Critical Reflection

 The documentary series, "Immigrants in America", is a series in which people from all over the world share their experience with moving to America. The series includes multiple episodes of countries in which people share their stories. 

The five minute extract is from the episode of immigrants from Romania. This is especially special to me because I am from Romania. Coming up with an idea for a documentary I decided to work with something that I am passionate about. Living in Miami I have come across many different cultures, I live in a very diverse area. I have met so many people from different parts of the world and noted that they each have their own stories. Documentaries are about informing and educating, they illustrate a "slice of life." 

 Immigration is a topic that is usually viewed differently, so I decided to create a piece that gave viewers insight on these personal experiences. As an immigrant myself, I tend to feel closer to people who come from a different country, not necessarily my country. This is how I drew my target audience, which are immigrants that came to the United States, ages 7-75, male and female. I want to give viewers the feeling of comfort and relation.

In the extract, the interviewee is discussing the feeling of flying for the first time, first impressions, how America is viewed in his country, obtaining his citizenship. In the interview he also discusses the language barrier and how learning English in a classroom is not the same as needing it in the real-world, this is a part of the extract in which I felt was something many people can relate to; however, I did not use this part of the interview in the extract. I feel that this could have added greatly to the piece, but I could not fit it into the extract due to the flow of it, it felt out of place.

The article was a “director’s” interview, but being the director, editor, producer, writing, etc. I included questions and answers about how the piece came about and how the editing worked. This product engages with the audience because it also has the feeling inclusion, the interviewee is also an immigrant in which the audience can relate to.

To promote the piece, I used Instagram. Instagram has recently gained a great deal of popularity among businesses due to their feature which helps promote and reach a large audience based on their likes. I created a business/promotional page which shares my posts with people who engage with similar posts. Something I felt lacked in my page greatly was a set theme. Instead of having a color scheme I posted images and videos of countries and interviewees from those countries. I was able to obtain short clips of interviewees introducing themselves to share with the viewers other episodes that are going to be included in the series. This brings me to another topic I want to discuss about the social media page. While I included information about other countries, the last couple of posts only focused on the episode of the extract, this is because it is the most footage I had. Not having a color scheme definitely does not attract the audience, however, I feel that it works because the documentary is a non-fictional piece focused on immigration which is usually correlated to more serious and neutral tones.

I chose to follow genre conventions, the five minute extract includes, interviews, b-roll footage, archived footage, and the use of a hand-held camera. While the overall episode would include multiple interviewees, the extract only included one interviewee, this is something that I felt I could’ve done a better job on, I could have included an interview with the interviewee’s wife to describe how she felt. However, I am proud of the way I shot the interview, it felt very professional, the interviewee was placed perfectly and the lighting was great. I also used archived footage, while it was minimal, something that I felt made the piece better was the use of the footage from the first house he lived in. The use of the hand-held camera worked well because the main feeling I wanted to convey with this series was for the audience to relate, and this created a sense of realism, as he is walking into his office.

The brand is developed mainly through the five minute extract. Diversity is the important part of this series. The different episodes focus on immigration from one country. Immigrants feel a relation to other immigrants because they share similarities; struggles and happiness with leaving their home countries. They see themselves as foreigners, however, they work hard and try to become the best they can because they have been given the opportunity to move to the country with limitless possibilities.

Overall, I felt that my products worked well to engage with the audience. My main focus was on making sure the target audience felt relatable. Being able to watch people who come from the same country, hearing their stories, it makes the audience feel like they are watching family. I know that my products could use work, for example, adding more b-roll as well as transitions to the extract could strengthen it greatly, an additional interviewee, such as his wife would have also added to the piece. The social media page could have been structured with a color scheme to attract the audience more. The article seemed to engage with the audience as it relates to the audience.