Video link: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/1021601194
- consider in what ways you hope your final work engages its audience and communicates a key concern of the studio? Draw upon your experiences from attending the studio exhibition.
It was both nerve-wracking and exciting to see the work I created showcased in the studio exhibition. I hope the audience becomes fully immersed in the emotions of each participant, even though their stories were conveyed through interviews rather than their real online and offline dating experiences. Some participants have chaotic online and offline dating lives, while others are happy, having formed relationships through dating apps. Alamouti D (2020) stated that documentaries bear a social responsibility to convey ideas. I truly hope the audience can draw inspiration and reflect on their own dating lives, fostering critical thinking about how millennials navigate self-discovery in the context of modern relationships. The course primarily focuses on creating a documentary that meets industry standards, covering all stages from pre-production, pitching, and funding to release. It helps us understand the entire process a documentary goes through. Developing a strong creative proposal is emphasised as a fundamental skill for filmmakers to secure sufficient funding. This course has been instrumental in advancing my career in the industry.
- outline the singular most successful and singular most problematic aspect of your process/finished work
The most successful aspect was adding an additional participant, which brought much more tension to the story. I even heard someone laughing during Soph’s segment, and it made me wonder if there was a strong resonance with young people using dating apps. Each participant shares their story in a distinctly different way. Val, for instance, touched on prevalent issues with online dating, noting that many aspects of ourselves presented online are often less real compared to offline interactions.
However, the biggest issue we faced was with the sound recording. There was a major problem with Liv’s voice recording—something went wrong with the wireless mic, so we had to rely on the shotgun mic, which resulted in a buzzing sound when played in Premiere Pro. Additionally, the editing process was rushed, and many beautiful shots I captured for each participant weren’t used in the final film, which was a major drawback for the project.
- imagine you are going to keep working on that media piece, what would be the core things you would want to improve and extend and why?
If I had more time, I would focus on finding individuals from diverse countries with distinctive cultural and political backgrounds who are willing to share their real dating experiences and the challenges in their lives, deepening the exploration of the topic for the audience. Most participants would come from the LGBTQ+ community, which faces more complex situations than cisgender heterosexual individuals. This visual project would be both meaningful and educational, especially in our era of algorithms, technology, and homogeneity, where finding a partner has become more efficient online than offline. The documentary would address themes of love, hurt, self-discovery, and how family relationships or society shape perspectives on dating and partnership.
I aim to provide a comprehensive overview of each participant’s dating life, as some individuals even struggle with offline interpersonal relationships. Hu J. (2023) noted that compulsive use of dating apps reduces time and energy for offline activities, contributing to real-life interpersonal issues. This is also a growing problem among young people, with AI increasingly replacing authentic human communication with automated responses. In this context, the dating experiences of sexual minorities are even more difficult than in the past, highlighting unprecedented challenges in interpersonal relationships.
- outline one key thing you’ve learnt from your studio experience that you will take into your future thinking and practice
The most important lesson I learned from making a documentary is the value of bravery in communication, even though it may sound cliché. For beginner documentarians, finding the courage to be brave is especially difficult. I often have creative ideas but hesitate to bring them to life. We tend to be overly cautious, unsure of what is acceptable or off-limits in documentary filmmaking. While there are numerous resources that guide us on ethical conduct and potential pitfalls during production, the boundaries remain ambiguous for beginners because each project is unique. Ruby J. (2005) suggests that documentarians are often perceived as existing beyond moral constraints, free to turn people into aesthetic subjects without their knowledge or consent. To address this, we made a point to ask participants frequently, “Do you feel comfortable with this?” before starting interviews. By getting their consent, we could be “brave” in creating what we envisioned.
Additionally, I sometimes had to change the camera angle between questions, which might have upset the participants. Despite this, I felt it necessary to do so, balancing my artistic vision with their emotions, often apologising to maintain their comfort and trust. So I will carry this lesson into my future career: we must be brave in expressing our needs, rather than timidly holding back. If the other party rejects our ideas, we can then adjust our approach and make some compromises to achieve what we want.
- What’s one key takeaway about working collaboratively?
The key to successful collaboration is having a shared goal and direction for the project. This involves understanding each group member’s similarities and differences, maximising each person’s strengths while bringing everyone together as a cohesive team, maintaining mutual respect, and fostering clear communication to develop a cohesive visual plan.
Even though our schedules often conflict, once we are aligned on the same goal, we can work much more efficiently toward the project’s vision. Having a shared objective allows us to streamline our efforts and make decisions with clarity, ensuring that each step of the production process is purposeful and focused. By staying united in our aim, we can avoid unnecessary delays or miscommunication, and the project is less likely to deviate from its intended track. This shared understanding keeps everyone motivated, helping the entire team remain productive and driven toward a successful outcome.
Reference
Alamouti D (2020) The digital ethical space: towards a transnational documentary ethics, a filmmaker’s point of view. Transnational Screens, 11(2), 103–120. https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2020.1734305
Hu J (2023) Exploring the impact of a ‘confining’ imaginary of user-recommendation systems on platform usage and relationship development among dating app users. Behaviour & Information Technology, 43(6), 1164–1177. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2023.2201353
Ruby J (2005) New challenges for documentary / [eReserve] (A. Rosenthal & J. Corner, Eds.; 2nd ed.). Manchester University Press.
Reflection from Xuefei Li
I hope that our project can attract more audiences who are facing social and dating pressures and can empathize with this topic because of our topic. At the same time, I also want to attract more audiences with the stories of curious and private participants. I was inspired by the documentary Wildness (2012) we watched in class, which attracted many curious or queer audiences by documenting the controversial and sensitive topic of queer community gatherings and socializing. I think this is also a key point that this studio wants to convey, that is, as a documentary maker, In particular, a documentary producer should have the sensitivity to spot social problems. we should dare to tell some sensitive and secret topics and present the original story as truthfully as possible. (Ruby 2005) “I believe that the maker of images has the moral obligation to reveal the covert-to never appear to produce an objective mirror by which the world can see its “true” image.” Therefore, in this project, I mainly want to highlight the confusion of modern people about love and social interaction. In this project, our participants all have different but dramatic love stories, so we can attract the curiosity and resonance of the audience by talking about love, a relatively sensitive but inevitable topic.
In the whole process of making the project, I think my team and I have been very actively cooperating, each of us is very clear about our tasks, and we are also very hard to complete our work to achieve the goal of our team. In addition, the final visual effect of the shot was as high quality as we expected. I was amazed to obtain such a high-quality visual effect of the video in a limited time, and at the same time, I communicated and coordinated with multiple participants in a very limited time. I think it’s an uneasy thing to do such a complex shoot and edit in just a few weeks. In my opinion, the biggest problem is that our early interviews relied too much on the interview content of the participants, thus ignoring the main narrative and core viewpoints of our documentary. In the later editing, we found that many shots focused too much on the participants’ own stories and neglected to respond to the theme, resulting in our project deviating from the theme.
If I want to make further progress in this project, what I want to improve most is to control participants more. Although this project is a documentary, if participants are allowed to tell stories, the whole work will present a very messy narrative. (Ruby 2005) “One must consider the consequences of those among whom one works of simply being there. of learning about them. and what becomes of what is learned.” But the control here is not to ask the participants to say the assigned script but to help them understand our project and the effects we want to present so that they can tell more about their ideas about our theme and the story around it and not be too lost. In addition, if I continue to complete this documentary, I will seek several participants of different ages, genders, and experiences to enrich our story. In this way, our documentary will reach a wider audience, reflect more issues including dramatic stories, and discuss more in-depth topics in our overall documentary
I learned from the studio study this semester that making a documentary is not only about setting up a camera to capture everything that happens, especially after working as a documentary director, I found that documentaries also need to interfere with the narrative while ensuring the authenticity of the story. (Nash 2011) “Director Gordon Quinn describes a negotiated filmmaking process in which he attempts to balance his needs as a filmmaker with those of the participant.” Therefore, because our work in the early stage was too messy, I found that documentary filmmakers needed to violate the moral edge within the controllable scope for the overall quality of the project. (Nash 2011) “Historically, documentary claims a relationship to both journalism and art. While the former confers an ethical obligation, the latter is seen to permit “a measure of artistic ‘amorality.” It is also for this reason that the authenticity, fun, and morality of documentaries are difficult to consider at the same time. (Nichols, 2017) “Journalism, which shares a focus on the historical world with documentary, also leans more heavily toward the document, with its stress on factual accuracy and lack of a personal voice.” Therefore, in my future work, I will give more consideration to balancing the feelings of participants and the involvement of a documentary filmmaker, and I will control the whole project more rather than let the story develop too freely.
Finally, our collaborative work, which I think is the most challenging for me, because I am responsible for both the producer and the director, and both involve communication and collaboration with participants and team members. I believe that in collaborative work, it is important to ensure that information is clearly and accurately communicated to each participant and team member. Especially as a project producer, everyone is waiting for me to give them specific tasks so they can hone in on their work, so I need to have a clear idea of what the project as a whole looks like, what I want it to look like, and what everyone should be doing at what time. At the beginning, I was not able to master these tasks well, but in the later stage, with the help and guidance of my teachers and team members, I sorted out the theme and narrative of the entire documentary, and also increased the cooperation with participants to ensure everyone’s understanding of the theme, which will be of great help to me in the future documentary production.
Reference:
Nichols, B. (2017). Introduction to documentary, third edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p.105
Nash, K. (2011). Documentary-for-the-Other: Relationships, Ethics and (Observational) Documentary. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 26(3), 224–239. https://doi.org/10.1080/08900523.2011.581971
Reflection from Maggie