Informing Ideas

RESEARCH PLAN

For this project, I plan to collect a significant amount of research. Both primary and secondary so that it will help me grasp a broader understanding of what culture means to those other than myself. It may also help me when thinking of ideas.

Because of the content and subject matter of the product we intend to make, I have chosen specific topics to research:

Religion Race Sexuality Hate Crime

Primary Research -

For primary research, my plan is to conduct a survey, most likely an online survey, that asks questions about what culture means to the participants. I plan for it to be fairly short and simple as to ensure the data collected can be displayed easily and can be analysed and reviewed later.

Depending on the outcome of the survey, I may also conduct interviews with those around me and ask them questions similar to those in the survey but instead this time request that they give more in-depth answers so that I receive more diverse data to analyse later.

Secondary Research -

By collecting secondary research, I will hopefully be able to add to and complement the data and knowledge gained through my previous research. This will hopefully extend my understanding of what culture is and means to those around me.

To complete this research, I will make use of plenty of websites, forums, and databases. I will also try to find books related to what I want to know about culture. This will improve my knowledge of cultures all around the world and may also make me recognise and understand my own culture.

Audience Research -

As the product we plan to make is to be aimed toward an audience of ages 13-19, I will be looking at and analysing existing products that have been targeted toward a similar age range. This will hopefully help when it comes to the presentation of the film and will help when choosing which visual style to go with by helping to find which is most suitable to hold the attention of the audience. This will also help us when writing the script as it will give us a better understanding of what type of language to use.

CULTURE RESEARCH

Research collected through www.lumenlearning.com

Many cultures partake in unique traditions, celebrations, and festivals that often originate early in their cultural history.

Some foods and traditional dishes are usually unique to the location from where they derive.

What is Culture?

Culture is the patterns of learned and shared behaviour and beliefs of a particular social, ethnic, or age group. It can also be described as the complex whole of collective human beliefs with a structured stage of civilisation that can be specific to a nation or time period. Humans in turn use culture to adapt and transform the world they live in.

The anthropological study of culture can be organised into two persistent and basic themes: Diversity and Change. An individual's upbringing and environment (or culture) are what makes them diverse from other cultures. It is the differences between all cultures and sub-cultures of the world. People's need to adapt and transform to physical, biological and cultural forces to survive represents the second theme, Change.

Culture generally changes for one of two reasons: selective transmission or to meet changing needs. This means that when a village or culture is met with new challenges, for example, a loss of a food source, they must change the way they live. This could mean almost anything to a culture, including possible forced redistribution of, or relocation from ancestral domains due to external and/or internal forces. And an anthropologist would look at that and study their ways to learn from them.

Culture is:

LEARNED through active teaching and passive habitus.
SHARED meaning that it defines a group and meets common needs.
PATTERNED meaning that there is a recourse of similar ideas.
ADAPTIVE which helps individuals meet needs across variable environments.
SYMBOLIC which means that there are simple and arbitrary signs that represent something else, something more.

There are different ways that culture is defined. One refers to the ability of the human species to absorb and imitate patterned and symbolic ideas that ultimately further their survival. The other refers to a particular learned way of life and set of patterns an individual person has picked up, representing one variation amongst many different cultures.

Art is a huge aspect of culture and has been present and prominent since the age of the earliest humans.

Music is an important part of life and is a way of expressing ourselves. It makes it easy to unite and relate to others regardless of differences.

Elements of Culture include:

- Knowledge & Stories

knowledge and stories are handed down through generations.

- Language

phrases and dialect deriving from, and unique to, the culture of a location.

- Traditions & Rituals

beliefs and values passed down within a society with symbolic meaning with origins in the past

- The Arts

means of expression. music, drama, dance, paintings, sculpture

- Food & Drink

the traditional dishes and cuisine that belong to that culture

- Values

religious beliefs and values synonymous within a culture

What Does Culture Mean to You?

When completing research, I began watching videos that would likely be similar to the product we planned to create. The above video was very useful as it served two purposes by improving my knowledge of culture whilst also influencing how I thought our final product could be made. The video contains numerous culture-based questions being asked to members of the public. The video begins with very uplifting positive music which immediately establishes the tone of the video, letting the audience know it's not going to be a dramatic or overly serious video.

Thus music is accompanied by various shots of smartly-dressed people, all happy and smiling, at some sort of large gathering. This serves as a great introduction and shows the audience whom the video is going to be targeted toward. The questions are shown to the audience by overlaying digital writing over a piece of paper. This is a very creative and simple way of displaying the questions for the audience.

After each question, the video cuts to a montage of everybody's answers to the questions. This works well as the pace of the video is much more fluent this way instead of hearing each person's answer to all questions. Instead, we cut back to them if they have more to say on the subject.

Each of the interview subjects is framed in a medium shot. This suits the style and tone of the video as it isn't intended to be dramatic or serious and instead a light-hearted look into the ways members of the public defines the culture they're a part of. They are also mostly filmed with a shallow depth of field, this blurs the background, ensuring the subject is the main focus in the frame and removing any unneeded, distracting elements from the background.

The ending of the video consists of a humorous collection of certain interviewees laughing and smiling. This is a fitting end to the video as it shows the positive and collective side of culture.

RACE RESEARCH

Research collected through www.britannica.com

What is Race?

Race is the idea that the human species is divided into distinct groups on the basis of inherited physical and behavioural differences. Genetic studies in the late 20th century refuted the existence of biogenetically distinct races, and scholars now argue that "races" are cultural interventions reflecting specific attitudes and beliefs that were imposed on different populations in the wake of western European conquests beginning in the 15ht century.

The modern meaning of the term race with reference to humans began to emerge in the 17th century. Since then, it has had a variety of meanings in the languages of the Western world. What most definitions have in common is an attempt to categorize people primarily by their physical differences. In the United States, for example, the term race generally refers to a group of people who have in common some visible physical traits, such as skin colour, hair texture, facial features, and eye formation. Such distinctive features are associated with large, geographically separated populations, and these continental aggregates are also designated as races, as the “African race,” the “European race,” and the “Asian race.” Many people think of race as reflective of any visible physical (phenotypic) variations among human groups, regardless of the cultural context and even in the absence of fixed racial categories.

The classification of "Three Great Races" according to Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (1885-90)

Many scholars in other disciplines now accept this relatively new scientific understanding of biological diversity in the human species. Moreover, they have long understood that the concept of race as relating solely to phenotypic traits encompasses neither the social reality of race nor the phenomenon of “racism.”

Prompted by advances in other fields, particularly anthropology and history, scholars began to examine race as a social and cultural, rather than biological, phenomenon and have determined that race is a social invention of relatively recent origin. It derives its most salient characteristics from the social consequences of its classificatory use. The idea of “race” began to evolve in the late 17th century, after the beginning of European exploration and colonization, as a folk ideology about human differences associated with the different populations—Europeans, Amerindians, and Africans—brought together in the New World. In the 19th century, after the abolition of slavery, the ideology fully emerged as a new mechanism of social division and stratification.

What is Racism?

Racism, also called racialism, the belief that humans may be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called “races”; that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural and behavioural features; and that some races are innately superior to others. The term is also applied to political, economic, or legal institutions and systems that engage in or perpetuate discrimination on the basis of race or otherwise reinforce racial inequalities in wealth and income, education, health care, civil rights, and other areas. Such institutional, structural, or systemic racism became a particular focus of scholarly investigation in the 1980s with the emergence of critical race theory, an offshoot of the critical legal studies movement. Since the late 20th century the notion of biological race has been recognized as a cultural invention, entirely without scientific basis.

(left)

A sign at a beach in Durban, South Africa, in 1989, during the apartheid era. It restricts the use of the beach to "members of the white race group," in accordance with South Africa's racial segregation laws of the time.

In North America and apartheid-era South Africa, racism dictated that different races (chiefly blacks and whites) should be segregated from one another; that they should have their own distinct communities and develop their own institutions such as churches, schools, and hospitals; and that it was unnatural for members of different races to marry.

Historically, those who openly professed or practised racism held that members of low-status races should be limited to low-status jobs and that members of the dominant race should have exclusive access to political power, economic resources, high-status jobs, and unrestricted civil rights. The lived experience of racism for members of low-status races includes acts of physical violence, daily insults, and frequent acts and verbal expressions of contempt and disrespect, all of which have profound effects on self-esteem and social relationships.

RELIGION RESEARCH

Religion, human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence. It is also commonly regarded as consisting of the way people deal with ultimate concerns about their lives and their fate after death. In many traditions, this relation and these concerns are expressed in terms of one’s relationship with or attitude toward gods or spirits; in more humanistic or naturalistic forms of religion, they are expressed in terms of one’s relationship with or attitudes toward the broader human community or the natural world. In many religions, texts are deemed to have scriptural status, and people are esteemed to be invested with spiritual or moral authority. Believers and worshippers participate in and are often enjoined to perform devotional or contemplative practices such as prayer, meditation, or particular rituals. Worship, moral conduct, right belief, and participation in religious institutions are among the constituent elements of the religious life.

Religion - the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or Gods.

Religions & Beliefs

Agnosticism

- Agnosticism is the view that the truth of metaphysical claims regarding, in particular, the existence of a God or Gods, or even ultimate reality, is unknown and may be impossible to know. One can be an agnostic as well as an atheist or religious believer.

Atheism

- Atheism describes a state of having no theistic beliefs; that is, no beliefs in gods or supernatural beings.

Buddhism

- A way of living based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama. The Five Precepts are the basic rules of living for lay Buddhists - refrain from harming living beings; taking what is not given; sexual misconduct; harmful speech; and drink or drugs which cloud the mind.

Christianity

- Based on the teaching of Jesus Christ. Christian groups differ in their interpretation of his teaching, life, death, and resurrection, but these matters are at the heart of the way of life of all of them.

Islam

- Revealed in its final form by the Prophet Muhammad. The essentials of Muslim practice are summarised in the five pillars of Islam - declaration of faith; ritual prayer; welfare; a month of fasting during Ramadan; and pilgrimage.

Hinduism

- An ancient tradition of related beliefs and practices that developed in the Indian subcontinent. Core ideals and values shared by most Hindus would include respect for elders; reverence for teachers; regard for guests and tolerance of all races and religions.

Judaism

- Based on the Jewish people's covenant relationship with God. Jews believe they are challenged and blessed by God. Love of one's neighbour is the great principle of social life and the founding inspiration of the Jewish community

LGBT RESEARCH

Research collecting through www.wikipedia.com

LGBT or GLBT is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the term is an adaptation of the initialism LGB, which began to replace the term gay in reference to the broader LGBT community beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s. The initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.

It may refer to anyone who is non-heterosexual or non-cisgender, instead of exclusively to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. To recognize this inclusion, a popular variant, LGBTQ, adds the letter Q for those who identify as queer or are questioning their sexual identity. Those who add intersex people to LGBT groups or organizing may use the extended initialism LGBTI. These two initialisms are sometimes combined to form the terms LGBTIQ or LGBT+ to encompass spectrums of sexuality and gender. Other, less common variants also exist, such as LGBTQIA+, with the A standing for "asexual", "aromantic" or "ally". Longer acronyms, with some being over twice as long as LGBT, have prompted criticism for their length, and the implication that the acronym refers to a single community is also controversial.

A Gay Pride parade held in the streets of Warsaw amid fears and threats. (2019)

Gay Pride, also called LGBT Pride or LGBTQ Pride, byname Pride, annual celebration, usually in June in the United States and sometimes at other times in other countries, of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) identity. Gay Pride commemorates the Stonewall riots, which began in the early hours of June 28, 1969, after police raided the Stonewall Inn bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighbourhood. Gay Pride typically involves a series of events and is often capped by a parade involving marchers and colourful floats from the LGBTQ community and its supporters.

HATE CRIME RESEARCH

What are Hate Crimes and Incidents

In most crimes, it is something the victim has in their possession or control that motivates the offender to commit the crime. With hate crime, it is ‘who’ the victim is, or ‘what’ the victim appears to be that motivates the offender to commit the crime.

A hate crime is defined as 'Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.'

A hate incident is any incident which the victim, or anyone else, thinks is based on someone’s prejudice towards them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender.

Types of hate crime

Physical assault

Physical assault of any kind is an offence. Depending on the level of the violence used, a perpetrator may be charged with common assault, actual bodily harm or grievous bodily harm.

Verbal abuse

Verbal abuse, threats or name-calling can be a common and extremely unpleasant experience for minority groups.

Victims of verbal abuse are often unclear whether an offence has been committed or believe there is little they can do. However, there are laws in place to protect them from verbal abuse.

Incitement to hatred

The offence of incitement to hatred occurs when someone acts in a way that is threatening and intended to stir up hatred. That could be in words, pictures, videos, music, and includes information posted on websites.

Hate content may include:

- messages calling for violence against a specific person or group

- web pages that show pictures, videos or descriptions of violence against anyone due to their perceived differences

- chat forums where people ask other people to commit hate crimes against a specific person or group

Statistics

Police Recorded Crime Police recorded crime figures in 2019/20 show that there were 105,090 offences where one or more of the centrally monitored hate crime strands were deemed to be a motivating factor. This represented an 8% increase on figures for 2018/19. Figures from Greater Manchester Police (GMP) were not included in this year's release due to the implementation of new IT systems affecting data supply.

The increase in police recorded hate crime over the years has partly been attributed to better recording methods used and greater awareness in reporting hate crimes.

DOCUMENTARY RESEARCH

As we planned to create a documentary and had a fairly detailed idea of how we wanted to make it, I began watching documentaries in the hopes that it would help with the structuring and ordering of the documentary.

As we obviously didn't have a great deal of time before we would have to begin filming, I decided to watch documentaries that I knew wouldn't be underwhelming as I didn't want to take the risk of wasting time. This is why I chose to watch documentaries made by the legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog as I was mildly familiar with his style and knew that it may be something that I could learn a lot from.

The two documentaries I chose to watch were:

Grizzly Man (2005) Into the Abyss (2011)

Grizzly Man Analysis

This documentary follows the journey of Timothy Treadwell, an environmentalist and bear-enthusiast, who decided to go out and live with grizzly bears in the wild of Alaska. The documentary is pieced together with Treadwell's own footage that he captured whilst living in the wild. Herzog pieces together footage filmed by Treadwell whilst out in the wild and uses it as a way of improving our understanding of nature and its grim realities.

There is a sequence that documents Treadwell and his female partner's death at the hands of a Grizzly bear. A bear that he believed he had finally bridged the gap with.

This sequence begins with a Coroner explaining what it was to like to examine the remains of the two environmentalists. Herzog supposedly asked for a second take and whereas the first had been a simple, dull, medical assessment and explanation, Herzog instead asked the Coroner to speak about how the process made him feel. This completely changes the emotional impact of the scene by humanizing it. The coroner also mentions that an audiotape had been recorded by Treadwell as the attack began and he begins to briefly explain the horrific contents of the tape.

The next scene in the sequence shows Herzog listening to the previously mentioned audiotape. However, we as the audience are unable to hear the contents of the tape as he wears headphones. We are instead forced to create the horror of the tape in our mind based around the details given by the coroner in the previous scene but also the heartbreaking reaction of Herzog as he listens.

The camera switches between Herzog's reaction and Jewel Palovak, Treadwell's friend, as she sits opposite him, trying to control her emotions as the tape plays.

This sequence ends with a video clip, filmed by Timothy Treadwell, showing two enormous Grizzly bears savagely fighting each other. This clip allows the audience to partially comprehend the power, aggression, and savage violence that these animals are capable of and the atrocity that Treadwell and his mistress faced at the hands of them.

What have I learnt?

I believe the thing that watching this documentary has taught me is how to tackle a subject, as sensitive as this, tastefully and with minimalism as not to exploit the tragedy of what occurred. Although our documentary doesn't tackle the subject of a man living in the wild or being ripped to fragments by an enormous beast, it does include a number of subjects and focuses that, if done incorrectly, could end up being offensive or hurtful to certain members of the audience.

Another thing that watching this documentary has taught me is how to order the sequence of scenes so that they underline their emotional impact.

DOCUMENTARY STRUCTURE

To convey information in a documentary, film-makers use the concept of the Three Ts:

Tell them what you are going to tell & show them. (INTRODUCTION) Introduce the program by briefly discuss the material covered in the program.

Tell them the information, facts, story, etc. (COVER) Present the material in a logical fashion and covers all aspects of the documentary.

Tell them what you have just told them. (SUMMARIZE) Reinforce the materials that the viewer has just learned.

TYPES OF DOCUMENTARIES

The Expository Mode

The expository mode is the most familiar of the types of documentaries. They are heavily researched and are sometimes referred to as essay films because they aim to educate and explain things — events, issues, ways of life, worlds and exotic settings we know little about.

The Observational Mode

Observational documentary is probably the most analyzed mode of all the types of documentaries. The form is also referred to as cinema verité, direct cinema or fly-on-the-wall documentary. Observational documentaries strive for cinematic realism. The gritty realism produced by actuality filmmakers of the 1960s and 70s was achieved through technological advances made ten years earlier.

The Participatory Mode

The participatory documentary is when the encounter between filmmaker and subject is recorded and the filmmaker actively engages with the situation they are documenting. The participatory mode aims for immediacy and often presents the filmmaker’s point of view.

The Reflexive Mode

Documentaries made in reflexive mode provoke audiences to question the authenticity of the documentary in general. Reflexive documentaries challenge assumptions and expectations about the form itself.

The Poetic Mode

The aim is to create an impression or a mood rather than argue a point. Filmmakers operating in the poetic mode typically emphasize cinematic values over content to create visual poetry. Shot design, composition and rhythm achieved in editing are hallmarks of the genre. The narrative, if there is one, is expressed visually rather than rhetorically.

The Performative Mode

The performative mode of documentary is the direct opposite of the observational mode. In Observational documentaries, unobtrusive observation of the subject is the director’s aim. A Performative documentary emphasizes the filmmaker’s own involvement with the subject.

DOCUMENTARY TECHNIQUES

Voice-Over

The voice-over in a documentary is a commentary by the filmmaker, spoken while the camera is filming, or added to the soundtrack during the production. Through this the filmmaker can speak directly to the viewer, offering information, explanations and opinions.

Archival footage

Archival, or stock footage, is material obtained from a film library or archive and inserted into a documentary to show historical events or to add detail without the need for additional filming.

Reenactment

Reconstructions are also often used in documentaries. They are artificial scenes of an event which has been reconstructed and acted out on film based on information of the event. Reconstructions generally provide factual information, and give the viewer a sense of realism, as if the event really happened in front of them live.

Direct and Indirect Interviews

The interview is a common documentary technique. It allows people being filmed to speak directly about events, prompted by the questions asked by the filmmaker. An interview may take place on-screen, or off-screen, on a different set. Interviews in a documentary give the viewer a sense of realism, that the documentary maker’s views are mutually shared by another person or source, and thus more valid.

Exposition

In a documentary, the exposition occurs at the beginning and introduces the important themes of the film. It is important because it creates the viewer's first impression and introduces the viewer to the content.

Actuality

Actuality is the term for raw film footage of real-life events (reality), places and people as opposed to fictional films which use actors, scripted stories and artificial sets. Documentaries are not pure actuality films - rather they combine actuality with explanation, commentary, and perhaps even dramatization.

SCRIPTED VS UNSCRIPTED ESSAY

Scripted vs Unscripted Bibliography:

Middleton, R. (2020), TBI Distributor’s Survey 2020 – Part 2: Unscripted:

https://tbivision.com/2020/10/06/tbi-distributors-survey-2020-part-2-unscripted/

Russell, B. (2020), What’s the Difference Between Unscripted and Scripted Television?:

https://www.castingdepot.com/blog/posts/whats-the-difference-between-unscripted-and-scripted-television

CULTURE SURVEY

As a way of further improving my knowledge of culture, I decided to create a survey that asked a number of questions about culture. I also included questions related to the product we intended to make so that we could adapt it to suit the preferences of the audience. As we knew our target audience is 13-19-year-olds, I made sure that only those of that age range were able to complete the survey.

SURVEY RESPONSES

1/6

INFORMING IDEAS