CRITICAL REFLECTION (ESSAY)
I had a very rough start deciding what to do for my advanced portfolio. I started with the ‘short film package' and then transformed to the ‘documentary package’ in the middle of the year. Despite the sudden change and zero knowledge of creating a documentary, I believe that it was all worth it because it really brought back my creativity that I did not have for the first month or two. I learned how to plan and prepare for a new way of making films. I had to build upon my past experiences of making films and apply them to a new genre of film. I was certainly out of my comfort zone, but to become a better filmmaker one must step outside zones of comfort and embrace new directions. It was a very hectic journey, but at the end of the day, I was able to persevere through all the mishaps that have come my way and was able to produce a satisfying outcome.
In my documentary, I chose to represent my country. More specifically, the Filipino migrant workers who have come abroad to seek better payment and put their knowledge and skills to good use outside of the Philippines.
As a Filipino, I thought it was a great idea to bring up this issue about the K–10 education system and the effects it had on migrant workers today. The reason for this is because I know a lot of adults, not just teachers, but from different sectors of the economy, who were denied or put in a lower position due to the lack of two years they had during high school.
Because this is a very broad topic, I came to the conclusion to narrow it down to just a ‘teachers’ perspective. Being a student at a school in Qatar I had the opportunity to interact with members of the Filipino community, thus making it easier to film and produce. Therefore, during my free time or media lessons, I was able to film and get the views of the women I interviewed.
I decided to do all three: observational by filming one of the teachers working and helping the kids; participatory by inviting them over to ask them questions; and reflexive documentary by putting texts and a rhetorical question at the end of the documentary. I think it really challenges an ordinary documentary because I believe that having just one genre is not enough to portray the message I want to give out.
In the process of editing my video, I experimented a lot with footage from YouTube. I looked up “old clips of Filipino schools,” and I was able to find a lot of useful clips to add at the beginning and end of the video. I really wanted to go the extra mile to represent the Philippines by showing people how teachers teach in the Philippines and how great they are at what they do.
I struggled with the social media task at first, not knowing what to do until I did thorough research and realized that I had experience promoting events in the past. I wanted my brand to be a modern and trendy media. I wanted to express a message for teenagers to be informed of the K-10 system and the effects of migration on both the host and receiving countries. Migration is a topical subject around the world at the moment and people are being forced to move from their home country to other countries due to wars, environmental issues and government instability.
I kept the main theme colour green because of aesthetics. I made sure to post frequently as well, reposting my posts with a countdown or a story with a link to announce that the documentary is out. I kept engaging with my followers to keep reminding them about the documentary and the magazine article. Posting a lot will lead to an increase in algorithm, which will lead to them coming across the posts a lot often and sticking to their heads.
I made sure to keep my logo straightforward (as all logos should be) so that it was clean, clear and easy to read. I also wanted the eye to be the principles of my brand ‘WhoisNicole’. I therefore thought putting the name around an eye would be a perfect idea. The eye complements the tagline, enhancing the brand by “Amplifying untold stories through a visual lens”.
I wanted to highlight some of the lesser known stories of migration around the world. Ukraine, UK, France and Palestine are all areas that made the headlines everyday, I wanted to highlight the Philippines. In addition to that, the simple logo I created will be easy for people to identify as ‘WhoisNicole’. This is why brands such as Nike and Adidas are easily identified due to their simple logos. Repetition in branding is very important, and so I used a signature watermark of the logo to promote ‘WhoisNicole' at the side of every post again. This will show consistency and for the consumer and overtime will be recognizable.
My target audience ranges from sixteen to late twenties, out of all the social media like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc. I chose Instagram. The reason for this is because the application Instagram has users of exactly all the ages I am targeting. The next step is how to keep up the engagement with these ages at once. I first made sure that all my posts and the documentary were very well put out, utilizing Canva with its amazing features as my main tool to edit all my posts.
The aesthetics will lure young people, especially teens, to click on the post whenever they come across it through their feed. The next thing is to have interesting topics and titles to discuss, such as the documentary I made, “Ten Years Behind." Older people still care about their looks, but they are more interested in the information they might get from the post or video If I were to collaborate with an influencer, I would choose a socialite that has an interesting and unique story to offer while at the same time being very trending in social media, such as ‘Jojo Siwa', a famous child star who is recently going viral for her questionable tactic on her rebrand as an adult.
With her increasingly high spotlight now, choosing her will be an amazing way to capture the serious aspects of her life. To increase my mass audience in the range of sixteen to late twenties is important, and I think collaborating with an influence is important in todays social media trends. Another factor is making videos and story templates like ‘bingo’ or ‘this or that’ to also increase interactivity with my supporters.
My journey to developing my documentary all started off by researching different types of documentaries through YouTube. I stumbled on a documentary that was talking about people living in poverty due to the Philippines' absence of a free education system. This ultimately inspired me to create a documentary relating to the Philippines’s education system leading me to my whole idea about voicing the struggles of the overseas Filipino educators striving for a teaching position abroad.
Therefore, I chose to work with three teachers whom I know, two from near where I live and one that is based two hours away. I had to leave the house at twelve in the afternoon, giving me enough time to set things up whilst doing the interview to film in her house just before sunset.
Luckily, the whole process of that day went very easily. Despite the two other teachers being from the exact same school, it was a lot harder compared to Mrs. Mary Joy. This was a big challenge because I insisted on filming the interview in school; therefore, I had to ask permission from different heads of staff as well as find a free schedule that both of us have together.
My overall media blog journey was a roller coaster, from creative issues with my initial plan with the ‘short film package’ to going down a documentary route. From this I learned how to create a documentary style film, something I have not undertaken before. I also learned how to create a documentary magazine article being able to input additional points that I was not able to do on the actual video documentary.
Through social media, I was able to come up with many ways to advertise the documentary as well as engaging my followers and keeping them connected. Although, to be honest, I think that I could have done more exploration in terms of my ideas through my social media. If I had the opportunity, I could have returned home to get some dallies of schools and classrooms scenes in the Philippines.
I still am proud of stepping outside of my comfort zone and making a documentary style film and whilst there were setbacks I persevered and feel I have made a good film about an important topic.
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