First blog post by Jay Kadi for Media, Culture & Production course
Hi,
This is my first blog post under the Media, Culture & Production course I am studying at Southampton Solent University where I will be giving an insight into my work, my thoughts, feelings and opinions around it and the media. That is me below, I hope you enjoy my posts.
This module contained an assignment that I had to prepare for carefully, with the overall concern of achieving a successful social media campaign for a client, one out of three charities/organisations. I believe that with my partner Marc we achieved this, despite some complications.
One creative challenge that I faced through this experience is writing a drama full of four characters and then finding actors to play these characters. Another creative challenge I also faced was figuring out the ingredients for a successful social media campaign to market our drama/short piece. I believe that we successfully overcame all of these challenges. In order to prepare for the assignment I had to research how big international brands and even small ones were able to market their products online successfully to wide audiences, this was the most challenging of all tasks. I created a marketable product by learning how to write an interesting storyline and characters for a screenplay. We began by using ideas from “Story” by expert screenwriter Robert McKee and sharing advice from other sources with each other. We also analysed other drama pieces that touched on mental health and applied the most relatable and interesting elements into our own. The most interesting challenge was having to work with actors as a director, this was fun and allowed me to use my group working, leadership and management skills to a wider extent. One obstacle we had to overcome was not having a third member of our group turn up to sessions or offer support but myself and Marc still operated as a team and completed each task with our tutor, client’s and each others guidance.
For our unit we were given an assignment to create a successful social media campaign for Solent Union who needed to gain more attention to their social media account so they required students from the university to create a drama production for them on a single camera with a team . These were the requirements for our module which we were given 3 months to complete. I will be using Gibbs reflective model to articulate the mental transformation I went through during this time period due to the challenges we faced as a group and individually. After this experience I have been able to reflect on how to craft and execute a successful social media campaign, the importance of teamwork, working with actors as a director and being a leader in a group. Professor Gibbs model, made in 1988 is a useful facilitator because I will be able to gather my thoughts, new ideas, strengths, weaknesses and promote my own self improvement (Manktelow et Al). Reflection is important because I am able to link what I have practiced with theory by combining my observations with applied knowledge and thoughts. Jenny Moon argues facilitators of reflection such as Gibbs model are
‘A means of upgrading learning and enable more mature learners to become aware of how they can use reflective techniques to upgrade their previous less organised but valid levels of knowledge and understanding.’ (Moon, 1999).
I have used my time since completing our social media campaign to think further about what went wrong and could have been better but using Gibbs reflective cycle has helped me to concisely articulate what I have learned and how it will benefit me for current and future projects.
Manktelow, J., Swift, C., Jackson, K., Edwards, S., Bishop, L., Mugridge, T., Bell, S., Robinson, R. and Bruce, E. (2019). Gibbs’ Reflective CycleHelping People Learn From Experience. [online] Mindtools.com. Available at: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/reflective-cycle.htm [Accessed 22 Apr. 2019].
Moon, J. (1999). Reflection in learning & professional development. 1st ed. London: RoutledgeFalmer, p.163.
For the producing for social media module we wrote a script, talked to our client about our ideas, confirmed production details but we still had to cast actors. This was not the first time we had to work with actors on this course as directors, previously working with them for our Imagining Reality module in our 2nd year.
During that time period we were taught the essentials to directing and producing. But it was difficult to actually find actors to cast and we ended up directing, producing and acting in our short. This was especially beneficial for our group because I am a trained actor myself.
This time around for this short piece we were blessed with the opportunity to pair up with the third year theatre course actors. Since that time period, I have learned many things about how to execute a successful project as a director, including the fact that 90% of directing is acting (Kroll, 2014). So we especially paid attention to the actors who would fit the roles of our characters during a role play exercise where they were able to show off their talents.
In that session after explaining the synopsis of our short piece, myself and Marc were approached by 12 different actors to be involved in our piece and we were able to cast 4 of them.
Working with the actors was less complicated than I’d imagined because myself and Marc did not work with them as teacher and student but as a team. Veteran casting director Ken Lazer spoke on the importance of working as a team;
Actors and casting directors are team players. Unfortunately, many actors think, Please, call me in to audition. You’re so important to me and my career. Let me put you up on this pedestal. Oh my gosh, please, no! We are equals in this game, my friends. Treat casting directors as if they are your friends. (Lazer, 2018)
In a similar respect, we also treated the actors as our friends, complying with each others schedules and needs to get the job done. This resulted in an almost perfect execution of our film and because of the rapport and respect we built up with each other we were able to ask them to reshoot scenes after feedback from our tutor.
Kroll, N. (2014). 90% Of Directing Is Casting! Here’s Why You Need To Prioritize Your Talent – Noam Kroll. [online] Noam Kroll. Available at: https://noamkroll.com/90-of-directing-is-casting-heres-why-you-need-to-prioritize-your-talent/ [Accessed 2 Apr. 2019].
Mink, C. (2018). 7 Secrets Casting Directors Want Actors to Know. [online] Backstage.com. Available at: https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/7-secrets-casting-directors-want-actors-to-know-65697/ [Accessed 2 Apr. 2019].
In this day and age of the Internet, many businesses and artistic personalities have pulled consumers to their brands through social media campaigns.
For our module we have been asked to do our own campaign for Solent Union about Mental Health. On the 21st January we were visited by three different Southampton-based organisations that were struggling with their presence on social media. My self and Jack decided to team up (with Marc) to appoint Solent Union as our chosen organisation, tackling the issue of Mental Health. To bring awareness of the student unions online presence to students successfully, we had to think hard. Jack wanted to go with another organisation but I convinced him that we should work with the Mental Health organisation, as it is something everybody in that room and beyond those walls could relate to.
In order to bring awareness to Solent Union’s online presence we needed a successful social media campaign. Building “brand awareness, creating a sense of community and uniting people around a common interest or experience to set a trend” are amongst the strategies many successful campaigns use (Maher, 2018). Mackenzie Maher also says that other campaigns can be the conscious motivation for your own too.
With a creative, open-minded marketing team on your side, the opportunities for brand social success are endless, and even if you’re just running a one-man show, all it takes is a little inspiration to get the creative juices flowing. (Maher, 2018).
To take what you have seen and apply it in your own style where necessary is strategic. With this information and the encouragement of my tutor we decided to look at other brand campaigns, one that stood out for me and inspired me was Wealth Simple’s Investing for Humans campaign. I read about their campaign on a ShortStack Article titled “A Social Media Marketing Strategy to Follow: 5 Successful Examples”. Here is the information I gathered from this.
•Wealth Simple – a “Fintech” and “robo-advisor” company decided to approach their target audience (29 year olds) with language that they know, since most people probably don’t know what those two terms even mean. ••Their aim was to reach their demographic with a “simple communication style that communicates trustworthiness”- using social media (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter) a platform they knew they could reach their demographic on.
•Wealth simple’s overall campaign aim as a financial firm was to sell their company as the firm for people to go to, to help them invest their money with. In order to lay this message across their target audience they had to think of a strategy that audiences could relate to.
The company interviewed “real people” about money problems. Instead of having industry professionals give their knowledge on investing. They used people that their target demographic could relate with speaking about problems they could relate to. By using their logo at the end of each video, they marketed themselves as the solution. •One of the videos got 1,851,028 YouTube views. On Instagram, their videos got almost 5,000 views in 5 months.
The key ingredients for success that I discovered from this campaign was:
•Use language the target audience can understand. •
You don’t have to sell a product or service, sell an idea tied to the product or service. •
Be creative- try a social media campaign that defies the norms of your industry. • •
YouTube is not the only place you can post videos. You can post on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. (Saurel, 2018)
Maher, M. (2018). How To Make a Successful Social Media Campaign: Real Life Examples. [online] Power Digital. Available at: https://powerdigitalmarketing.com/blog/how-to-make-a-successful-social-media-campaign/ [Accessed 1 Apr. 2018].
Saurel, S. (2018). A Social Media Marketing Strategy to Follow: 5 Successful Examples – ShortStack. [online] ShortStack. Available at: https://www.shortstack.com/blog/social-media-marketing-strategy-you-should-follow-5-successful-examples/ [Accessed 1 Apr. 2019].
From the beginning of the Imagining Reality project I noticed that my team were able to be honest with each other and about each other, this allowed for our process to run smoothly as we helped each other learn what works best and what doesn’t. In terms of personal criticism I was told consistently by Caroline and Carolina that I needed to improve how often I come in to lectures and for meetings. But this was something I knew already and began to felt like was being taken the piss out of, so I became quite irritated, but I took the feedback constructively each time. As Rich Harrington advises “If someone on your team has a concern, make sure that they know the door is open and that you want to hear it’. (Lynda, 2017). This critics advice was especially relevant to me as I’d been appointed the role of director.
I felt like it was more important that I’d be taken seriously through my actions than arguing with words. I understand that different people have different ways of giving constructive criticism, especially Caroline’s which can come across as rude but I allowed it to motivate me to behave as a professional. Despite this, I could have been more persistent with telling them that I didn’t like consistently being dictated during pre-production meetings (or atleast that is how I felt). This is something that I will make sure I do more next time as it doesn’t help to suffer in silence and I’m sure they didn’t mean to make me feel uncomfortable.
I directed this short film with a positive attitude, motivated by director Wim Wenders who said, “Final cut is overrated. Only fools keep insisting on always having the final word. The wise swallow their pride in order to get to the best possible cut.” (Nastasi, 2014). Motivated by this mantra, I believe that the best directors are the least arrogant, most confident and the nicest (somebody who uses their ears as much as their mouth). As a professional it’s almost imperative to collaborate. Thus, despite having a clear vision of what I wanted our short film to look like especially since I created the concept and wrote the first draft, I was extremely open to my crew mates suggestions and asked them constantly if they were happy with my decisions from pre-production to post-production. For example, when I wanted Marc to shoot Blake’s bedroom scene without filming the messages from Sarah pop up on his phone I listened to his suggestion that he should film the phone. So we shot that scene in two styles and ended up using his version after feedback from Roy, our tutor, if I hadn’t allowed him to take initiative I can’t imagine how our next meeting would have went, but I did so it went very well. Marc served his purpose as did I.
Jim Sisson a principal of Vantage associates, said “Without purpose and goals you cannot build a team. The purpose must be worthwhile and create a sense of doing something important together.” (Sisson, this is an essential mantra that I also carried through with me during the production process. If I didn’t allow Marc, Carolina and Caroline to feel involved, then I’d have felt uncertain about the direction of the project because I wouldn’t have felt sure that my team was enjoying the process. If the latter was the case then the quality of the short film wouldn’t have been as rich as I required because less effort may have been put into it if they didn’t believe in it. These are the minor decisions that cement the differences between a group and a team, I was focused on making our group a team and felt comfortable because I felt the others were too. I will continue to work in this way whether I am a director or an editor, because every player has a part to play towards success within a team.
In order to work towards success I had to be honest with myself. “When we understand more about ourselves, know our own triggers, and develop our emotional intelligence, we are more able to manage every situation we enter” (Cottrell, 2018). To ensure that I was the best captain in the team to direct this project I was able to help myself using a self evaluation sheet for my skills provided by our tutors. The sheet asked us to rate our skills and capabilities on a scale of 1 to 6, in that order. At the bottom of the self evaluation sheet, we were asked which 3 skills we felt the need to improve the most. I chose being punctual, planning how to do a job and working accurately, in that order. These were all skills that I realised that I’d failed to achieve to a higher standard and that I knew made a large difference to the quality of my work.
I also took a Lynda course titled “Project Management for creative projects” (Lynda 2017) to help improve these qualities for me. I felt that a lot of my failures were due to these skills. I know that when I’m on time to my meetings or lectures I am able to take in and convey more information. I am then able to plan my next steps after because I have taken in and given all the necessary information that I need to make a successful project. Therefore I am finally able to work towards this accurately because I am well organised and have given myself room to prepare for sudden change. Although I haven’t made a full turn-around, in terms of my punctuality, I have improved on my organisation and how accurately I work, I have learned though from Marc that working fast is the most effective way to work. As well as being punctual, not being slow at working is my next feat to accomplish.
Lynda (2017). Project Management for creative projects. Available at: https://www.lynda.com/Video-tutorials/Welcome/506926/587158-4.html [Accessed 19 Feb. 2018].
Nastasi, A. (2014). 100 Famous Directors’ Rules of Filmmaking. [online] Flavorwire. Available at: http://flavorwire.com/465913/100-famous-directors-rules-of-filmmaking/view-all [Accessed 25 Apr. 2018].
Cottrell, S. (2010). Skills for success. 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p.74.
My overall goal for this course is to achieve a 1st or a 2:1 through my efforts beginning this semester. To achieve so I aim to create a professional short film with my team unlike the amateur attempt at a documentary that I filmed and produced in the last semester. I received the grade D1 and was disappointed in it but I received feedback.
I was told that my strengths were that I had good audio dialogue editing, we managed to get some interesting material and my editing was mostly as expected. But the reason my grade was so low was because the grading on the video wasincorrect, making it harder to see the person being interviewed. Also, the image editing was at times imprecise, audio mixing was not done properly. I included an “ear splitting” piece of music as part of an interval in the documentary and I failed to make a coherent film – it felt like three split parts. To resist having the same fate as I have previously I will do things differently this year. I have chosen to discipline myself, use my time constructively towards my goals (not leaving things to the last minute) and I will research more; read blogs, articles, online videos, academic resources.
I received the previous grades because I wasn’t putting enough time into practicing things essential for success in the course and my focus towards it was poor and weak in comparison to how it should have been and will be. In more explicit details I need to learn more techniques, how to use equipment, get signed off on lights so I DON’T have to rely so much on grading. For this assignment I will devise a good story so the finishedpiece looks connected and not split, devise a good story and practice more with the camera. For the overall success of the course I will purchase my own camera and dedicate time to learning how to use them professionally and edit professionally.
Ideation is the term used for when people create ideas through different processes such as brainstorming in a group, sketching, writing a mind-map and more. The aim of Ideation is ‘to generate a large quantity of ideas that a team can then filter and cut down into the best, most practical or most innovative ones’ (The Interaction Design Foundation, 2017), this is to inspire even more new and better results.
Our group used the process of Ideation to help us create the concept of our documentary (what we were gonna film, who we would interview, what footage would be used and where this could be found). We planned to hold meetings every Thursday for the duration of the Spitfire Project. In the 1st week we banded together and communicated all the different concepts we had for our documentary, including it being centred on; The Spitfire Pub located on Above Bar Street and the connection that the name of the pub has with the Spitfire Aircraft. A documentary on the newspaper archives that focused on the Spitfire Aircraft using the photos and stories to create a narrative (this idea was a bit unclear). A comparison between the conditions Southampton suffered from during the Blitz and today, showing how far the city has progressed aiming to find out and show how much the Spitfire has involvement in this. The last idea was to create a documentary on the Uni’s in Southampton, showing off the multicultural society that the city holds specifically in the centre of it, again with the same aim of showing the state of progress the city has been in after the Blitz.
Our ideas were noted down by Katherine (image below) and each came from practicing Ideation in our own time (I brainstormed) and eventually led us to piece together our final idea of what to film for each of us to leave or take for our individual edits. Out of all the options discussed we agreed on interviewing students and passer by’s in Southampton on their knowledge of the Spitfire Aircraft and then filming Mr Tony Martin (Spitfire Archive historian), interviewing him and using his and others archive material to form a narrative of generations that have been inspired by the aircraft, inside of Southampton. We were able to pitch (image below) this idea to our class, tutors and the client with positive feedback, encouraging us to move forward and turn the idea into a project. Ideation helped us to focus on our clients, needs and what we can offer to them by “stepping beyond obvious solutions, therefore increasing the innovation potential” (The Interaction Design Foundation, 2017) of our solution, which I believe we did since our project was unique as we hadn’t heard another group pitch the same idea. It also helped us create our interview questions for Tony Martin (image below).
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The Interaction Design Foundation. (2017). What is Ideation – and How to Prepare for Ideation Sessions. [online] Available at: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-ideation-and-how-to-prepare-for-ideation-sessions [Accessed 12 Nov. 2017].
Books, Films and TV Dramas are all forms of media that have been used to share stories of the past, present and future. They provide emotional narratives that connect the world as humans, teaching audiences right from wrong, how to grow and the unwritten rules of life. But the documentary genre is the sharpest media form in the world in gathering stories, information and images and sharing them constructively to an audience to create a narrative of truth from a filmmakers perspective.
To make these documentaries a visual success many filmmakers use the 6 modes of documentaries that Bill Nichols (shown in the image above) introduced to the world in his book “Introduction to documentary”. The modes include ‘poetic, expository, participatory, observational, reflexive and performative’ and they are regarded as sub-genres of documentary.
Poetic mode; Filmmakers use this to arrange their film in a particular order through “tone, rythm, or spacial juxtaposition” (Trilogy, 2017). This story structure is different to the typical linear continuity. Observational documentaries allow filmmakers to focus on their subjects un-interrupted to show their truth. Participatory Documentaries “invite the subjects to participate with the filmmaker” (Trilogy, 2017) and subjects are usually interviewed. Reflexive documentaries are essential in showcasing the relationship between the filmmaker and the audience by showing the process of their storytelling (the behind the scenes of documentary making). Performative documentaries rely on gripping audiences through emotional and deep communication, through artistic forms such as poetry, as opposed to conceptual communication. The 6 modes provide a template that filmmakers often use to work with in many documentaries over time. David Attenborough adopted the expository mode for “Wildlife on One”, the BBC programme he narrated over from 1977-2005 (Attenborough, Harris & Jones, 2005). Expository documentaries help to provide “a specific argument or point of view” for the audience.
There are two other modes of documentary; animation and dramatization, that are not mentioned in Nichols’ list of modes but are definitely effective. Animation is effective because it can bring stories to a visual aspect for the audience and producers can be as creative as they want to be (Docuseek2.com, 2017). If one was to speak of a dream where they were talking to a flamingo with a tracksuit on and nike trainers they could draw this and bring the image to life so viewers don’t have to use their imagination. Dramatization documentaries are equally effective because they also bring stories to life by having actors perform the narratives, like in the BBC series Crimewatch (Docuseek2.com, 2017). Out of all modes I would say that Nichols documentary are the most popular but not the most creative.
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References
Attenborough, D., Harris, S. and Jones, D. (2017). Wildlife on One (TV Series 1977–2005). [online] IMDb. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0334878/ [Accessed 26 Oct. 2017].
Docuseek2.com. (2017). Documentary genres. [online] Available at: http://docuseek2.com/wp/documentary-genres/ [Accessed 26 Oct. 2017].
Trilogy, G. (2017). Nichols’ 6 Modes of Documentary Might Expand Your Storytelling Strategies. [online] No Film School. Available at: http://nofilmschool.com/2015/09/nichols-6-modes-documentary-can-help-expand-your-storytelling [Accessed 26 Oct. 2017].
Jkadi Gallery 