Evaluation (pardeep)

Practical Production Evaluation: ‘The Lavish Life’

For my practical production, I worked in a group to produce the opening of a documentary called ‘The Lavish Life’. It’s a documentary based on how the media influences us to consume, and as we feel that teenagers are most influenced, we have decided to target them by making our documentary MTV style.

We deiced to take on equal responsibilities in the beginning but we hardly worked as a group, as Simran and I seemed to put in more time and effort into editing and we came up with most of the ideas. We also changed our original plan of showing how more males are being influenced as we felt that this was a weak ending for our primary audience which is mainly young females.

The opening to our documentary is a montage sequence which starts with the D&G time advert, which is interweaved with our own footage. Featuring high-angled long shots of crowds and using cuts to show close-up’s of shop names, the aim of the montage is not only to grab the audiences attention, but is to show the idealistic lifestyle. The fact that the montage is almost like a fast edited MTV music video, helps to reinforce our point on how the media puts forward this ideology of aspiring to a glamorous idealistic lifestyle, as promoted by the D&G advert. The advert itself contains young people, who seem to live the glamorous lifestyle which is conveyed via the mise-en-scene (party) and their costumes. This attracts our young audience as well as the non-diegetic parallel sound (‘dance floor’), which is very effective as it anchors the images and it gives the documentary a glamorous feel. Within the montage, various people are carrying shopping bags of Argo etc which puts forward the ideology that in order to obtain this flawless lifestyle, it is necessary to consume. The montage’s main purpose is to create enigmas for our audience as well as to give them a vague idea to what the documentary is about. Our title ‘The Lavish Life’ then appears after the montage.

Via a fade, we have chosen to introduce one of our vox pops. The vox pops show people of both genders and all ethnicities, yet their age is similar, allowing our young audience to identify with them. As vox pops are a typical convention of documentaries, we included them to also ensure that our documentary appears to be realistic. The answers seem very much repetitive, representing this age group to be very influenced by the media to remain young, hip and ‘cool’. Again this links to our audience as they are most likely to visit the same shops, hence they will feel that the documentary directly concerns them.

Our documentary follows Rabigers convention of including interesting characters as we’ve included a university student. In a sense, it can be said that the documentary conforms to props convention of hero/villain, as the student (Abi) is represented as naive with money while the media influencing her is represented as corrupt, as it’s the reason why she shops, resulting in her being in debt. This scene starts with Abi coming up the stairs and apologizing to the camera for her lateness (as she went shopping), which instantly creates the impression that she’s a shopaholic which is reinforced by the shopping bags in her hands. Abi is represented as young, easily influenced typical university student who conforms to the stereotype of girls, as she’s shown to be a shopaholic and a bit careless with money. She is a character our audience can identify with, especially girls and university students.

This part of the documentary appears to be more realistic due to the mise-en-scene, which is her room, and also due to the fact that she acknowledges the camera’s presence by talking directly into it. Her entrance gives the impression that this footage is unedited, and it’s almost like an observational mode. Again, this is MTV style, so it keeps the audience entertained.

However, Abi’s voice is slowly drowned out, which represents her as someone who talks a lot. Instead it’s replaced with parallel music (‘six days’) and as the tempo changes of the music, so does the shots. By including shots of receipts, via close-up’s and long shots, it reinforces just how much Abi consumes. Also, a short montage of designer labels such as Gucci and Versace and crowds are placed next to each other, this allows an active audience to make correlations, as it suggest that this is what we all want, and aspire to. Nowadays, the media shows how class is defined by culture, so by obtaining designer clothes and by showing these labels, the documentary hints that we all buy certain things to attain a higher status in society, hence the documentary targets people who want to achieve high status and want the ‘ideal’ lifestyle.

The documentary goes on to show statistics about credit cards via a voiceover and then a professional. The final montage starts by the word media appearing everywhere suggesting that we are being attacked by the media and that it is inescapable, which is ironic as it’s meant to help people to escape from their lives.

The opening montage and the university student sequence is the biggest strength of our production as every little detail has been taken into account to prefect it. We feel that the university student forms the base for our main point whereas the opening montage is the first thing that the audiences see, hence it’s probably the most important in grabbing their attention. However, the university student scene can also be seen as a weakness as Abi conforms to the stereotypical view of young females and of young people as a whole. As her character is very careless with money, it may make the documentary seem unrealistic as not everyone is like this. Nevertheless, we have used this to our advantage as her character shocks the audience, which helps to stress our point.

In conclusion, although the documentary is about how the media influences us to consume, like Moore’s ‘Bowling For Columbine’ it raises other issues such as the sort of society we live in and the lifestyle we all want. In a way, it hints that banks are partly to blame yet this is done covertly, which manipulates the audience without actually stating this. ‘The Lavish Life’ is meant to entertain and inform a young audience and I think it does fulfill its purpose.