Ukraine crisis to my audience and how it’s not just affected Ukraine but the entire world and how British farming operates in a global context. In my article I also talk about the Ukraine crisis and go over what was said in my documentary but this has the same effect as the documentary but it shows my audience I’m talking about this subject outside of being on camera. In my documentary I bring to light environmental issues with subjects like energy and how we should be more sustainable with it. This targets my environmentalist section of my audience. In my work you can see the representation of gender in the farming industry and how it’s predominantly male which is what my documentary represents with a male cast for the interview.

I was careful to create a strong sense of branding across my three productions. This is firstly achieved through reference to the channel institution, so I have a logo which can be seen on my Instagram page and is shown in the middle of the magazine article and at the start of my documentary. My production company named Farming Productions gives my audience a sense that I am a company that creates farming documentaries and not just the biogas documentary but many others. I have used the same font for my title card in my documentary and on the title for my article, I have also used it on some of my posts on my Instagram page. This font is bold, uppercase and solid which represents the bulky machine based industry of farming.

The imagery that I used through-out my work is in mostly the same style with it either being of landscapes or animals and in a cinematic layout. This imagery remains constant right through my work, which lets my audience get to know my style and recognise it and it also conveys the ideology of the importance of the countryside and the farming industry across all three.