How do your products represent social groups or issues?
How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
How do your products engage with the audience?
How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
The documentary, Cultura, focuses on developing the concept of appreciating Latin American culture within society. This is demonstrated through different Latin cultures and traditions such as dance and music. Cultura remains as a symbol of how unified society is through shared memories, traditions and cultures.
Cultura is a social documentary that embodies Bad Bunny’s Superbowl halftime performance as well as general Latin traditions. Due to this, the majority of my research heavily focused on watching the Superbowl performance. Analyzing it and most importantly critiquing it. My research also consisted of understanding different Latin cultures outside of the most comprehended cultures. This helps me create a stronger foundation for the portfolio project due to heavy research and a critical understanding of the intended themes.
In addition, more research had been concluded prior to starting this project. Documentaries such as Abstract, which addresses multiple different art forms in an episodic format. It heavily appreciates well-known masters of their craft and shares their thought process, production process and snippets of their life story and inspiration. Another documentary that was analyzed is American Promise, which follows the life of 2 young men over the span of 13 years. Immense inspiration was gained when analyzing these pieces. I enjoyed and appreciated certain aspects of both pieces and was educated on each topic diligently. This is something Cultura that strives for, understanding. These documentaries improved the planning and research process significantly by creating the pave way of what a documentary could look like. Watching these documentaries also improved my understanding of proper documentary conventions.
Following, Cultura is a diverse production, signifying its target audience to be broad. Cultura’s demographic is about 16 to 29 years old. Viewers of this production will have the ability to value common themes and symbols. However, it is viewable for younger audiences since the topics being discussed are family friendly and appropriate, which is what Cultura strives to achieve within the overall representation of this production. The target audience of Cultura is extremely important because it signifies one of Cultura’s main themes, to bring people together. This is done by catering to younger and older audiences. This diversity is also shown through the selection of the subjects. The subjects were purposefully chosen to have a diverse age range. The main purpose of this is to show diverse opinions and experiences. For example, one of my subjects, Aida Matos, 72 years old. She experienced the evolution of how Latin music changed over the decades and her experience of this. She expressed deep interest in the evolution of music and enjoys the popularity of Latin genres.
The overall branding of Cultura shows eager enhancement to learn about Latin culture. It's celebrating Latin pride and shows the evolution of Latin American culture today. The overall brand is developed in various ways. Ways in which it could properly demonstrate the final goal of Cultura. The social media component of this project illustrates this flawlessly. The Instagram page for Cultura demonstrates multiple different aspects of this production. Including, behind the scenes footage, sneak peeks and audience engagement. Audience engagement is highly important within Cultura’s brand because it unifies people. For example, Cultura’s Instagram page varies from daily quotes, quizzes and community events. The color palette was also taken into consideration. The brightly themed colors represent the radiance that Latin flags produce. The social component covers the majority of the branding for this piece since it shows the production process.
At the beginning of this project, social media research for documentaries was also done to increase the likelihood of being successful with social media as well as having an overall understanding of what social pages should demonstrate. I checked out pages such as Cartel Land, For the Culture with Amanda Paris and The Social Dilemma. All these pages created a sense of togetherness and remained consistent with the media texts and overall brand. Which was considered during the development of the Cultura social media page.
The brand for Cultura is mostly developed through the social media component. However, the digital component, which was to create a magazine based on the production also signified importance. I decided to take the ‘interview’ approach by creating questions about the production process and responding adequately. I wanted to delve deep into this approach because I think it will reveal a sense of inspiration and interacting with my audience. This approach will engage within my audience because it discloses a personal connection. For instance, 2 questions that were responded to were “How did this documentary improve your production skills?” and “How did this documentary improve your knowledge of Latin American culture?”. These questions were well thought out and really reflected final thoughts about the piece.
To further emphasize, the target audience is clear and defined. It appeals to creating a sense of community and unity. Within the controversy of Bad Bunny Superbowl halftime performance and the socio economic state of the world currently, it felt justified to create a documentary that highlights the globalization of Latin music. For example, subject Lenny Hernandez, often discusses Bad Bunny’s global impact and how he made a positive change to a society. Understanding culture and valuing where people come from as well as sharing traditions and history is incredibly important today. Striving for togetherness is the goal.
Within my production, I wanted to touch on these important issues as it raises popularity and controversy. Each subject addresses common topics intently. I also wanted to incorporate more b-roll footage of Latin dances. However, due to time constraints, I was not able to do so. Despite this, I worked my hardest to accomplish my final goal.
After working tirelessly, it is equally important to take a moment to reflect on the process. This production pushed me to work hard and exceed expectations I had for myself. With that being said, I could’ve spent the time we had for this process to develop my original idea. I did have to confine my vision for many reasons, and I would have liked at least one more subject. While my brand is developed through social media and the digital magazine, there could be improvement within my production as well.
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