Digital Component: Social Media

 

    One component of the documentary package is the creation of a social media page, being a major marketing and connective tool to develop an audience for the docu-series. While Sofia and I plan on continuing to explore a larger variety of social media pages, below is the start of our social media research regarding documentaries, with one being a student sample and the other from an Emmy-nominated series we have researched in class. Before that, however, here are notes that I took in class that were given regarding specifics for the social media account, as there are certain focus points to remember:

Student Sample

    The first day that my teacher introduced a student sample to the class, I was able to see this student sample, one of an acquaintance of mine from last school year. She also did a documentary (First Place), and although our topics differ, with hers being about the competitive nature of high school students no matter what field/ niche group they belong to (ex: a poet, engineer, mathematician...), the specific style of her posts and the characterized subject portrayal in the Instagram postings caught my eye since that day in class, with more exploration of the Instagram page making me greatly appreciate creative choices such the development of a "video-game" like theme that acts as a metaphor, comparing real-life competition and online, more "exaggerated" competition. This representation of high-school competition as entrapping, cyclical, and addictive (I'm aware these adjectives sound quite dramatic...) through the choice of metaphor create space for more imagination with editing and animation, with the documentary incorporating elements of a video game such as "player #'s" to reference the main subjects of each episode or a loading bar.  

    Although this is only a past student sample, seeing the potential of what our social media could potentially become, with our account having the opportunity to embrace different parts of our brand and ultimately give our audience a clear and also enticing perspective of our documentary is exciting, reminded through Samy Duarte's key art and creative artistic choices.

Abstract: The Art of Design

    Earlier this school year when learning about different documentary types in class and was awakened to the world of documentaries, ranging from watching Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop to NYT Op-docs like A New Wave (blog post on my research is linked here), I watched two episodes of Netflix's Abstract: The Art of Design, learning about different forms of art that I don't usually get to as much, such as costume-design for movies, being Ruth Carter's episode (an Academy-award winning costume designer). With my own documentary also being episodic, centering each episode around a specific community of people, with specific subjects being focused on (for the most part), I thought back to this docu-series as it personalizes and builds up each episode in a flawlessly natural and entertaining way, perhaps taking inspiration towards our own documentary series.

    Regarding the social media page (abstractdesign), it is extremely cohesive and complementary to the series style, while also giving insight and a sense of consumer-creator connection. Here are specific observations from exploring the Instagram page of the docu-series, as that is the platform Sofia and I will be making our own account on:

• Makes purpose of docu-series clear (ex: "the way design surrounds us, inspires us, and informs our daily lives") 
  
• Captions reveal information about design process of main subjects of eps. (ex: "What's your go-to album to listen to while working?" - Connects to Oscar-award winning designer Ruth Carter episode: shows she plays a playlist to inspire actors...)
• Captions ask questions to audience/ intrigue^
• Captions often include quotes of subjects/ just do posts of interview questions with quote response!!! (ALOT)
• Captions reveal what eps are about by revealing what the "abstract team" (third-person) will do in specific episode.
• "Abstract Lessons"- Lesson learned through different episodes (ex: "Design is play")
• BTS Post (Family of subject)
• Key art/ intriguing visuals (ex: collage)
• Promo event info (ex: San Francisco Design Week's virtual Festival)
• #'s in caption (ex: #abstractseason2)
• Towards the beginning of their social media posting they didn't reveal any subjects, just quotes about creative process, imagination, art, etc... (Made striking visual)

the very beginning of the social media page

Conclusions

    Those are the main things we noticed, with each account (one being a hypothetical docu-series account and the other a real one) offering ideas as to different ways we could possibly go with our own docu-series Instagram account. After analyzing the Abstract Instagram account, it feels like Samy was also inspired by Abstract, making sense as the setup of her episodes, with each following a specific subject and their niche, aligning partially with the setup of Abstract. This shows that although you might be inspired by a reference, you should implicate the parts of it that you need for your vision, and that in the end it'll become new and original to you.

    The choices we are now inspired to implicate for our own social media postings including the usage of quotes, BTS posts, striking visuals, and the drive to build a consumer-creator relationship, especially considering Sofia and I are pretty involved in setting the tone for our piece throughout the series. Overall, I want the Instagram page to offer more/ a different side of the docu-series episodes, making it a hub to find out more and feel connected to the creators (Sofia and I) and purpose of the piece. Because the purpose of our docu-series stems around connection, I think that we need to focus on making our social media page a place for connection from audience to creator, while still maintaining some sense of "professional boundaries".