When Me and Bia's were creating the op-doc "Violet Storm", we aimed to introduce an up and coming all girls band, how their lives are affected from being in a band, and how they can balance being in a band with school.
Research for this doc was fairly straightforward. We watched some documentaries in class which inspired us with topics and techniques, like Exit Through the Gift Shop, which had an interesting narrative of building up to Mr. Brainwash's exhibition. This inspired us to make the narrative end with Visions of Venus performing at the Carolina Ale House. The inspiration for the idea came from the op-doc "Almost Famous: The Other Fab Four", which also showcased an all girl band. We chose to do our doc on Visions of Venus because they were a newly created band that was starting to become popular in our school. They were also prevalent on social media like Instagram, so we figured that VoV could post our documentary as promotional material for their upcoming concerts and single, similar to what The Beatles did with their episodic documentary "The Beatles: Get Back", and how it promoted their "Let It Be: Special Edition" album. With genre, we chose to make it like a rockumentary, because it best shows VoV in action. There were some genre conventions we didn't embrace, like voiceover and direct interviews. We felt like those techniques would put less focus on VoV, by having us seem like we are controlling the narrative too much, which went against the purpose of the doc of showcasing them. However, we embraced certain conventions like montage, non diagetic sound (like background music), and b roll. Montages allowed VoV's performances to be more energetic and to show their variety on stage. Background music was used to match the tone of performances and subjects during interviews, and b roll was used to stop direct interview shots from being stale and show VoV in action. There was a technique prevalent in music videos, where inserts were edited on the beat of the music. Considering that our doc was about a band, we wanted to use this for montages throughout the doc.
Our target audience are people high school aged 15-18, leaning more towards female, but still having a significant amount of male and nonbinary viewers. They also are interested in rock music. They were engaged by including aspects of school, which fits with our target audience being high school aged. We engaged our audience by showcasing a band made up of just girls, which engaged the female part of our target audience. The rock fans part of our target audience were definably engaged by showcasing a band. They could have been engaged more if more b roll of VoV's performances were shown during interviews, or if other local bands were showcased. The younger audience likes music that isn't just from the past 5 years, but the past 50 and even 60 years. We engaged them by making the background music be hard rock songs from 1965-1975. However, we didn't cover our bases by including more modern rock songs, so they were not fully engaged. We included shots of Ari and her friends just being themselves and hanging out. This use of "candid" shots are popular among Gen Z. They are also notable for being constantly online, so by distributing the documentary on Visions of Venus's social media page, it engages them.
Our documentary does represent social groups and issues. It has to, because our subjects are just minorities, all being women. The doc clearly represents young women, and more specifically those who are interested in rock, which is a male dominated industry. The doc has indirect interviews so they can better show their experiences without any influence to their answers. The op doc "Almost Famous: The Other Fab Four", which focuses on an all female band, used a technique where interviews had no cuts, even when the subject paused for a long time. We decided to use the same technique to accurately show their actions. We were mostly successful with representing a social group, but it could have been improved by having staged b roll of the actions that were explained during indirect interviews. But representation wasn't the main focus of the doc, we just wanted to showcase an up and coming band, and we didn't focus on their gender. Social issues are represented by the subjects in their indirect interviews. We asked them questions about topics on like "Has being part of a high school band increased your social circle and affected your social life?" and "Some of you are seniors, have college applications added more stress onto your plate and conflicted with VOV? If so, how do you handle that?", which allowed them to discuss their issues with school, and how it comes with conflict to their band. This would publicize the issues that high schoolers have with balancing school and their free time / extracurriculars.
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