Practical Production Evaluation- ‘Islamophobia’ Naziya


For my practical production, myself and Tanya produced a controversial documentary called ‘Islamophobia’. I feel it is a very educating and informing documentary which depicts a life of a young Asian British Muslim aged 17 that lives her life in Britain with two racial identities embedded within herself, British Muslim. We both felt that the perfect name for this documentary should be called ‘Islamophobia’; the reason why we have named it controversial is due to the negative portrayal of Muslims within the media. The title fits well with both our primary and secondary audience and shows how Muslims are demonised in today’ society through differential mediums of media such as film, T.V, and so on.

Furthermore we decide to work as a team, and thus collaborate with each other. We thought this would be the best idea, as we both will have an equal chance in seeing each other’s strength and weaknesses, and we would counteract with each other. During the filming procedure, I had the camera, which therefore provided me the chance to explore, and be creative with the camera; I had also improvised some of the shots as I went along, it was useful to me, as I gave Tanya the feedback, some shots were 360 shots and tilt shot.

One of our main strength was the filming, the reason for being this is because we had used many techniques during our vox pop, such as close up shots, and we had also used the tripod very steadily and we were very creative with it. close ups were effective as it gave an insight into the public thought and a clearer facial expression. However the editing process was really stressful for us both, as we were editing at my house, it would be really hard for Tanya to come to my house due to renovation , and at many point Tanya would not co-operate with me. In addition to this, we struggled a little with our narrative in the beginning, eventually we got there at the end. My contribution to the production was equal to Tanya, as it remained the same and I was on track at all times.

Our documentary begins with a catchy montage sequence that shows the well influential people in the world, for example George Bush, Saddam Hussein, Tony Blair and so on. We anchored the montage sequence with continuous additive dissolve in order to make it look dramatic and eye catching to the target audience. Nevertheless, to make the montage sequence look effective we added in Scott Mathewes dream song, which was contrapuntal, and later the music faded in, and had dissolved in to dramatic and emotional pictures, such as twin towers collapsing, July 7th and Muslim women crying. The women in the end was placed there to show the effects upon the dominant males had on the passive and oppressed females, she is the end product of their needs.

In our production, we used many shots, in order to make our documentary as creative as possible, and also to convey messages across to the audience. And example being the shot of the mosque, is a tilt shot, coming down from the sky, the ideology behind this is that it shows the audience that god is above us, also it is seen as a high angle shot which conveys that god is superior and it makes the audience look up. Also we used ‘cinema verite’ footage in order to make out documentary look authentic and realistic as possible. While filming the public and asking them how they would define ‘Islamophobia’, we had asked a range of ethnicity and different ages. The whole point of this was to make sure that we are not being biased and making our documentary appealing to everyone. While filming or vox pop, we got a range of people from different locations such as Southall, Greenford and Uxbridge, and one vox pop was done in Urdu, in order to appeal to people. When it came to editing I had added in the sub-titles, as Tanya does not speak Urdu. Again the ideology behind this show that we are getting various views, and that today we are living in a multi cultural society, especially in London.

In Module 2, we studied ‘Bowling for Columbine’, which was a great benefit for both of us, as we had based our narrative similar to Michael Moore. The way Moore was seen in his documentary, we had done the same where I was seen in the documentary as the main protagonist, living my life in Britain. Again we should realism here, as I was seen in the documentary throughout, and my views were getting seen to, which again shows us being authentic and give a sense of realism, towards the audience. We also used non-diegetic and parallel music in our documentary, for example I was the narrator of the documentary, therefore audience, could identify with me, as well as adhering to Michael Moore’s documentary. Adding on to this, we went for the similar idea to Michael Moore using the sound track ‘What a wonderful world’ to conclude his documentary, we used the music Boluevard of Broken dreams, ‘ I walk the lonely roads’ to conclude the documentary and I’m walking off. This can be seen as ironic, as when that song is playing, you can see a lot of public near me, and therefore this shows that you may have a lot of people near you, yet be alone and have no friends. Hence, Islam could be a metaphor for this, despite being a growing religion in Britain, we are isolated and demonised.

In order to make our documentary realistic, and having Michael Moore’s style of narrative in mind, during the vox pop, I was seen in many of the shots, similar to Moore was depicted in ‘Bowling for Columbine’, the aim of this was so that we do not make our documentary looking biased, and that my views are getting cross to the audience.

During the montage, we added in an archive image of the twin towers collapsing, and a shot of the CNN news, and the shot was quiet shaky. Over here we can say that it shows realism and we are following Moore’s style. During the montage we added in Chris Cornell’s music If you take a life do you know what you would give’? We believe that this music assimilated well, as in the montage all what is being seen is the past drastic incidents that have taken place.

Islamophobia, will be shown on channel 4. The reason for showing it on channel 4 is because, it informs, educates and entertains the audience, and Islamophobia will hopefully do this, and challenge people’s stereotype.