Advanced Portfolio- Critical Reflection

How do your products represent social groups or issues?

My film is a documentary about the life of Coco Sanemeterio and what occurred for him to create his NGO Pozos sin Fronteras. His NGO is all about the creation of water in non-developing countries with wells and saving millions of lives. My documentary mainly focuses on the issue of water and how hard it is to obtain it in Africa. Clean fresh water is an essential ingredient for a healthy human life, but 1.1 billion people lack access to water, and 2.7 billion experience a lack of water at least one month a year. My production represents various social groups.

Firstly, the developed population and a clear example are how the director of the NGO having his life resolved, thought about helping, with no good reason just to help and to stop this global crisis of water scarcity. Moreover, At the end of the documentary, he recommends different social groups such as little children, families, and anyone to help and do their bit. Sometimes, any help is good, and if it's something as simple as water. Many people think that water is everywhere due to it covers 70% of the planet, however, only 3% of the world's water is fresh water, and more than half of it is frozen in glaciers. In conclusion, freshwater is very rare and occurs in many countries worldwide.

I portray the social groups with my archival footage in the background whilst he is speaking, we can see undeveloped countries have little access to water and how the NGO tries to solve it. We also see how the land is very dry and unfertile showing that it's hard to grow food. This portrays the issue of water scarcity in Africa.

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

The newspaper article is orange so I am mainly focusing on orange so I am trying to link my blog and production with an orange theme. In addition, I created an install page with an orange theme to create a brand called The good maker. Adding on, I created a youtube thumbnail with the same color and font called Akkurat bold. Also, I made a logo for my Instagram page with the text The well Maker and another one with a well. furthermore, my Youtube banner links with my brand and connects with my webpage. Finally, I created a watermark of a well in my video for brand recognition.

How do your products engage with the audience?

Social media plays a big role in film distribution and marketing. To engage my audience with my documentary, I created a YouTube and Instagram account for the production company. My Instagram account has a photo that people can like and comment on, making it possible for the audience to interact with my production. Also, on the page's biography, there is a link so that people can click and see my documentary. In youtube, there is a subscribe, like, and comment feature that lets the audience interact with the videos. I enabled it to make it interactive.

My blog is also a great method to engage audiences. My posts are detailed and interesting, possibly attracting audiences. My website is professional and easy to navigate making the audience know what to do. Finally, my magazine cover and pages will capture the attention of people because it's visually appealing. The front page uses a Bold sans serif font to make it stand out, modern and traditional. Quotes appear in the texts to make the audience feel what the interviewee is saying.

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

My Documentary mainly uses conventions. It follows some techniques that mainly all documentaries use.

Firstly, it uses Archival Footage and Photographs, this means the use of old photographs, newsreel footage, and even shots from fiction films. For example, I use old photographs from previous missions of the NGO as background footage whistle Francisco is speaking. I mainly use archive footage of the mission of Burkina Faso and how they taught adults how to manage water. Secondly, I use the technique of Talking Heads. Talking heads are the interviewing of people shown in their offices (sometimes with a wall of books behind them) or their homes. In my case, I interviewed him in his house with some African masks behind referring to Africa. Moreover, also use a wobbly Camera since in Africa it is very difficult to film properly. In addition, I use Voiceover Narration basically to make it easy to follow the story. Finally, the main convention of documentaries is real people and I followed it basically by Interviewing a real person called Francisco San Emeterio. Furthermore, background music is another convention that is commonly used in productions. This is the use of music as background whilst the video is playing. In my documentary, I used two songs from the non-copyrighted library of youtube to not have any legal problems. I used music that matched the video timing, normally using African music.

After analyzing multiple documentaries and watching multiple videos on how to edit for documentaries I used these techniques so my documentary makes sense and has a professional look.