Critical Reflection

This is my critical reflection for the documentary.

Questions:

1) How do your products represent social groups or issues?

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

3) How do your products engage with the audience?

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

Me and my team (Bagas, Nicho, Bagus) was tasked to make the opening of a crime documentary, around 3-5 minutes, for this project. We decided to based the documentary about murder and kidnapping, which in short, contains a story of a student called Bagus who was once a happy guy but later on, becomes distant and suddenly disappeared because he got rejected by his crush and wants to take revenge. Our purpose to make the media product is to raise awareness about murder and kidnapping and to highlight its dangers towards women and the people around us.

The research that my team and I did, tremendously helped us during the production of our work. From crime documentary opening research, thumbnail, and sound research, guided us so that we our documentary looked and feel like it belongs in the crime genre. At the crime documentary research, we identified and analyzed all common techniques that are often used in each of the documentaries. The conventions used for crime documentaries range from: dark setting, eerie music, dim lighting, random camera movement, and many more. These use of camera, mise-en-scene, sound, and edit ultimately lead to a goal which is to make the scene as suspenseful and make the audience be at edge for a majority of the time. For the thumbnail research, we took inspiration from the documentary ‘what Jennifer did’ and implemented the subject smiling and the subject frowning for our thumbnail. We also use the red to color the word ‘good’ because red has connotations of blood, and danger which is perfect for a crime documentary that revolves around murder. Furthermore, we specifically color the word good because we want to implement reverse psychology as good implies that it’s a positive word but after what Bagus did, the good turned red meaning something terrible had happen such as a murder. We choose this because based on one of the 5 codes (hermeneutic code) made by Barthes, it creates a sense of mystery and hooks the reader on the possible reasons that made Bagus change from the positive to the negative side. Furthermore, we use color white and black as the mise-en-scene to differentiate the good (being white) from the bad (being black). Also, based on the culture code made by Barthes, we decided to use the title “Not so Good” because our subject’s name, Bagus, is a word from the Indonesian language that means ‘good’ and we thought of the idea to make the connection so that the title is related to the documentary.

I choose an audience by identifying what resources we had as 4 teenagers who was tasked to make a crime documentary. For example, our resources was the availability of Indonesian people that were around us and I could make them our actors instead of hiring professional ones. This logically led to choosing Indonesian people as our target audience but we also decided to include foreign people as well so that more people can enjoy the documentary. After choosing an audience, I intentionally design my media text to appeal them such as using Indonesian slang (like ‘curhat’ which means deep talk) to make the Indonesian audience able to relate to the film thus making them more engaged. On the other hand, a way to target the foreigners was to edit in English subtitles so that they can understand what is being said - without them learning the Indonesian language.

The groups that were represented in our documentary were young Indonesian students around the age of 17, that are both male and female. The group contains the main subject (Bagus), the girl and Bagus’s friends. At first, Bagus was shown in a good light because his friends said (through the interview which is considered as diegetic sound) that he was a great and kind guy which is also paired with positive mise-en-scene such as using silly pictures/videos of Bagus’s past which connotes that he was an unserious person. But then he changed to a mysterious, and anti-social type friend and this was shown by his friends stating it during an interview that is dimly lit, expressed in a flat tone, and the interviewee using dark clothing to further express what they’re stating are the negative side of Bagus and showing hints that he is connected with the disappearance of another student. This is done so that there’s a plot twist in the documentary that drives the narrative forward. Then, the girl is shown as innocent and classified and this was represented by camera angle showing every part of her but her face which implies that the producer of the documentary is trying to protect her privacy. Also, Bagus’s friends were represented as side characters by them being interviewed (which is what side characters do in crime documentaries) and their purpose is to give context of who Bagus was as a person and foreshadow an incident that involved the girl who rejected him.

Since we target the 17+ year old Indonesians and foreigners, our preferred reading about them is that different people handle rejection differently and thus it is unpredictable to know how they would respond in that situation. Additionally, a stereotype was used in the form of a person would get sad when they get rejected and in this case, Bagus got depressed, distance himself from everyone, and for a while, locked himself in his room before he started his plan for kidnapping. This is because stereotypes help to make audience understand the context faster without wasting any more time. It is also a way for the audience to relate to the media text, making them more engaged. Also, another preferred reading is that boys are naughty, troublesome, and defiant as even when things doesn’t go to their way, they would find a way to take revenge and get the last laugh (in this case, Bagus got rejected, kidnapped the girl that rejected him and took her life as payback but he was so insane that he took his own life too). However, the preferred reading for girls is that they are innocent, and often the victims.