Review (pardeep)

The Lavish Life is a short documentary about how the media influnces us all to consume and about how the media makes materials seem like a drug which we all seem hooked onto.Our main protagonist is represented typically as a female who can NEVER have to many clothes and shoes. Although she is represented as ditzy and we as the audience may even laugh at her, we secretly identify with her as she represents some truth. The documentary's fast pace MTV style makes The Lavish Life fun to watch as it features catwalks, flashy adverts and much more.

The LaViSh LiFe....

*~~The lavish life~~*

****BLINGG BLING BLINGGGG!!!****

I know you’ve dreamt about it….Everyone wants it….. And you can have it…. but you do have to take the luggage that comes with it…. This mtv style documentary will entertain as well as educate you to why individuals have this obsession about ‘the lavish life’.

The lavish life is an exiting, entertaining and uplifting documentary on four girls who go out into the real world to find out why we spend so much money and why people are so obsessed with shopping and always wanting to look good in the contemporary fashion!

We have a money obsessed uni student called ‘Abi’that cares more about looking good than eating and also have interesting opinions from the people out there and what they think that causes us to shop a lot! So if you have a non stop addiction on spending money on clothes then this documentary wills definitely interest you and you can see how shopping addictions lead to other problems so we can definitely say that it’s not all “the lavish life”.

I think lavish life gives you the inside story to what can happen when you do get caught up in the ‘lavish life’ but we challenge the fact that people think it’s only the women who are bad, when you do watch the documentary you will be very shocked!!!!! Because it flips, turns, spins like madd and smacks you with the real deal!!!!!



Interesting facts

We had a vox pox that was really really good, and when we uploaded it we realised the mic weren’t turned on!!! Lol :p
Lol there’s one bre that finks he’s too bad, spending 300 pound a week in nike town unoe, finks he’s on it N THAAAA loll!!!
Challenging but fun I LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

**DIPS**
XXXXXX

The Lavish Life review..SiMrAnXxX

Are you a shopoholic?? Spend a bit too much?? The Lavish Life takes an investigative approach as to why society, teenagers in particular, have become such a cosumer based society. Abi our (female) protagonist reflects and exposes the urge to conform to celebrities, magazines, and yes...the Media, also enforcing the view that everyone has to have "that particular item, that particular colour, that particular brand"..but why?? The MTV styled fast paced documentary leaves you informed, amused but also left in thought, questioning your own spending habbits.

For my practical production I worked with 3 other people and produced a social issue documentary called ‘The Lavish Life”. It’s an MTV style documentary based on the lives of people who over spend on items such as clothes and accessories and also investigates how we are influenced by the media. We thought it would be necessary to use ‘The Lavish Life’ as our title and emphasise the word ‘Lavish’ as it is something that most of us aspire to have as a lifestyle. We all want a ‘Lavish Life’ therefore we are drawn to the latest clothes n fashion to fit in and feel accepted in society. The title and style of the documentary conformed to our target audience of male and females of a late teen (14-24) age range and by using the word ‘Lavish’ in inverted commas it created a sense of enigma as to whether we are able to reach this lifestyle. This would draw our target audience into watching our documentary.

Within the planning stages of our practical production, we decided to assign everyone with equal roles with everyone having responsibility over all of the production processes such as research, filming, and editing. This was so we would all as a group be working together and be able to recognise each others strengths and weaknesses and apply this to the completion of our production. We had a few difficulties with people not being available for editing such as myself at the beginning stages but picked up on more editing sessions when it was coming towards the end and worked very hard to get it finished. I think everyone contributed well in the production as a whole even though more was contributed from others.

In the opening sequence of our documentary we chose to do a MTV style montage including extracts of the glamorising ‘D&G’ TV advert with edited shots of real life shopping from ordinary people on the high street with low angle shots of the mainstream retail outlets to give the impression that shopping is dominant over most of us. This is there to emphasises the growth of the women and men buying excessively and to introduce the problem arising with money in which we hope to investigate as the documentary progresses. We kept the original sound to the advert as it was up beat, grabbed the audience’s attention and fitted into out MTV style theme that we wanted to create. We also overlapped the title with the sequence at the end of it to reflect these images as being ‘The Lavish Life’ that we all aspire to today. We also used Vox Pops to ask other people what they think and to see how such things as the media have affected their spending habits. We mediated these Vox Pops and only selected scenes with people looking as if they ignorantly spend money without looking at the consequences which is the image we wanted to convey to the audience to not only reinforce our point but to relate to our target audience who are more than likely to be shopping in this way. We used a lot of fades throughout our production to construct a continuity effect which demonstrates the problem with over spending as a continuous social issue.

Our professional, who put across his view on the issue, further over looked this. We constructed the scene and paid close attention to detail as we sat him at a computer in an ‘office like’ room to flow his image as a professional where we then had his speech lead to the climax of the documentary where it all concluded to the blame of the media. This was a particularly well structured part of the documentary as it posed a question from the professional, then with the use of a montage to answer the question to create closure however there is a slight problem with the volume of the professionals voice as it seems to stay low and is overcome by the next montage scene and music, but we hope to get it solved before submission of the production.

Our documentary relies on the montages that we produced as the group thought that this was the most effective way to put our point across to our target audience. Our influence came from Module 2 when we were studying ‘Bowling For Columbine’ and ‘Man With A Movie Camera’ who both used these techniques to serve the same purpose. We merged a few of the different techniques together such as our main focus which was our university student with our montages of credit cards and receipts and placed a parallel sound with it to reflect the ’real life’. The song wasn’t conventional to appeal to our audience but different and sets the tone to the way we think today as a mellow non-thinking society. The university student was being perceived as a naïve and narrow minded student to emphasise the trap that we all fall into to think that we all have a back up plan (the credit card) but then are reassured that she is in trouble with her money and cannot manage it with all of her students debts on top of her overspending, this is a problem that a lot of students have which we wanted to make clear to the audience.

‘The Lavish Life’ will be shown on channel 4, a commercial channel, as they target to similar audiences as our target audience and also show programmes and documentaries that tackle these types of issues we have raised in our documentary. As we interviewed people of different ages and ethnicity’s it is clear there is a secondary audience where we are appealing not only to teenagers and students but everyday middleclass, working class, middle aged people as the problem occurs to many more others.

In conclusion ‘The Lavish Life’ serves its purpose to inform and educate as well as to entertain with the use of our MTV style fast paced editing shots. We posed many questions and answered them using different styles and techniques to conform to the documentary style we wanted to create. I think we were successful in the stereotypes and tones created by the soundtrack and the MTV style we prioritised to create.

xXx.KaRiNa.xXx

For my practical production I worked with 3 other people and produced a social issue documentary called ‘The Lavish Life”. It’s an MTV style documentary based on the lives of people who over spend on items such as clothes and accessories and also investigates how we are influenced by the media. We thought it would be necessary to use ‘The Lavish Life’ as our title and emphasise the word ‘Lavish’ as it is something that most of us aspire to have as a lifestyle. We all want a ‘Lavish Life’ therefore we are drawn to the latest clothes n fashion to fit in and feel accepted in society. The title and style of the documentary conformed to our target audience of male and females of a late teen (14-24) age range and by using the word ‘Lavish’ in inverted commas it created a sense of enigma as to whether we are able to reach this lifestyle. This would draw our target audience into watching our documentary.

Within the planning stages of our practical production, we decided to assign everyone with equal roles with everyone having responsibility over all of the production processes such as research, filming, and editing. This was so we would all as a group be working together and be able to recognise each others strengths and weaknesses and apply this to the completion of our production. We had a few difficulties with people not being available for editing such as myself at the beginning stages but picked up on more editing sessions when it was coming towards the end and worked very hard to get it finished. I think everyone contributed well in the production as a whole even though more was contributed from others.

In the opening sequence of our documentary we chose to do a MTV style montage including extracts of the glamorising ‘D&G’ TV advert with edited shots of real life shopping from ordinary people on the high street with low angle shots of the mainstream retail outlets to give the impression that shopping is dominant over most of us. This is there to emphasises the growth of the women and men buying excessively and to introduce the problem arising with money in which we hope to investigate as the documentary progresses. We kept the original sound to the advert as it was up beat, grabbed the audience’s attention and fitted into out MTV style theme that we wanted to create. We also overlapped the title with the sequence at the end of it to reflect these images as being ‘The Lavish Life’ that we all aspire to today. We also used Vox Pops to ask other people what they think and to see how such things as the media have affected their spending habits. We mediated these Vox Pops and only selected scenes with people looking as if they ignorantly spend money without looking at the consequences which is the image we wanted to convey to the audience to not only reinforce our point but to relate to our target audience who are more than likely to be shopping in this way. We used a lot of fades throughout our production to construct a continuity effect which demonstrates the problem with over spending as a continuous social issue.

Our professional, who put across his view on the issue, further over looked this. We constructed the scene and paid close attention to detail as we sat him at a computer in an ‘office like’ room to flow his image as a professional where we then had his speech lead to the climax of the documentary where it all concluded to the blame of the media. This was a particularly well structured part of the documentary as it posed a question from the professional, then with the use of a montage to answer the question to create closure however there is a slight problem with the volume of the professionals voice as it seems to stay low and is overcome by the next montage scene and music, but we hope to get it solved before submission of the production.

Our documentary relies on the montages that we produced as the group thought that this was the most effective way to put our point across to our target audience. Our influence came from Module 2 when we were studying ‘Bowling For Columbine’ and ‘Man With A Movie Camera’ who both used these techniques to serve the same purpose. We merged a few of the different techniques together such as our main focus which was our university student with our montages of credit cards and receipts and placed a parallel sound with it to reflect the ’real life’. The song wasn’t conventional to appeal to our audience but different and sets the tone to the way we think today as a mellow non-thinking society. The university student was being perceived as a naïve and narrow minded student to emphasise the trap that we all fall into to think that we all have a back up plan (the credit card) but then are reassured that she is in trouble with her money and cannot manage it with all of her students debts on top of her overspending, this is a problem that a lot of students have which we wanted to make clear to the audience.

‘The Lavish Life’ will be shown on channel 4, a commercial channel, as they target to similar audiences as our target audience and also show programmes and documentaries that tackle these types of issues we have raised in our documentary. As we interviewed people of different ages and ethnicity’s it is clear there is a secondary audience where we are appealing not only to teenagers and students but everyday middleclass, working class, middle aged people as the problem occurs to many more others.

In conclusion ‘The Lavish Life’ serves its purpose to inform and educate as well as to entertain with the use of our MTV style fast paced editing shots. We posed many questions and answered them using different styles and techniques to conform to the documentary style we wanted to create. I think we were successful in the stereotypes and tones created by the soundtrack and the MTV style we prioritised to create.

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.

yEaHyYyYy... FwIniShEd.....

yEaHy It's fWiNsHeD... We sMaShEd iT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! mEdIa aWaRdS HeRE We cOmE N Tha NoH LiAyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dips
xxxxxxx