Creative Critical Reflections: A level

Reflection 1: “How do your products represent social groups or issues?”

This was a particularly important part of my project as the interaction between the humans and bears of the region is at the core of the questions the documentary explores. When i asked for feedback from my family my grandfather told me that it was vary important for me to show that this problem is not something necessarily new and that the people of romania have always coexisted with bears to varying degrees. I also believed it to be important to now show an extreme version of either interpretation of bears that people usually have (i.e. Monster or Teddy Bear). I wanted them to be understood as majestic but also extremely intelligent, adaptable and dangerous animals. The humans needed to be similarly nuanced, when someone hears of a conflict between animals and humans they usually think of poaching which is not the case here. And thus i needed to put more emphasis on the humans seeming indifference and complacency about deforestation and even the bear attacks that ensue as a direct result of that. I also wanted to place emphasis on the inaction of the government in particular when dealing with this issue and their almost childlike pretending that killing ever greater number of bears will help with the problem instead of possibly making the remaining ones even more aggressive.

Reflection 2: "How do the elements of your production come together to create a sense of 'branding'?"

The Google dictionary offers many definitions for branding, but in my case, I believe this fits the question best: “the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design”. I have aimed to create a unified sense of branding for my short documentary project, which represents the messaging through its themes.                       First, I tried to create every single minor task with the purpose of assisting me with my major task in a way. That way, everything I did is interconnected by the main topic of Romanian wildlife conservation. I tried to implement some of the references and knowledge I obtained in last year’s task, since I created a magazine that also focuses on local wildlife conservation. This time, my focus was bears, since their existence and conservation are a very popular topic of debate in the country. I also wanted to highlight local rescues who are doing their best on keeping bears safe while also trying to give them free space and not keep them in captivity.                      I aimed to follow the structure of a documentary’s production process, so I learned about the main steps from researching online and asking family and friends who work in the film industry. I learned about pre-production and used my minor tasks to aid me in the production process of the documentary; together they can constitute as the pre-production phase of my work. Hence my work stays interconnected, tied together by the main topic of Romanian Bear Conservation, represented by the common elements of the presence of local landscapes in the background of my film, images taken from local places that feature bears in any way and interviews with local animal conservationists. I also used my time wisely and I filmed all my background footage while travelling to record interviews.                   For my main audience I focused on targeting other people living in Romania and neighbouring countries. I believe that by including familiar landscapes that Romanian people can recognise help with spreading the message of conserving the beauty of this land for future generations. I implemented the images and footage in my social media campaign to promote my film. I used the main platforms of Facebook and Instagram because that is what most of my target audience uses (people between ages 17-99). In addition, I decided to use YouTube to upload my video footage to, because the website makes it easy for me to see the engagement on the film, and in addition YouTube links can also be implemented into Facebook and Instagram posts in a simple way. Overall, I believe my branding is concise with my filming material and represents my topic in an accurate way.

Reflection 3: "How do your products engage with the audience?"

                  Before I could effectively reach and engage with my target audience, I had to figure out who the people are, who represent segments of my target audience. To define my audience, I needed to think like my customers. Firstly, I defined who are the people or companies that need or want my products/services? I concluded that environmentally conscious local businesses and citizens from Romania would be sensitive about the message I want to spread through my work, because their motivation is both material and sentimental, due to the dual aspect of living in the presence of bears. These animals can be at the same time a menace and a blessing for the locals. They can attract tourists from all over the world, but they also can destroy your livelihood. I also hoped, that making a film in the English language it would attract a larger audience interested in wildlife and conservation.

After identifying my target audience, I decided upon the social network where my ideal customers hang out. To engage them more effectively and get better at meeting their wants and needs I also spent some time there myself. I set up a personal account, under the name of  Chereches Alexandru Daniel (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566887311301) and I did some research. Then I linked a special meta social Facebook account to the personal one, to advertise my documentary. (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566806045767)

              The average citizen/business usually have a Facebook account, though young people find this platform boring, so I linked my Facebook account to Instagram for the young ones who spend their time on this platform.

I didn’t need a specific audience segmentation, and I  didn’t link many specific elements of my documentary (contents, bands, representation, language, design (fonts / graphics) to specific uses and gratifications because I consider that my  general audience has no such thing. After deciding to advertise my work on Facebook I defined my audience as the average environmentally conscious citizen from the age of 17/18 to 99.

              After defining my target audience my branding was an easy thing to figure out, because I live in a town in Romania, surrounded by large amount of forest where bears also live. So, I chose for my brand “Urban Bear” because I cannot set aside my urban perspective when I do my work, but I’m also a huge fan of the bears which live almost among us in my town. (My town’s citizens have a sound signal on their phone when the bears enter the perimeter, so they can avoid meeting with the wildlife.)

                 I used various marketing techniques to establish a relation with the targeted audience. Setting a premiere date, streaming, reals, polls, engagement marketing, and user-generated content, I hope that I can better engage my audience and put the focus on my brand. This is an excellent way to boost my brand's recognition and strengthen customer relationships. Being aware that the tone and style I use to communicate with my audience becomes my brand’s voice, I tried to be objective and polite, engaging with the audience to emphasize the professionalism of my work.

         I consider that my voice should be authentic and consistent across all my channels, therefore  I used existing hashtags from social media platforms such as #focusonbears #whostheboss #focusonwhatmatters or #NatureDocumentary #premiere #teaser. Apart from the product being read/watched, I chose to interacting with my audience via social media polls, voting and I created the opportunity for the readers to submit photos from their experience with bears and share ideas of how to deal with the situation in the benefit of both men and animal. I kept everything free of charge because this is a media studies exam project, but I also will keep my promise (I’ll give away free logo T shirts) to those who engage with my posts and vote for the Q and A I set up for them. I also linked my posts to existing Facebook accounts and websites of the organizations and businesses I worked with in shooting my documentary, and I set up #specialthanks hashtags for the people who engaged with my in my work.

             I hope my social media presence through the Urban Bear account will enhance the interest of the targeted audience towards my documentary about the bears situation in Romania.

Reflection 4: “How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?”

When i first started the research for the documentary i didn’t have a complete vision in mind as to what i wanted it to look like fully. I obviously had a rough outline about its topic, achievability, the amount of work required but i did not have a concrete picture of what it was going to look like. And so i started watching documentaries, both on streaming services and youtube (some of them are listed and can be seen in my research and planning category). This part of the research never truly ended as i continued consuming media and synthetizing this information as i went about the other steps in the planning & development process, however my vision was much clearer now as to both the documentaries aesthetics as well as its function. I wanted my short film to be informative but not boring and i wanted it to be concise but not surface level. Like you'd expect the final product was something in between these expectation. I originally wished to show more statistics with the footage i filmed being nearly ten times the length of the finished short film and so needless to say a lot of my original ideas got cut due to the constraints of both my writing ability and the standards set forth by Cambridge. An idea that i got from a documentary by Sir David Attenborough is the importance of the music and scenery, previously i always believed that the raw information and substance of the documentary were by far the most important aspects but after my research i discovered that the aesthetics given to it in post production as well as the cinematography will stick with the viewer far more than any statistic or micro factoid ever could. Another thing that really inspired me are youtube documentaries and video esses. There influence can also be felt in my work with the shorter clips stitched together with transitions rather then the longer more lingering shots and professional camerawork of an official documentary Something i came across on my research was just how misunderstood bears as a species actually even were. As an example we either associate them with ravenous monsters or huggable teddy bears with neither interpretation being complete or wholly respectful of this fascinating animal. When in reality bears are both dangerous when provoked and intelligent enough to not pick fights with humans randomly. And so i realised that the root of the problem was this misunderstanding of how bears operated in the country, which was the convention i wanted to challenge first and foremost.