Social

action documentaries are a subgenre of informative documentary that spotlights an

issue to raise awareness. My social action was to give insight into people with disabilities
achieving a career path, with isnt known to be difficult. Unfortunately, big companies do
not like to employ people with disabilities since they have no experience. Scullers caf in
Marlow employs young adults with learning disabilities and gives them a career path to
have a better life in the future.

There is an important reason for following this social action, as it ensures that the issue that
people with disabilities can have is clearly explained and shown throughout the
documentary. If we are clearly able to identify problems that are now becoming a global
issue, it could allow people to see the problems that are facing the community and entice
them to visit the Caf, as they will know they are supporting a local charity, which helps
people with disabilities.

During my social action group, I worked in a
group of three, where we were all given
individual roles to try to produce a successful
social action video together. Together we able
to give each person individual roles, from
narrator, cameraperson and director. The
equally spaced roles allowed us to work
together to meet the criteria of the brief
given, by making sure, filming ran smoothly
and we were all up-to-date with what we needed to do. I believe that together we worked
successfully, as we all worked together on each role rather than individually and we always
helped each other if needed. This helped us to produce a successful social action video to a
similar professional standard. My role was to narrate and interview subjects, also filming B-
roll around the caf and Marlow.


Analysing the results of the social action, I
asked multiple questions to access the
audience that is viewing my documentary and
how they felt after watching. The first section
is establishing the audience. From these
results, I can see that most, if not all, of the
people watching the social action are
students/ young adults. This may be due to
the audience watching content on YouTube
as a platform. A way of getting a broader
audience for my social action would probably
be using multiple platforms to gain exposure.
Using platforms such as Facebook could gain
some exposure from 30-40 year olds. Doing
this could improve the reaction to the social
action and help make a noticeable change to
the issue. I also have a 3/1 ratio of males to
females that have watched the social action, this could be improved with more exposure
but I wouldnt know for certain.

Going into the effectiveness of the social
action, I asked if the documentary fully
represented the issue fully and seeing how
well the point was put across. All responses
gathered say that I have achieved putting the
point across to the audience and effectively
representing the issue. One person that
answered said yes it does, it makes the
viewer knowledgeable about the topic., this
makes me more confident that people are
understanding the issue and how to improve
it. Other responses stated: Yes, I think it does.
It does put the points across well through
interviews and voice overs and yes, shows
the issue in Marlow clearly and how people
are working it to reduce it, also seeing this
makes me confident that the style of social action has worked to covey information over to
the audience, but also makes me confident that people know how Marlow is helping the
issue and ways that viewers could help the issue.

A thing that I also wanted to find out is how
interested the viewer would be looking at a
lengthy social action video, making sure that
all attention is on the documentary and to
stop people getting board. Using interesting
cinematography and content, I tried to
maintain the interest in the audience and it
seems like it has worked. All responses have
showed that this has worked quite well! One
response stated, the cinematography works
well as it is interesting and looks good., this
confirms my intentions and hopefully
improves the effectiveness of the
documentary. yes, the use of voice over,
interviews and the view of Marlow kept the
visual interesting so people can be engaging to
it, this statement helps solidify the interviews, showing that they hold information and add
value to the social action.

The next question I asked was if the social
action was appropriate for all ages, this was
met with a 100% yes answer! Although the
people answering these questions were of a
younger demographic, I am confident, from
the way the questions were answered, that
they have the ability to asses if the social
action is appropriate. Now knowing that my
social action is suitable, I am confident that I
can distribute this to make a difference and try
and help the issue. Since I am aiming this
social action to all ages, I am

From the other questions, I can see that the
interviews gave information and worth to the
social action. Now I asked if they were conducted
properly and how I could improve them. Yeah
they look professional; this gives me a good sense
that I conducted the interviews properly and to a
good high standard. Some criticisms and how I
could improve are: yes, add in more b-roll, this is
a good constructive criticism that would improve
the social action if I did it again, in addition to can
have a better lighting to show the staff clearly?.

Would you say that the social action could
give a positive impact to the issue? This was
a resounding yes and is very helpful to the
issue. Knowing this, the issue could be
helped and could have the positive impact
that is the objective of the social action. In
conjunction, this result has made me
confident that the charity would like the
social action. Having a positive impact on the
issue could show this issue to an audience
wider than the local proximity of Marlow and
that would exceed any expectations when
planning the social action

The next question was: Would you say
the colouring of the social action maintains
interest in the viewer?. I asked this
question because I needed to make sure
that anyone viewing the social action
would maintain interest and hopefully
watch the full documentary. Yes, its
pleasing to look at and yes, people need
to find out more about it (the issue);
These show that this has worked with the
audience and helps the issue by giving
more exposure with all the facts. With
majority of people watching the full social
action video, I can confidently say that
there could be an effect to help the issue
chosen.

The final question I asked was if the
information in the social action supported
the issue? This question is the most
important because this would decide if the
social action would be a real representation
of the issue and if I could strongly say that
the video was authentic. Thankfully the
answer to this was yes, everyone who
answered the survey thought that the
information supported the social action.

In conclusion, the social action has had an
amazing reception from audiences, but to be
sure I would make sure that I have a wider range of ages answering the survey, but from the
responses I would probably get the same sort of results.

When planning this social action my group looked at similar social action videos, we found
two social actions based around the issue around working with disabilities, these videos
could raise awareness to the subject and maintained interest throughout. The videos we
looked at were, The Disability Action Centre and Development Disabilities. Both videos
showed a narrative, this was
quite hard for us since we
didnt have a large time
frame like the people
capturing their social action.
They gave facts and figures,
giving knowledge to the
audience about the issue.
Both videos showed multiple
examples of found footage and used many different camera angles to show a greater
perspective about the issue, broadening the view for the audience. Their social actions were
set up in a similar way to our social actions, having multiple interviews, narration and
footage of the subject. But with this there were also some differences, the main difference
was the length of the social actions. My social action was around 11 mins but theres were
around 5 mins. I purposely made mine over 10 mins to give a true insight into the subject at
hand.

Overall I think my social action was very successful with the reaction from the audience
solidifying that. I believe that I did manage to produce a social action video that addressed
the issue and would help raise awareness on this subject. However, I think there are a few
technical problems with my social action that I could have improved on, like the interview
set up and the use of facts, which would allow the issue to come across more easily for the
audience.