The communist crisis in Cuba has been going on for years on end, and people are failing to pay attention to how severe the situation has become. Cuba has held a communist regime since 1965, and as time progresses, the lives of citizens degrade more and more. Cubans have been facing the worst food and medicine shortage since the 1990's. Food insecurity, followed by a lack of medication, lead to difficulties in accessing proper healthcare. The ideological priorities the government rulers crave, make them pay an insufficient amount of attention to the healthcare infrastructure and well-being of the citizens of Cuba.
Furthermore, education in Cuba is another challenge citizens face. Although Cuba has been known for its high literacy rated and heavy investment in education, the obtained education doesn't get citizens very far, as they are unable to apply their knowledge to their country. Everything is so strict and controlled, that the lives of citizens don't have much of a future. The things taught by Cubas education systems are also a concern. This is meant in the sense that their curriculum may not be the most diverse, instead based around the government's political beliefs. Now as an outsider looking in, one may ask, "if the conditions are so horrid, why don't they just leave?". Well, they aren't allowed, and haven't been since 20 years after the revolution. Therefore, most citizens have to fight, get lucky, or break the law if they want to have a successful future.
My grandmother is one amongst the few that got lucky by being offered to leave the country through an educational program. Since before I can remember, my grandmother has told me her life story and all the struggles she's been through. As a citizen of a high-income country residing in a costly town, I could not even imagine how my grandmother and her family coped with everything they've endured. Our family still in Cuba and we try to help them survive every year by sending them food, medication, toys, clothes, and more essentials that they do not own. Through my 16 years of living, I've realized the issue is barely spoken or acknowledged. That was the point of the film, to inform the audience of what is going on in Cuba and how important it is to seize the opportunity of migration while it's available. Migrancy can change one's whole life for the better, especially since communist countries are still so common.
Our purpose is to set this out to our targeted audience. Our target audience consists of an older range from the age 28 and older. As for their characteristics, they're humble, intrigued by relevance, they like reading, especially non-fiction stories and of course enjoy documentaries. I would say our targeted audience has an interest in this topic, however, I believe that defeats the documentaries purpose, since we want to expand the knowledge of this issue beyond those who are interested. Many of our product's techniques embody the character of our targeted audience. For instance, to represent the humbleness and calmness our audience has, we used calming music within the film. As for visually, we used warm hues and tones like yellow, calm red, and more, to have a soft impact on the eyes and mind. Moreover, pertaining the relevance and reading stories aspect, this whole doc was representative of an ongoing situation in our world today, migrancy. To make the situation more interesting as opposed to soley informative, we shared the story of a life of an immigrant. This is why the documentary would be appealing to our audience.
The main reason that we decided to go with an older target audience, is due to the pacing and documentary type. Younger ages like teenagers usually watch things that are full of color, humorous, or romantic. They usually turn away from films of seriousness or that contain world concerns. It feels more like a chore rather than an interest. However, older people typically lean toward these kinds of films as they believe knowledge and learning from other people is key. Another thing younger ages tend to be more interested in, is quickly paced media forms, while older audiences like slower paces better. Slower paced media is usually easier to understand and contain more depth than those that are quickly paced.
Additionally, a technique we used to engage our viewers and prevent them from becoming bored is the use of a variety of b-roll. Since the main focus was our subject and her story, it was a bit difficult to generate ideas of b-roll. Our group decided it would be smart to contain b-roll of the setting of my grandmother's home still keeping a serene tone. We included intricate statues and paintings displayed around the home, food, and the more elements/objects within her home. We believe motion is crucial to maintain engagement of our audience, so we also added some clips of my grandmother carrying out every day at home activities. For example, the segment where she washed the dishes or when she was handing my mother coffee.
To further compel viewers, we added another subject/interviewee, the mother of the primary subject/interviewee to the documentary. It is interesting to hear what one's daughter may have to say about this specific situation or how they might've felt about it. Although Diana wasn't present for the amount of time I wished she was, she still was an intelligent attention gripping addition.
All the techniques mentioned were done to intrigue and maintain the attention of our target audience.
Since our documentary was more personal, it did not require a lot of research. The only thing we looked into was how to use the correct techniques to convey what we want to convey in the correct way (edit research was included). This consisted of the title creation, making the subtitles accurate, correctly placing the b-roll rather than just throwing it in, perfecting the lighting/color hues, and finding the well-suited music to layer with the audio and context. Due to the fact that the documentary was of such simplicity, and drew more focus onto our interviewee, we did not challenge any of the conventions that were taught to us. We practiced a consistent, steady editing method that is equivalent to the processes we were taught to achieve specific documentary types.
Overall, I had an amazing time creating this documentary with my teammates, and I'm so glad others finally got to hear the story of my hard-working grandmother.
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