Wednesday, 13 October 2010

Questionnaire for target audience





For our Taget Audience we gave out 17 Questionnaires to people. From the Results we think the questionnaire has changed our target audience, as we was going to aim it at all ethnic group but we now think our target audience should be aimed at ethnic minorities, especially mixed raced. We also gathered that many people thought that someone who was mixed race, could be either classed as white or black considering on their skin tone, which could back up our idea that if you are mixed race, you are looked at differently depending on your skin colour. We also noticed that people had very strong opinions, however did not put it down on paper as they thought it would be the 'wrong' answer.
From our questionnaires their was 9 female and 8 male, with the majority of them being aged between 16-18, we also had 2 people from the aged group of 30-40. In our questionnaire we asked the question ' would a documentary about being mixed race appeal to you?' we asked this to see if, targeting our documentary at a broad audience, would appeal, however from our results it showed that only a certain amount of people would be interested, and that was also depending on what nationality they was. 9 out of the 17 people said they would be interested, the majority of those people said they would be interested because they would want to learn more about it and that it effects them personally, either they are mixed race or know someone that is. 8 out of the 17 people said they would not be interested, this is because they said they was not mixed race so it wouldn't appeal to them. We wanted to know how many mixed race people knew, all but three, put 5+ , this helps us back up thr point that mixed race people are very common. We wanted to know people's nationalities because we wanted to know that, if that would effect our results, and we noticed that some ethinic groups would be less interested than others. Another question we asked was ' do you think there are any stereotypes attached to being mixed race' we thought this question would be a key element for us, as this is asking, how mixed race people are peiceved in society. Although majority of the people said no, there was no stereotypes, the people who answered yes, said that mixed race people may have sterotypes such as ' the mixed race child can be called more than one race' or ' money- they might be poorer'. we think we might have got more responses on this questionnaire, if people just wrote down what they thought, than what they thought we wanted to see. For our documentary we also wanted to know if being mixed race is dependent on your skin tone, so we asked ' would you class a mixed race person as? Black/White/neither/Depends' When respondents put down depends, they all put on skin colour, this backs up our idea.
Carrying on from that question we named some celebrities, who are mixed race, light and dark or black people who are light skin. most put the light skinned mixed race celebrities as 'white'. this also helped us show society looks on peoples skin tone, to determined how mixed race someone is. Our final question was 'have you seen any documentaries or programmes based on being mixed race' All but one said they haven't seen any, these helps us show we are very unique and the one person who said yes, said it was 'is it better to be mixed race' which is one of our inspirational products.

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

What is your USP?

Our documentary is about Mixed race people in contemporary society and how they are perceived in regards to the social acceptance of the mixed race movement. This topic will appeal to our audience as it is a unique yet a modern untouched subject. it is not a commonly addressed issue in the media therefore we instantly are but at an advantage to present our uniqueness. The target audience will be able to relate to the points made.

What type of Documentary is it?

Our documentary will be set on a mixture of different modes within the concept of documentary. Firstly, we will use the pro active mode, in theory we will practically involve ourselves in the activities such as the group discussions and interviews. This will create a sense of comfortablity and also a great level of engagement. We aim to demand a repond from the audience by getting involved. Secondly, we plan to use the expository mode in a order to inform educate and enlighten our audience through a narrative voice which ultimately works to guide them through the documentary towards the end.


What Documentary Inspired you?

The ' Is It Better To Be Mixed Race' Documentary. It inspired us to a great significant extent because it discovered a new area of science based on a controversial topics. Aarathi Prasad pursued her aims and thoughts through the use of this documentary . She covers the situation of Mixed Race people almost to every extent. This documentary was filmed in the UK and broadcasted on channel 4. Channel 4 is recognised for associating itself with controversial subjects they aim to make their audience gain an apprehension of that which in most cases they are unfamiliar with. We aim to affirm the concepts and fundamental conventions of channel 4 however, we also want to entertain the audience whiles educating.


Is It Viable?

The documentary 'caste me half' is greatly feasible, because it is unique interesting and an intriguing topic which has hardly been discussed in history. The Documentary is going to be held in a school environment therefore, all the interviewers are easily accessible and with profesional arrangements it could most definitely work. However on the other hand, we cannot predict the outcome of the interview nor the actual level of the input we will recieve from the participants.

What locations will you use?

We intend to use two different locations one within the school environment in order to get a depth of information from different individuals with a respectable atmosphere and we will also go out to the public in order to get their opinion briefly of the topic.

who have you approached for interviews?

We have asked several different individuals to take part in either our disussions and interviews we aim to cover a wide age range of people in order to get a full picture of the topic being discussed. Firstly we have asked students and 2 teachers, 1 male and 1 female teachers which are a parent of a mixed race child. We also hope to have a discussion with a group of young individuals in order to grasp their opinions on mixed race people and their background knowledge of the mix of two races.


what further research will be required in order to be well informed?


We will establish the historical background pf being mixed race, we will also manifest the rights of humans in terms of to what was socially and lawfully acceptable in the past and to what level they were granted 'freedom' to choose their personal spouse. we will analyse the historical movement and what society has morally achieved in regards to human nature and interaction.

How will the 5 minutes fit into a larger whole?

The 5mins will be in the introduction to the documentary we will however, go into further detail with the historical background, human and civil rights movemetn, extendend inerviews this our target audience starts from 15-25 year old males and females, because we felt that these ages are most likely to experience certain reactions from society based on the topic of 'being mixed race' as it is very common amongst them, however we also think that older than 25 will watch as it appeals to anyone is may concern


Why would C4 or another television company want to commission your documentary?

Channel 4 tends to provoke the audiences views and challenges their opinions “foster the new and experimental in television. It will encourage pluralism, provide a favoured place for the untried and encourage innovation in style content perspective and talent on and off screen”. ''We will use our reputation for risk and non-conformism to engage a younger generation in the values of public service broadcasting''. Whereas our documentary focuses in a controversial concept which eventually arouse a range of reaction from the audience. we feel as this would be suitable form them to commission.

Is there a global market for your documentary?

There is most certainly a global market for our documentary as races are missing all around thr world, forming new cultures and races through their 'creation'. increasing rate of people immigrating from different counties and this would demand both a physical and emotional interaction between cultures.

research into similar products/inspirational texts

Is It Better To Be Mixed Race



For our documentary we looked into similar products to help us gain inspiration, however once we started to look into it, we found that there is not many documentaries based on 'being mixed race'. We found one documentary similar to our idea,which was called, 'Is It Better To Be Mixed Race' which is a Channel 4 commissioned Documentary. Geneticist Aarathi Prasad, who plays a proactive part in the documentary, considers the theory
that Mixed Raced Humans are blessed with innate advantages, something farmers reconginse in plants and animals as a hybrid vigour. This idea is disagreed with those who are named racists and as Prasad discovers, many mixed race people object to being defined by their skin colour.
As we watched the documentary we realised it was based on a scientific approach rather than a social one, which is the opposite of what we intend to do.
There was a few similarities to the product, that we would like to use in our own documentary, such as The Historical background of mixed heritage. We would like to use this in our own production because we want to start at the roots of 'mixed race' and we want to know what society thought about being 'mixed race' in the past and the stigmas that were attached to it. Another similarity would be the personal interviews. We would like to interview many people, as our documentary is based on social feeling so talking to society is a big part of it. Also in 'Is It Better To Be Mixed Race' they use several images of mixed race celebrities, we would also like to use this, to show the variety of mixed race people in society.
The differences between our documentary and ' Is It Better To Be Mixed Race' is that we will have no expert knowledge nor scientific input this is because we are not interested in who is genetically superior, we want to find out people's opinions on how they are accepted in society based on their skin colour.








SuperSize Me







Another inspiration for us was supersize me, for a few reasons. mostly for the layout of the show and some of the techniques they use which we would like to able to use in our documentary.
Differences between supersize me and our own documentary is that we will not use the observational approach neither the reflective for the fact we don't want our documentary to have that fly on the wall style. Another differences is the main the one, which is the topic.
Some similarities i think our documentary may have to supersize me, is stereotypes. Morgan Spurlock uses a lot of stereotyping a lot of people, mainly americans and how they eat a lot of fast food. in our documentary, stereotypes may come up, but not purposly, they may be a stereotyoe of mixed race people and this is what we want to show. Also we may use Visual conventions too, as in, if we are talking about the past and then we show several images to do with that historical information, and it can also be used when we are relating back to a celebrity. As supersize me, we will be using interviews. in our documentary we will be using a narrator unlike, instead of it being a proactive all the time, we will have a presenter but not through out the documentary.

Wednesday, 29 September 2010

Documentary definition.

A documentary must demonstrate the social interaction or movement of a group of people in relation to the reality which they face. however, the ambition to convey a specific message could possibly corrupt the truth of the documentary.

Wednesday, 15 September 2010

Documentary Definition

A piece of media that is edited to show a 'true'* picture of the subject that is shown,which the viewer is left to conclude their own opinions on.

* Because its edited, the media only show what they want the audience to see


Naomi