action documentaries are a subgenre of informative documentary that spotlights an
issue to raise awareness. My social action was to give insight into people with disabilities achieving a career path, with isnt known to be difficult. Unfortunately, big companies do not like to employ people with disabilities since they have no experience. Scullers caf in Marlow employs young adults with learning disabilities and gives them a career path to have a better life in the future.
There is an important reason for following this social action, as it ensures that the issue that people with disabilities can have is clearly explained and shown throughout the documentary. If we are clearly able to identify problems that are now becoming a global issue, it could allow people to see the problems that are facing the community and entice them to visit the Caf, as they will know they are supporting a local charity, which helps people with disabilities.
During my social action group, I worked in a group of three, where we were all given individual roles to try to produce a successful social action video together. Together we able to give each person individual roles, from narrator, cameraperson and director. The equally spaced roles allowed us to work together to meet the criteria of the brief given, by making sure, filming ran smoothly and we were all up-to-date with what we needed to do. I believe that together we worked successfully, as we all worked together on each role rather than individually and we always helped each other if needed. This helped us to produce a successful social action video to a similar professional standard. My role was to narrate and interview subjects, also filming B- roll around the caf and Marlow.
Analysing the results of the social action, I asked multiple questions to access the audience that is viewing my documentary and how they felt after watching. The first section is establishing the audience. From these results, I can see that most, if not all, of the people watching the social action are students/ young adults. This may be due to the audience watching content on YouTube as a platform. A way of getting a broader audience for my social action would probably be using multiple platforms to gain exposure. Using platforms such as Facebook could gain some exposure from 30-40 year olds. Doing this could improve the reaction to the social action and help make a noticeable change to the issue. I also have a 3/1 ratio of males to females that have watched the social action, this could be improved with more exposure but I wouldnt know for certain.
Going into the effectiveness of the social action, I asked if the documentary fully represented the issue fully and seeing how well the point was put across. All responses gathered say that I have achieved putting the point across to the audience and effectively representing the issue. One person that answered said yes it does, it makes the viewer knowledgeable about the topic., this makes me more confident that people are understanding the issue and how to improve it. Other responses stated: Yes, I think it does. It does put the points across well through interviews and voice overs and yes, shows the issue in Marlow clearly and how people are working it to reduce it, also seeing this makes me confident that the style of social action has worked to covey information over to the audience, but also makes me confident that people know how Marlow is helping the issue and ways that viewers could help the issue.
A thing that I also wanted to find out is how interested the viewer would be looking at a lengthy social action video, making sure that all attention is on the documentary and to stop people getting board. Using interesting cinematography and content, I tried to maintain the interest in the audience and it seems like it has worked. All responses have showed that this has worked quite well! One response stated, the cinematography works well as it is interesting and looks good., this confirms my intentions and hopefully improves the effectiveness of the documentary. yes, the use of voice over, interviews and the view of Marlow kept the visual interesting so people can be engaging to it, this statement helps solidify the interviews, showing that they hold information and add value to the social action.
The next question I asked was if the social action was appropriate for all ages, this was met with a 100% yes answer! Although the people answering these questions were of a younger demographic, I am confident, from the way the questions were answered, that they have the ability to asses if the social action is appropriate. Now knowing that my social action is suitable, I am confident that I can distribute this to make a difference and try and help the issue. Since I am aiming this social action to all ages, I am
From the other questions, I can see that the interviews gave information and worth to the social action. Now I asked if they were conducted properly and how I could improve them. Yeah they look professional; this gives me a good sense that I conducted the interviews properly and to a good high standard. Some criticisms and how I could improve are: yes, add in more b-roll, this is a good constructive criticism that would improve the social action if I did it again, in addition to can have a better lighting to show the staff clearly?.
Would you say that the social action could give a positive impact to the issue? This was a resounding yes and is very helpful to the issue. Knowing this, the issue could be helped and could have the positive impact that is the objective of the social action. In conjunction, this result has made me confident that the charity would like the social action. Having a positive impact on the issue could show this issue to an audience wider than the local proximity of Marlow and that would exceed any expectations when planning the social action
The next question was: Would you say the colouring of the social action maintains interest in the viewer?. I asked this question because I needed to make sure that anyone viewing the social action would maintain interest and hopefully watch the full documentary. Yes, its pleasing to look at and yes, people need to find out more about it (the issue); These show that this has worked with the audience and helps the issue by giving more exposure with all the facts. With majority of people watching the full social action video, I can confidently say that there could be an effect to help the issue chosen.
The final question I asked was if the information in the social action supported the issue? This question is the most important because this would decide if the social action would be a real representation of the issue and if I could strongly say that the video was authentic. Thankfully the answer to this was yes, everyone who answered the survey thought that the information supported the social action.
In conclusion, the social action has had an amazing reception from audiences, but to be sure I would make sure that I have a wider range of ages answering the survey, but from the responses I would probably get the same sort of results.
When planning this social action my group looked at similar social action videos, we found two social actions based around the issue around working with disabilities, these videos could raise awareness to the subject and maintained interest throughout. The videos we looked at were, The Disability Action Centre and Development Disabilities. Both videos showed a narrative, this was quite hard for us since we didnt have a large time frame like the people capturing their social action. They gave facts and figures, giving knowledge to the audience about the issue. Both videos showed multiple examples of found footage and used many different camera angles to show a greater perspective about the issue, broadening the view for the audience. Their social actions were set up in a similar way to our social actions, having multiple interviews, narration and footage of the subject. But with this there were also some differences, the main difference was the length of the social actions. My social action was around 11 mins but theres were around 5 mins. I purposely made mine over 10 mins to give a true insight into the subject at hand.
Overall I think my social action was very successful with the reaction from the audience solidifying that. I believe that I did manage to produce a social action video that addressed the issue and would help raise awareness on this subject. However, I think there are a few technical problems with my social action that I could have improved on, like the interview set up and the use of facts, which would allow the issue to come across more easily for the audience.