HOLLY MITCHELL

Trashed: Drinking and Destruction

Our documentary “Trashed: Drinking & Destruction” uses the traditional convention of an Expository documentary. Our documentary speaks directly to the viewer and throughout the programme, attempts to find the cause of alcoholism, and also to discuss and warn of, the effects of alcohol. A convention of an expository documentary is an attempt to persuade the viewer, and by the use of statistics, warnings, etc. “Trashed” attempts to change the opinion of the viewer as it portrays being drunk as somewhat dirty and unpleasant. We also attempt to develop from this convention, by aiming at a particular audience. We specifically tailored our documentary to appeal to the younger generation, and the people we are trying to warn and help. We attempted to do this by the use of relatable teens in our documentary, but also by comparing and contrasting their opinions with that of somewhat more experienced and knowledgeable adults, as a way to get across the seriousness of the message. The Archive footage we used showed intoxicated behaviour at its worst, violent and frightening; which should also appeal to our teenage audience as it is in some ways comical, but also communicates extreme cases.

The planning stage in our documentary was very important. We first analyzed documentaries by the famous film maker, Michael Moore. By doing this we where able to make notes on the conventions he uses and his non-stereotypical techniques which helped us inspire to his works. We then constructed deep research on our chosen topic to help us be enthusiastic about underage drinking when creating the documentary and use real life facts within it. We then watched different documentaries that conformed to the genre we had chosen, by doing this we where able to inspire from the ways they approached issues around the subject matter.

When filming we chose to keep the interviewer out of the camera shot, as we felt that their presence would be unnecessary and we could use a typical documentary convention of subtitles to introduce characters and interviewees. We used a variety of shots throughout the documentary, from low angles to close ups and even a video-cam. The video cam we constructed was of a teenage girl coming home from a night out, we decided to let her film herself as we could then get a real life snapshot of her disorderly state after a night out. We chose to display the time on the shot as well, to show the audience what time she finally made it home and emphasise the lack of sleep she will get. In contrast we then filmed her waking up in the morning, this scene I feel is the one in which teenagers will relate to the most, as if they are already drinkers they will know the feeling of sickness in the morning and will hopefully think again before bingeing, and for teens who don’t drink it will with a bit of luck scare them from consuming too much alcohol at a young age.

The combination of our ancillary task and our main product is effective, as they compliment each other. Our photography for out ancillary task is a way of grabbing the attention of the audience, denoted on the page is the shocking picture of a drunk young boy and is mirrored by the revelation of teen drinking in the documentary. The image of a younger boy of bellow thirteen connoted irony, we are warning the public of teen drinking and using such a young subject suggests what the future might hold if teen drinkers keep getting younger. We also shot the image in an alley way, as this relates to a specific scene in our documentary where in a reconstruction, a drunk victim gets abused. Using the same type of setting will hopefully help the audience make the link between drinking too much alcohol, and the disgusting places you can end up when you cant control your actions. The text that anchors the image attracts a different type of audience, the parents. We felt that parents should have the right to be aware of what their children could be succumb by at an older age. We deliberately wanted to make a potential viewer feel intrigued by the advertisement of the documentary, and want to watch it. Similarly, the double page spread from a TV listings magazine is also effective as reviews and advertisements from these types of magazines, are exactly what makes viewers aware of a program, and helps them decide if that is what the want to watch. Denoted in the middle of the article is a large image, which not conventional to a normal double page spread from a magazine, however we chose this image because it reflects exactly what we are trying to warn teens and parents about. The body language of the young teen has slight attitude of ‘not caring’, which emphasises the point of our documentary, that binge drinking can take over their lives permanently.

During the construction of this documentary we used iMovie to edit the filming. iMovie is available only on Mac computers, and as every member of the group has only used a Windows computer before, the Mac in itself was a new media technology. We used the Mac to upload the footage from the camera onto the editing software, to do the editing in the programme, and later on to burn the final edit onto disc. Therefore iMovie was a software programme that the group was also new too, we used the cuts and transitions to make cut or filming down to around 5 minutes, and to make our documentary flow, and to reflect the conventions of an expository documentary. When editing our film we made decisions as a group to move footage around which differed to our original storyboard. Our first decision was to remove our voxpop, we chose to do this as when editing it together, we found that it didn’t fit right with the rest of the documentary. As well as this towards the end of editing we discovered that our documentary was over the chosen time limit, which confirmed our decision to remove it fully from the film. We came across some difficulty when choosing music, as we needed something that would fit with our documentary genre but with limited lyrics in order to be able to hear the voice over, over the top. In the end we chose three different songs to fit in the beginning, middle and end. All of them where popular dance songs which have recently been in the charts, which conforms to our teen target audience.
Also, in our ancillary task, several members of the group were new to Photoshop, therefore we spent time to learn how to edit pictures, make full page magazine segments and put it all together to make something that you would find in a magazine. We decided to use a main and striking image in the middle of the page in order to grab the viewers attention. We then edited the text to face opposite ways, which made the page look more interesting and fun to read, which would help when attracting teens to the article. The other technologies we used included, search engines to help with research; a scanner to scan on print work; a digital SLR camera to get good quality images and television to view other documentaries.

As a way to gain audience feedback, we held a screening of our documentary, in order to record the reaction of our viewers. We opted to use a screening, instead of uploading our film to YouTube as the majority of our students said they did not have a YouTube account, which would make them unable to post comments and would leave us with limited feedback. The feedback we did receive was effective as we received constructive criticism as well as compliments from our friends. The screening was also useful as it allowed us, as a group, to view the documentaries of other groups. This was effective as it allowed us to see other characteristics of documentaries that we could have incorporated, and to compare and contrast each programme. The feedback we received was mostly parsing our reconstruction, one comment from a younger girl stated: “ the reconstruction was good to see what it was really like for the victim being alone and scared” followed by some older students telling us that: “We never truly know the danger we’re in when we are in a night out, and if we don’t remember, how are we meant to know if we where attacked or not?”. After hearing these comments we where glad to see how we had made an effect on some teenagers decisions to drink. The students also took notice of the important information, as one fellow student stated: “I was interested to hear what teachers and nurses had to say about teen drinking, normally in documentaries like this you just see drunk individuals with no meaning, it was a nice surprise to actually learn something”. Some teachers that where also at the screening told us that they where surprised at the level of stupidity the girl, Ellie Holden, had for her knowledge of the damage alcohol can do, and told us they will try and put more emphasise on it during lessons. This positive feedback made us feel confident that we had met the needs of our target audience.