For my practical production, I worked in a group of three to produce a short documentary called “It’s a woman’s world”. It’s an informative and educative documentary depicting the life of a 16 year old girl, who is domestically abused by her boyfriend. To overlap with the theme of the documentary, we felt it was vital to name it “It’s a woman’s world”. This title enforces the fact that the target audiences for this documentary are women. With the use of, “woman’s world” and its theme of domestic violence we were able to create a sense of enigma for both our primary audience of women and secondary audience of men.

During the planning stages of our practical production we decided we would share responsibilities and collectively put forward any ideas and suggestions we had for all our strengths and weaknesses to neutralize. However, there were a few limitations to such a decision as it resulted in unequal input from a member of the group, but she soon realized her mistake and put twice as much effort into the production. A main plus point for the group had to be filming the footage and capturing it, which I became a specialist in. Nevertheless due to a vague structure and not much planning, we as a group had to start filming more footage while we were in the stages of editing. Due to this, editing became across to be a stressful challenge but we soon overcame this by researching into previous documentaries produced by GHS students along with documentaries on “you tube”. On the other hand my role in the group remained consistent when producing ideas. Filming, capturing, logging shots, looking after the equipment and editing.

The opening of our documentary is a montage, creating moral panic by the use of horrific images of women that are abused. This is then juxtaposed by images of women posing. These juxtapositions are split with a scratching sound of a CD. This juxtaposition was influenced by “Man with the movie camera” which was studied in module 2. The use of such juxtaposition was to enforce two main ideologies, the hard hitting images of the abused women are anchored by a non-diegetic sound “It’s a mans world” by James Brown. This enforces the patriarchal ideology and contrasts with the images and it being a man’s world as all the images are of women being abused. We used continuous cross-dissolves along with a white fade for the images to go slow and hit the audience. This first track also contrasts with our title of “it’s a woman’s world”. This is then followed by images of independent, smiling women which is anchored by more non diegetic sound by Shania Twain- “I feel like a woman”. This enforces the feminine ideology of how women are independent. With the use of more continuous cross-dissolves, we also speeded up the images for it to be eye catching. The opening to the documentary is structured in order to engage the audience and to enforce our strong views on such a serious issue, which also creates enigma.

The documentary is followed by a moving image of people walking to show a busy lifestyle and how people would portray a normal lifestyle to be all about work. This also includes a voiceover which states facts and a short definition of domestic violence. This is then followed by a longer definition of domestic violence, produced in our vox pops. These have been selected in order to construct the definition and create a sense of practicality. Due to the fact that the people are of all ages, this will be more appealing and will make an impact on the awareness of domestic violence.

We are then introduced to our protagonist, Amrit who is shown to be sitting at the bus stop, living a normal teenage life. We then show her being supercilious all dressed up as she is ready to go to “a over 18’s gig” and is talking while looking in the mirror as well as holding an Alize bottle at the age of 16. The continuity is then portrayed when she runs towards a car by which she will be traveling to the gig in and is continued again by showing the car zooming off.

After studying Bowling for columbine in module 2, we realized in order to create an ironic point we need something outstanding and at the same time to be assertive, we then decided to have a scene in which Amrit rings a helpline, screaming and panicking in order to engage our audience this is also done through have a black screen with subtitles of what is being said. This is also shown in bowling for columbine when real life footage of a shooting is shown. We then decide to add more documentary conventions which also shows the disequilibrium, this is the talking head of Amrit with her crying and telling the audience about her being abused, this is also emphasized by cinema Verite style footage which gives the impression that the footage has not been mediated, therefore creating a sense of authenticity.

To conform to Todorov’s narrative theory we enclosed equilibrium of amrit at the bus stop followed by disequilibrium of when she is beaten and then a resolution of when she goes into the police station to press charges upon her boyfriend. Before her police station scene we try to create a sense of realism and emotion in which we show flash backs in this non –linear narrative structure followed by vows in which a couple promise to be together “in good times and in bad”.

It’s a woman’s world will be shown on a commercial channel such as channel 4 as this channels targets similar audiences and tackle everyday issues, such as domestic violence. We have achieved our aim of creating moral panic and showing the awareness of such incidents. However, we could have shown her boyfriend and his actions in order to create more of a panic and more of a sense of realism.

In conclusion, it’s a woman’s world serves its purpose of informing and educating its audience. Along with successfully enforcing Todorov’s theory of a narrative structure and ending it off with a message of “speak up” after a few facts with the use of more continuous cross-dissolves. Including a help line for all those who are in need of help and to free themselves from domestic violence.

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