Does This Make You Uncomfortable? is our documentary that was created to show how gen-z is made uncomfortable by feet, and what that shows about society.
The first step to learning about how to make a documentary was viewing some examples, and understanding some of the conventions that can be found. The first example we viewed in class was called I Think this is the Closest to How the Footage Looked. This short nine-minute piece was really vital in expanding our view of what a documentary can be. As was explained to us, a documentary is a “slice of life”, and this piece was a perfect way to show that. After this, we saw the piece Exit Through the Gift Shop. This was without a doubt the most influential piece we viewed when it came to the style of our own documentary. Due to our topic being out of the ordinary, we decided that a more lighthearted style, similar to the style of Exit Through the Gift Shop, would be important to get audiences to understand what we were showing. Something else we were inspired by from this doc was the use of interviewing the creators to progress through the piece, in order to explain to the audience what is happening, as well as using it to help maintain the structure. The final examples we watched in class were the New York Times Op Docs. These were extremely helpful for us, as they were really the only examples that were a similar runtime to what we were aiming for.
The topic that we were covering is quite a specific one that most people likely wouldn’t understand. A lot of adults we talked to during this project had no clue that people in generation z even have a problem with feet. Due to this, the main target audience for this piece is other people in generation z, as they already understand the topic at hand. The topic seems to tailor towards all genders, as most people seem to have the same discomfort around feet. The documentary tailored towards our target audience by also starting out pretty fast paced, which is helpful towards gen z, who normally have a lower attention span. I think if we were able to add more of our own interviews, potentially explaining how we originally came up with this topic, and explaining that it is a generation-wide issue, we could have expanded the audience to a much larger level.
This piece is something that most people in generation z can actually relate to. During the class viewing of our documentary, most of the class was laughing at so many of the moments, likely because they relate to it so much. Also, during a scene where a foot is shown, the entire class started freaking out, obviously pretty uncomfortable with what was shown on-screen, clearly proving that the topic does make them uncomfortable.
One of the ways that we developed a brand in the piece was with the very title of the piece itself: Does This Make You Uncomfortable? That was the question that we asked all of our man on the streets interviewees, as well as the first question for all of our main interviewees. Because of this, we were able to use the title as a guiding question within the majority of the piece, and it stayed a recurring theme throughout the whole thing. Another way we developed the brand was by, for lack of better words, the way we kept things pretty out of pocket for most of the piece. This documentary is on an admittedly pretty strange topic, so going right out there and embracing it ended up being an effective choice. Right off the bat, we show a video of a foot up close, which most people in our target audience would never dream of doing. We then walked around town showing people pictures of feet. This is once again something our target audience would find absurd, proven by the fact that people who knew what we were doing beforehand were shocked we would even try such a thing. At a later point in the piece, one of our interviewees ripped off his shoes and socks, and we zoomed in to capture the absurdity that our audience would find.
One of the main social issues that our documentary tackled was the trend for people in generation z to tend to cover up a lot more. Several of our interviewers were able to explain several other examples of younger people covering up, besides just with their feet. People in our target audience viewing the piece, who likely cover up their feet subconsciously, could question the reason for why they do so. I feel that we could have done this a bit more effectively if we were able to have our own interviews placed throughout the entire documentary, besides just the beginning. This way, we would be able to explain how what the interviewers are saying relate to the topic, as well as reaching a broader point of view of society itself. This piece most covers the group of gen-z, and it attempts to point out deeper reasons for some of their actions, ones that they may not expect.
With Does This Make You Uncomfortable?, the main goal was to use a funny and humorous beginning to draw members of gen-z in, before switching to a more serious a reflective topic, one that viewers can use to reflect upon some aspects of society.
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