#50- Critical Reflection

Elliana Gorecki: The Upcoming of a Theatre Kid is the documentary I have been working on for the past two quarters for A Level Media Studies. This documentary is an inspiring and revealing story about Elliana, who is studying at the University of Tampa in Florida, United States. In the documentary, Elliana shares her past experiences and inspirations that led her to get to where she is. The final product for the class would be five minutes taken from the hypothetical full documentary. These five minutes includes two informative interviews about Elliana’s childhood, theatre beginnings, college life and future plans in life.  

The Upcoming of a Theatre Kid documentary represents young people just like Elliana Gorecki. Young women with big dreams could relate to her story. Elliana’s story could inspire these young women around the world to follow their dreams, such as getting involved in the theatre world. So, the issues represented in this documentary wouldn’t be considered controversial. The issues addressed would be the “issue” of passions and inspirations for the youth. Someone like Elliana could be a person the look up to and become inspired by her story shared in the documentary.  

This proves that my audience is so important. My final cut and minor tasks are the main importance of my project; however, the audience holds a high importance for my project too. I was able to engage with the audience through all my products. The blog posts are mainly for the grader; however, it was shared on my project’s Instagram account for the audience to see. The probability of them going to my blog is low though.  

Theoretically, let's say all of my audience, or most, goes to the blog. I can engage all the viewers with the entire project. They will learn the brainstorming and making of a documentary. They will be invited to get a look into the research and production, the editing and behind the scenes, and the magazine and social media. On the blog, the entire project is shared. The audience engaging with it will give them a look at my marketing and could persuade them to watch my final cut. It will help my branding of the project.  

For any company, a brand needs to be made. Then you can focus on building the brand's reputation, because a good reputation will bring in more audience members. To build a brand you need a name and logo, or symbol. For my brand I created the name “DocBill Productions.” This was inspired by Playbill, a popular American company that produce promotional material for theatre productions and performances. My production company, DocBill, was inspired by them, however, I made it a little different. My company produces documentaries and magazine features on the current and upcoming stars in the theatre world.  

I didn't create a specific logo because the title and the yellow color would symbolize the company I created. This is similar to the Playbill company brand. To build a good reputation for my brand I was able to use the internet. I created a fake Wikipedia page about my production company, it held information about the origin and owner of the company and the documentaries produced by the company. This would build reputation for the company by having an “online source” about the company and having “another documentary other than The Upcoming of a Theatre Kid.”  

The brand of my company gathers the attention of audiences and gives the basic information of the company. However, let's do a deep dive into the products that came from this project. DocBill Productions produces documentaries and magazine features. The five minutes of clips from the theoretical full documentary for this project is about a theatre kids upcomings and her dreams of being on Broadway. The audiences will get a look into, specifically, interviews and shots showing the reality of classes, workshops, auditions, rehearsals, recitals and personal life. The audience can also learn more from the magazine and Instagram.  

I have never made a magazine feature before, so making the magazine for this project came after researching different magazine companies and how spreads were set up. Grabbing inspiration from the inside of Backstage and Tima magazines helped me build the final magazine copy for this project. The magazine feature is produced by DocBill Productions. The magazine features a cover page and a normal two-page magazine spread. The cover is a picture of Elliana that I took and has the magazine name and the subtitle which is the name of the documentary. The cover is similar to the covers of Playbill covers since it was the inspiration. Inside the magazine would be the two-page spread. The first page of the spread is informing the audience of Elliana’s upcoming and her reason for wanting to share her story. The second page of the spread is informing the audience of the making of the documentary. The pages feature pictures that relate to the contexts of each page.  

The Instagram account came easy to me, this is because I have grown up on social media and have multiple Instagram accounts. It was easy to use, however, I’ve never produced something like this that I must post of. So, I grabbed inspiration from other media products Instagram accounts. Their way of marketing their films and documentaries with posters, promotional videos and behind the scenes content helped me build what I wanted to post. The Instagram is managed by me, the owner of the production company, but would be managed by a marketing employee for a real production company. The Upcoming of a Theatre Kid Instagram account features promotional content, like that of what I researched, with the purpose of directly communicating the documentary to audiences and will entice them to check and watch the documentary. 

A specific example of the magazine is an interview from Elliana that gives relevant information of about the documentary and advertises “The Upcoming of a Theatre Kid.” A specific example of the Instagram would be posting the poster for the documentary with relevant information such as the release date and title so the audience can get all the necessary information and go watch it. Both the magazine and Instagram account are important marketing tools for the DocBill Production company. The audience are also able to share the information they get from both products. They can like and comment on Instagram to share their thoughts. They can also share the posts or magazine features with friends to gather more viewership for both and spread the information about the documentary.  

In the past paragraphs, I shared the importance of researching minor tasks. However, most of the research for this project was for the final cut of the documentary. I have had experience with filming in Freshman year when I filmed my Media Studies project and last semester when I had to be reassessed for Media Studies. I have worked with cameras, lighting, sound and writing. However, I have never made an extract from a documentary, and it is very different from an Introduction to a film.  

I had to investigate many different documentaries and research the conventions. The conventions of a documentary that I used are establishing shots, interviews with person of interest, parallel editing, has one topic and has a purpose. Each of the two interviews have their own establishing shots to let the audience know the setting of where the interview is taking place. Parallel editing is present by cutting to media Elliana has given me while she discusses her experiences. The topic is her life, and the purpose is to show others the importance of pursuing dreams. The conventions I rejected in the making of this documentary are narrative voice overs and handheld shots. I did not film any narrative voice overs for the clips, every word was spoken by Elliana and the sound from the interviews continued as other media was shown. The media she did give me contained some handheld videos, however, none that I had personally filmed. With these conventions I was able to learn and put to work the aspects of making a documentary.  

In conclusion, this project has helped me build skills for journalism and film making. It allowed me to experience the process of branding and marketing. Which I had experience from Travel & Tourism and was able to build upon it. This project has its ups and downs, but in the end, it helped me become a better Cambridge student. [Word count: 1,411]