Tanya Loi 12C
Practical Production Evaluation-‘Islamophobia’
For my practical production, I worked in a pair to produce a short documentary on ‘Islamophobia’. As the title suggests we explored what Islamophobia is, why there is such an irrational fear towards Islam, and the way Muslims are being misrepresented in our society, such as in the Media. We decided to call our documentary ‘Islamophobia’ as it creates enigma (Barthes) amongst our primary and secondary audience since this is a new term used in society today. This conveys that our documentary is dealing with current affairs, as ‘Islamophobia’ is consistently on the news. This ensures a larger audience, as ‘Islamophobia’ is attempting to ‘put forward an argument’ (Cook, 1985).

Prior to starting our practical production, we decided both group members would share the roles and responsibilities as this would be fairer and it would allow both group members to experience the different components that produce a documentary. This was unrealistic as we decided that Naziya Ali would be starring in the documentary as an everyman persona, to give a personal response like ‘Michael Moore’ in “Bowling For Columbine” (2002) and “Fahrenheit 9/11” (2004). Consequently I ended up doing more of the filming than expected. I contributed substantially to the group as I discussed my ideas, I made sure we were consistently on target, I did a great deal of editing and logging and I made sure that I kept meeting up at Naziyah’s house to edit, as she had the equipment. Additionally it was difficult meeting up with Naziya as she lived quite far, and there were other commitments she had.

Whilst editing we had a serious problem because our laptop crashed, which meant there was a possibility that our work got deleted. Therefore we restarted the editing process at school, as we didn’t save a back up copy of our production. Luckily, the lap top was repaired and our work was still on there, therefore we could continue the editing. But we learnt our lesson as after this incident we persistently saved our work on a removable hard drive.

The opening of ‘Islamophobia’ is made to look realistic as possible by using the ‘Channel 4’ ident. We broadcasted ‘Islamophobia’ on this terrestrial channel as it attracts a multicultural audience and its aim is to entertain and inform the public. During the ident there is a female voiceover, introducing ‘Islamophobia’ which would have traditionally been a Male. This illustrates that ‘Islamophobia’ is moving away from the patriarchal society; this can also be seen by the use of a female voiceover, a female protagonist and a female expert. We used similar conventions to “Fahrenheit 9/11” (2004) where the documentary begins and then the title comes up a short while later. ‘The enigma Code’ (Barthes) has been used in the opening, due to the use of a visual, mathematical like equation which allows for audience interpretation, this conveys ‘Islamophobia’ is challenging ‘The Hypodermic Needle Theory’. The opening equation also illustrates ‘visual juxtapositioning’, which is similar to “Man With A Movie Camera” (1929) which we studied in Module 2. For example ‘George Bush’ is seen as a villain (Props theory) and the woman crying is seen as being innocent, this also illustrates ‘Levi-Strauss’s’ ‘binary oppositions’. These elements can also be seen throughout the documentary to create more meaning. In the opening scene instrumental music by ‘Scott Matthews’ has been used, we have also music by Chris Cornell and Islamic prayers throughout the documentary. This connotes the theme of ‘East meets West’ which attracts a large multi-cultural audience.

We also linked ‘Islamophobia’ to “Man With A Movie Camera” (1929) directed by Dziga Vertov, as when the documentary begins the protagonist is going about her daily routine of reading the Quran and praying. Moreover we have a point of view shot of the Quran, to help the audience identify (The Uses and Gratifications Theory) with her. Furthermore we have parallel music of an Islamic prayer, which connotes that Muslims are not religious fanatics like the Media have portrayed them.

To illustrate the surroundings and to add authenticity of where we were filming, we included establishing pan shots of Greenford and then of Southall that effectively used the diegetic Sound of Asian music which represents the Asian culture and lifestyle that the protagonist lives. The Vox Pops were filmed using a hand-held camera to help convey realism like ‘Cinema Verite’; they were also mediated to show how ignorant the British public were about ‘Islamophobia’. In order to make our argument more believable, we decided to have an Urdu Vox pop to illustrate we are interviewing people from different cultures and backgrounds portraying we’re not biased.

To follow the argument further we decided to do a montage sequence like in “Bowling for Columbine” (2002) to reveal where Islamophobia originated from. To do this we used the expository mode of archive footage. The first scene we see is a news report of September 11th in colour to draw the audience in. The rest of the montage sequence is in Black and White to connote that these events have happened in the past, and so the audience can do something to tackle similar issues in the future. We used Chris Cornell’s song ‘You Know My Name’ that is seen as both parallel music (as the song talks about ‘taking a life’ which relates to the terrorist attacks) and contrapuntal music (as the song talks about people like George Bush and Abu Hamza as the ‘angels falling from the blinding heights’ which is seen as mocking).

We interviewed two experts on ‘Islamophobia’, as they are key characters in establishing facts. However their interviews were heavily mediated, this relates to Grierson, who stated that documentary is ‘The creative treatment of actuality’.

In conclusion Islamophobia does develop the audiences ‘knowledge of at least one situation or character’ (Rabiger) and it challenges the stereotype of Muslims. This can be seen through a range of factors like the ‘Categorical form’ that we’ve used e.g. interviews. We have also included ideological values such as multiculturalism, pro-Muslim values and antiracism. We got to the heart of the matter, in order to keep the interest of our primary target audience of teenagers 16 years onwards. ‘ Islamophobia’ was successful as it used and took into account many of the conventions of a documentary e.g. cinematography e.g. Pans and tilts, sound e.g. diegetic and non-diegetic , the mise-en-scene in Dr. Anshuman Mondal’s interview which makes him look knowledgeable etc. To improve ‘Islamophobia’ I would include a victim whose faced Islamophobic feeling to give a different prospective and I would retake a number of shots such as the interview with Dr Anshuman Mondal as he was slightly cut off the screen.

Word count: 1,113