We Are Not Who You Think We Are

Mood: Productive

Hi again! First of all, let us start with a visual representation of my mind while I try to think of ideas:

Now, let's get into the details of that jumbled up mess. Kass and I had a very productive day in class where we were finally on the same track about the direction of our doc. We went through a ton of ideas before we came to our current one about We Are Not Who You Think We Are (our doc title ooooh) - still trying to figure out if it's too long hmmm, TBD!

Here's the rundown for our doc:
Since it's airing on television and Kass and I want to incorporate several subjects into our reconstruction of "the Gen Z teen," we've decided to serialize it. In doing this, we can have short episodes that focus on a single subject, while the entire series will represent different subjects and different teens being powerful in a multitude of ways.

Because we are doing a serial doc, we started to think about how we could maintain cohesion throughout the episodes and still represent this one collective group of Gen Z (kind of the purpose of this whole thing sooooo.... pretty important). We decided that we would keep the same introduction for each episode. With the documentary series Planet Earth, every episode contains different content, but the nature theme as well as introduction remain constant throughout each piece. Planet Earth's American intro introduces facts about the number of filming locations, the days it took to shoot, and the years it took to make, as well as includes scenes from various episodes (see it here); Kass and I also would like to make ours a way to introduce the purpose of our piece. We are still working out the details, but the goal would be for several subjects to recite words typically associated with my generation: lazy, unaware, dependent, overly-sensitive, uncaring, etc (the subjects saying different words to show that these stereotypes affect everyone, not just a single individual - this is where we'd like the individualism of our subjects to shine through). They would say "They call us *insert words*, but they're wrong."

Then, we would move to what Gen Zers really are: “We are innovators. We are caring. We are special. We are valuable. We are respectable. We are intelligent. We are involved. We are the future. We are Generation Z, and we are not who you think we are.” All of these statements will be vocalized by all of the subjects to create that feeling of collectiveness among the generation. The last statement will prompt the title to appear, along with "Episode #: Subject Name" that will come shortly after.

Originally, we had wanted to use a single narrator throughout the series for cohesion, but we feel as if each individual subject should narrate his/her own story to make it seem more personal and, therefore, more powerful.

In Progress:
We are still trying to figure out who we want to use as the subject of our doc because that decision can make or break the doc. Also, we want to experiment with some shots to see what kind of style we are going for. I really like the idea of having the subject isolated from the other content of the doc - as in, we would film our subject in an empty area, him/her being the sole focus of the shot and just switching between the subject and other footage.

Overall, Kass and I are excited to find a subject for the doc and to work with this type of experimental form of filming and editing. I will update soon about some other aspects of the project that I've been thinking about.

See ya soon,
Chey :)