Although I am only reasonably satisfied with my documentary, I think it meets the goal quite well. The film successfully illustrates (both visually and verbally) the living conditions for stray animals in six diverse countries and explains how their situations have been influenced by those countries’ religions and cultures. I believe that I mimicked the expository documentary style relatively well (according to filmeducation.org, expository documentary is characterized by visual media alongside narration that explains or complements what the viewer is seeing). The film successfully explores the global context of fairness and development: the overarching theme is the effect that human tradition and development have had on homeless animals, which is one of the many consequences of our common humanity. I hope that it inspired the viewer to take a fresh look at the connections between humans and animals and how we share the world with other living creatures.
The main criticism I have of the film is the narration. Once I began editing, it became clear that I had written it without knowing much about the style of a voiceover; as a result, the narration sounded bland and awkward at times. As I listened to it over and over while editing, I became aware of my writing errors and realized that it could have been improved significantly if I had done more rewrites before recording. I was also limited by the footage I was able to find. In retrospect, I think I would have been much happier with the final product if I had chosen a topic that I could have filmed myself.
In order to best judge how the film met the criteria, I showed the documentary to a few people and got their feedback. In general, the results were positive.
1. The film was seen as having an emotional/inspirational impact on the viewer
Everyone who watched my film agreed that there were many saddening visuals, particularly the shot of the dogs being transported to Vietnam and the photos of emaciated animals. Many people find these clips difficult to look at, because they are so depressing and cruel. I was told that my film had the perfect emotional effect because it made people sad when it was supposed to but stopped short of showing anything actually disturbing, striking a good balance between things that are hard to watch and things that are important to know about. I was actually somewhat surprised at how inspirational people found the film. Specifically, the story about the Buddhist monks and the conclusion, where I identified how we can use what we know about the cultural perspectives on animals to build towards a better future for homeless animals were the most motivational sections. My relatively positive take on such a sad subject helped to make a more uplifting experience for the viewers.
2. The film is longer than 8 minutes but could have been more conciseits presentation of ideas.
The film is approximately 15 minutes, and the general feedback I got was that there was a great deal of information that overlapped between countries and it was repetitive at times. However, as one person pointed out, those similarities between countries are interesting and important to know, as well.
3. It does use a variety of visual communication techniques, including some motion typography, though significantly less than I had expected when writing the A/V script. I did not have time to animate all of the scenes as I had originally imagined. The same goes for personally filmed footage; I only ended up using one shot and one still photo of my own. I was unable to get any interviews, which was unsurprising because no one I know could possibly be an expert on such an obscure topic.
4. The film does give example of how the topic relates to helping stray animals.
In the conclusion, for example, the narrator mentions how we might use the information presented in the previous sections to create a better living environment for homeless animals. However, what I wrote is not easily applicable to most people going about their everyday lives, aside from possibly giving them a new respect for strays. Looking back, I think that I could have made that section much more inspirational to leave the viewer with a desire to help.
5. The film does use standard documentary techniques, with voiceover to complement the visual content
However, I now realize I should have taken the time at the beginning of the year to research how to create a documentary and to watch sample clips in order to get a better picture of the different components of the film and how they fit together.
6. The video does have a visual hook in the introduction that makes it immediately interesting for the viewers.
I decided to use a clip from a video of the Japanese cat island, which was swarming with cats. I placed it about 24 seconds into the film. In my opinion, this was an astonishing shot, and served to catch the viewer’s interest. Based on feedback, I realized I could have made the intro more interesting, both when I was writing the narration and editing. Also, the last sentence of the intro is a hook as well because it serves as a prelude, telling the viewer what they should expect in the rest of the film.
7. The film does use strong visuals to engage the viewer and presents interesting facts both through audio and visuals. Many of the people who watched it told me that the shots/images were really captivating (the dog eating from the monk’s cup), emotionally arresting (e.g. the dogs in the cages being transported to Vietnam), and surprising (cows in indian streets). Also, I did a good job presenting interesting facts through narration, which was the easy part, but also I did present some of the facts visually through motion typography. However, people told me the animals were far more interesting.
8. The film does strike a good balance between religious/cultural info and info about the stray animals. In general, I think I did a good job balancing the information given for each country. I began each section by describing the situation for strays in the given country, then describing the religious/cultural views in relation to animals, and finally discussing how the two are related.
9. The film has not been edited in a way that juxtaposes visuals to better support the message (graphic matching, cutting together two very different visuals together to create an impact, etc.)
When I wrote this criterion, I was thinking about what we had learned in film class about montage theory theory, and in particular about Eisenstein’s desire to collide shots to create something new in the viewer’s mind, and Bazin’s theory that meaning is created in the juxtaposition of visuals, not in the visuals themselves. I wanted my editing process to have just as much of an impact on the message as the narration did, but I do not think that I have managed to accomplished this as I had wished. Originally I was imaging, for example, a cut from a scene of a comfortable house cat to a shot of a sick stray in an attempt to emphasize the terrible living conditions for homeless animals, but I did not find any opportunity to do so (although looking back I think the film would have been stronger if I had included this sort of cut in the intro or conclusion). With the shots I had, I was unable to any graphic matching, but in this case I do not think that this would have added much to the overall message anyway.
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