Research: Documentary/Social Experiments Inspirations

Research: Documentary & Social Experiment Inspiration

In this post, I will be analysing my favourite social experiments that are on YouTube and paint a picture of how I want my documentary to be like with the help of analysing some of the documentary pieces that apply to the style I want. 

Firstly, I would like to produce guidelines that can help me analyse these pieces easily. 

1) Analyse the subject and what issues they are addressing
2) Analyse the camera work and transitions from volunteer to the public
3) Explain what I liked and disliked, and how can I make it better? 
4) What inspired me and how can I apply that technique into my product?

This is a social experiment by OCKTV that produce many prank videos and recently have been producing social experiments. This particular social experiment is based on two different races abusing their child in public and seeking whether the public will speak up and do something. 

The first race is a family of light skin complexion with an angry mother and father physically and vocally abusing their son over his "new lifestyle" becoming more 'hood' and a rebel. As it starts off, immediately people have started to react and help the boy and physically abuse the father. 

On the other hand, the comparison to the dark skin complexion family is the direct opposite of the first family. The second family consists of the same abuse to their child and the public have not helped however only a few reacted. The issue tackles human behaviour and standing up for other's rights. The issue is to portray wrong activities happening everyday, some behind closed doors and in public. The social experiment illustrates the child abuse and not speaking up issues in America. What I disliked in this social experiment is that they used two different locations which to me is very biased. The first family's location was in a big open space in between a park and in front of a large audience sitting on benches or walking past. Whereas the second family's location was more on the quiet streets and lower class people in comparisons to the first location with different sorts of race, cultures and class. In my social experiment, I do not want it to be biased, I want it to be in the same location to get the same or different reactions without manipulating location desires to be sure to get the reaction I expect. 

This is one of my favorite social experiments of all time as it tackles equality. This social experiment is based on the women's movement against sexism and rights to women. However, ever since the women's movement occurred, men have not been treated the way women promoted equality to both genders. Instead, it seems to me that men have traded a woman's position. However, I am against violence towards both genders and I am all about equality. As you can see in the beginning of the experiment, the man is very abusive to his girlfriend and in one second men rush to her rescue as it is wrong to abuse a girl, well because a girl is a girl. Sadly, the second part of this experiment does not get the same treatment once the girl physically abuses her boyfriend in public. Society have started to think that a man being hit by a woman is funny and something to laugh about because they are not aware that more than 40% of domestic violence victims are men. Just because men are portrayed as masculine and rough in the media, so the public shouldn't take it seriously as a woman is weaker than a man. Moving on to the camera work, I have noticed that OCKTV have been using the same camera technique which is hand held. To me, it seems like they used relatively the same location for both gender roles. The only thing I do not like in this social experiment is more on the technical side, the camera work. I will not be using the same technique but in the next social experiment it links more to my issue that I am tackling and the camera work that has inspired me. 


 '10 hours of walking in NYC' is based on women being sexually harassed by men and promoting that women should be left alone. I am using this as one of my inspirations for the camera work and the issue they were 'attempting' to portray. It was so hard for me to watch this as they have labeled every man in this video as a person harassing however I really disagree as most of the comments directed at her were compliments or simply telling her to have a good day and god bless. Although women are entitled to have the freedom of wearing whatever they please, but again this has to be a biased social experiment that angers me. First of all, let me emphasis that women are entitled to wear what they want but the volunteer must realise that she would get these comments from guys as she is wearing skin tight clothes that accentuate her curvy figure that attracts men. Most men have been focusing on her body rather than her face, however a bunch of people have also been focusing on her face and received compliments such as beautiful. Moving onto the camera shots and angles, it seems to me that there is a person walking in front of her, heading the same direction while holding a camera (which seems to me) in a handbag. I will experiment with the camera in a bag, and see if it can capture the image, if it shakes a lot or not and present it to some of my class mates to comment whether it is viewable or not.