Evaluation-karandeep

Practical Production Evaluation- House of Bhangra


For my practical production, I worked in a group of four and aimed to produce a cultural documentary called ‘House of Bhangra’. House of Bhangra is a cultural documentary that aims to inform its audience about the Indian music genre ‘Bhangra’. The documentary captures Bhangra from when it was first encountered in the U.K and how it has developed through the years showing the changes the music genre has gone through and how it is progressing now. There is a sense of comparison between the authentic parts of the genre progressing to the present path taken by the music genre. To make the documentary a success we identified that the title had to hold a vital relationship with the documentary if we where to get our target audience to watch this documentary. The chosen title as you are aware was ‘House of Bhangra’ the word House gave the title a more welcoming feel to the documentary as well as giving conations to a documentary based on Bhangra, the word Bhangra was chosen to give the audience a identification of what the documentary will b be based on.

In the planning stages of our practical production, we decided no to assign individual roles and responsibilities as we could share more wider input to the maximum as well as do each task with the input from four people rather that one or two, we where also all very egger to take part in all processing that was to be carried out. We all put in a vast amount of time in our production but it became obvious that our strengths where only used in some occasions as we where not all free to record/edit at the same time. Our strength in producing our documentary was clearly editing since our enthusiasm lied most with this aspect, as we edited our production at home making it easier to gather all group members to edit together more frequently. We where strong as we had covered all necessary documentaries related to ours to bring up a suitable narrative structure to our documentary.

After studying Bowling for columbine in module 2, we gained many profound impacts which where ideal to our documentary. The use of fly on the wall was very helpful as it gave an overall insight to our gigs included in our footage. Similarly using contrapuntal non-diegetic sound in our interviews was very successful because as the dialogue is progressing images of what is being said by the interviewee are shown through cut shots this gave the audience a clearer view of what was being said by the individual as some parts of the documentary may not be understandable by our secondary target audience. We used an original music track made by one of our group members as an intro to the documentary as it created a fast paste feeling to the documentary and the music genre. The use of mise en scene is significant in this montage where parties are shown in various clubs, to show the popularity of the music genre and build a comparison for when you start watching the documentary from the earl ages.

The opening of our documentary is a montage glamorising the idealistic view of the music genre as present today. We anchored all our images with the use of a typical Bhangra paste music beat in the background as we play our opening scene the effect of this is that it would give our secondary audience an idea of what the genre sounds like. Furthermore, we used continuous dissolves during the montage to construct a smooth effect, which in reality was used to enhance the superficial of what was being shown. To contrast the montage effectively the scene slow dissolve from the opening to the old fashioned theme of Bhangra, which begins in Punjab. Here it is obvious that the montage is shown as a comparison between the two different scenes. We thought it would be a smart idea if our documentary followed a chronological order, as it would help the viewers understand our documentary better and help build comparison between the both later in the documentary.

The documentary then goes on to use a range of shots throughout the documentary to convey our intentions and the type of values we are trying to promote. For, example the disequilibrium in our linear narrative is emphasised by cinema verte style footage, which means real footage as we mediated our documentary to show authentic scenes to give the documentary a realistic approach to its audience.

We then chose to use todrovs narrative structure and Rabigar as the two sides of new and old Bhangra is compared in the documentary to show two oppositions throughout the documentary. We also chose to use an interview in our documentary of a familiar face to the Bhangra audience as the interviewee was the part of the first ever Bhangra to ever sing in England. The use of this interview gives the opinion of his views on the new faze of Bhangra and shows a more authentic view of the genre which was used to build comparison between the old and new fazes of Bhangra. The use of the famous artist gave the documentary a more professional affect as well as giving our first target audience the option to familiarising with the singer.

After showing the authentic side of the documentary we then go on to show the more modern and present side of Bhangra to build a comparison to our audience. This part of the documentary begins with a montage of the present Bhangra to show how the genre has progressed and to build friction between both sides of the genre. We also included vox pops as it was necessary for us to show views of the music genre present through the views of someone in that faze this gave the audience an opinion through the eyes of someone else into the music genre.

House of Bhangra will be shown on a typical commercial channel, which can relate to show such documtaries such as Channel 4 as they take interest in such documtaries, which means they may contain our target audience as viewers of such channels.

In conclusion, House of Bhangra shows its purpose of educating and informing its target audience as well as entertaining them through the vast amounts of footage and comparison. The documentary explores the music genre in many ways showing all sides of the argument as well as implementing one by the use of mediation.