ideas for documentary

  • In order to better understand the current situation of beauty KOLs and related industries in China, I will interview friends of different roles in related industries. They include top influencers, the head of brand pr, as well as kols who are not known or even unable to support themselves in their profession. Trying to disassemble the online influencers industry environment in China from multiple angles. (also as part of the research)
  • I will interview four girls related to the industry, and the total length of the video will be about ten minutes (I hope not more than ten minutes).
  • Also wanted to interview a Chinese male beauty KOL, but is still looking for someone.

synopsis

  • In 2064, because of technology developing and a widening class gap, more and more people are trying to become “perfect human beings” through genetic modification. Genetic modification is expensive, and laws limit its share of the genome in an attempt to preserve humanity. Supported by advanced technologies such as genetic modification, beauty makeup fashion has become a backward industry and a product used by the bottom class who cannot afford the high cost of human body modification.
  • A, a girl living in the city village (I haven’t decided on the name yet), has been obsessed with beauty products, and has become A celebrity in the bottom society due to her lively personality charm, and has a right of speech. On her 16th birthday, she received a mysterious invitation from the developed world to help promote a product — similar to a piece of clothing that could help you get the features or curves you want. They are free of weight and can last for a week or two. The price is not cheap, but it is affordable for the common people. The upper class valued A’s sales skills and expected her to help sell these products with high income and the opportunity to enter the upper class.
  • These products have been A great success in the sales of the common people, so A has a better life. However, these products are only experimental products for the rich people to meet their own “cross-dressing” needs, which have great safety risks such as corrosion. While A is enjoying a new life that she has never experienced before, ordinary people are suffering because of the products she sells.
  • At the end of the story, A discovers the conspiracy of the upper class through clues. She knows that she has never really been respected by them, but she is still obsessed with her new life which seems rich and beautiful, and no longer cares about the cries for help and whines from the place she left.

some ideas about masters project

  • A short fashion film within five minutes
  • Through the understanding of Chinese fashion and cosmetics KOL, the world view is set in the future to complete a mixed reality fashion film integrating the cyberpunk style.
  • Through the analysis of current Chinese network influencers and network environment, I believe that the hegemony of beauty makeup KOL at this stage is likely to be replaced by other new marketing models. Many kols in China also believe that they will not stay for a lifetime. Based on this understanding, I chose the overall pessimistic and dark cyberpunk style, hoping to depict the unknown future trend under the prosperous environment through the presentation of the future.
  • This fashion film is intended to be shown by the ending, and for online influencers today, what they show is not necessarily true or what they really like. They may not show their personality, or they may advertise directly in order to get a high income from the brand without any understanding and trial of the products which need to be promoted. Apart from the top influencers, most of them are like puppets in the hands of capital players, following the capital’s instructions.
  • I am learning camera 4D by myself and want to finish or participate in the production of 3d effects of this film.

Timeline

March 2020 – May 2020 : 

Plan the project and complete the script

June 2020 – July 2020:

Prepare the shooting and build a team

July 2020 – August 2020 :

Complete the project in one or two weeks during the two months

September 2020 – November 2020 :

Finish the post production, network launch and study the promotion effect

Reading notes about stereotypes

in some circumstances we make categorical judgments of people. However, in other circumstances we make more individuating judgments based on the information we have about them.
We make an initial categorization of a person on the basis of the initial information we learn about them. This might well be on an obvious characteristic such as their age, gender or ethnicity. If a person does not interest we will not bother to analyze them further. However, if we are motived to consider the person further, we will then attend to the information about the person.
Our impressions lie on a continuum from automatic initial categorizations to thoughtful piecemeal integration, depending on how much time and attention we allocate to the information and the ease of fitting the person to a particular category.
Often it is only when we meet a person from a different culture that we suddenly become aware that the social conventions of our culture are not universal. We can consider stereotypes as being like social conventions. Stereotypes provide us with ready explanations. When using a stereotype we are making an attribution: we attribute the assumed group characteristics to the person being stereotyped. Stereotypes are essentially internal attributions.
149-164In the formation of social representation two processes are important in order to make the unfamiliar: anchoring and objectification. Anchoring is the process of naming and classifying the unfamiliar in terms of what is known.
Social representations are not explanations at the level of the individual but are essentially social, as they are collectively held by the group, and the social process of social interaction and communication is crucial to their construction.
D’Anderade defines a cultural model as ‘a cognitive schema that is intersubjectively shared by a social group’
Cultural models, whilst being able to account for everyday knowledge within a culture, do not fully deal with the dynamic construction of social knowledge through interaction and communication. Social representations, which explain how everyday knowledge is formed and developed, might be viewed as a way of extending and developing this approach.
Stereotypes are more than just cognitive schemas. Stereotypes are social representations: they are objectified cognitive and affective structures about social groups within society which are extensively shared and which emerge and proliferate within the particular social and political milieu of a given historical moment. Stereotypes do not simply exist in individuals’ heads. They are socially and discursively constructed in the course of everybody’s communication, and, once objectified, assume an independent and sometimes prescriptive reality. It is native to argue that stereotypes are simply a byproduct of the cognitive need to simplify reality. With stereotypes defined as social representations certain order properties emerge. Social representations have a certain rationality. They are not a product of a failure to think ‘properly’ or a distortion. Rather they evolve out of the communication within a social group that objectifies and legitimizes the social knowledge of the group.
The involvement of the mass media in the development and maintenance of social representations. The development of radio, film, television, and the internet has provided new media for communication, both widening the range of sources as well as speeding up the communication process.

critical thinking of the shooting in London

The three scenes in London were mostly shot by myself as a cameraman. This is my first time as a photographer on a video shoot. This is an interesting experiment, but there are some problems that need to be noticed and improved in the future.
First of all, in the process of shooting water and fire, because three cameras were used, the parameters set during shooting were different, so three colors appeared in the final video material. It will cause great trouble for post-editing. If there will be multiple cameras shooting together in the future, I should pay attention to setting camera parameters uniformly.
Second, there are many sundries in the final shooting materials of fire and water, which will affect the effect of the picture.

The material I shot in London this time is totally unusable. Because I am not familiar with the Settings of camera parameters, and the final come out I shot are all blue, and they are overexposed, and the images themselves are not good enough.
There were serious time management problems in the three shooting sessions, which were usually delayed at the beginning and then frantically rushed to catch up with the schedule. In the later shooting sessions, the schedule must be made in advance and strictly implemented.