MEDIA STUDIES A2 LEVEL
by fabyan damsyiq azhar
Media Studies A2 level
by fabyan damsyiq azhar
COMPONENT 3
final product
This is where I will be displaying my final products. Click the link to watch the documentary: https://youtu.be/its48rojxJ8
This is the article and the double-page spread
A NIGHT OUT WITH NORACON
I was curious to know about what it is like to be a garbageman especially in Brunei and this is the only company that let us film. NORACON SDN BHD. Catch them in action in BURUH TERSELINDUNG. While almost non-verbal, it takes a deep dive into the lesser documented territories of Brunei to present a different perspective for the sake of preservation.
As it is known, people working in these areas lack representation in local media. The plan was to spend a day with them to look at how they go about their day. They have different shifts on each day. We went at night which started at 9PM to 5AM.
Before all that, we contacted the secretary of the company and she hooked us up with the supervisor of the yard Arun who has been working for the company for half a decade. On the day, we first got an interview with Arun on the basics of the company as there isn’t much information that can be found on the internet.
As it turns out, Noracon is a company that has many areas of expertise concerning of mostly sanitation but they also do construction. Frequently collaborating with local authorities, they have projects under JASTRE, JKR, MOH as well as army camps. One of the truck yards is located in Bebatik which is the one I went. The workers there seem relaxed but hardworking mostly doing simple welding and truck repairs. The yard is connected to the workers’ quarters which is where they hang around when not working.
It’s noticed that around the compound the workers don’t talk a lot to each other. Although most of them are Indian, they don’t speak each others’ dialect so they speak Malay to each other. Just simple conversations and some goofing around. They do get along with each other despite that difficult barrier in communication.
The supervisor can be seen very hands-on and participative. Later on, he said that he was very happy doing this kind of work. His people was very good very okay he said. Moreover, it seems like this job was more of a calling to him as he said “this is our given opportunity”. It’s not just him that feels this way but also his fellow colleagues one of them added that working here, you also get more respect. The only thing that they know is the thing that they do for the company and it is what makes them happy.
However ugly the job may look, you never know what they think of it. We were assigned a truck to follow by the supervisor that does collection around a small commercial area in Sengkurong. The place is not really all that new with a lot of restaurants, furniture shops, supermarkets, a department store and such.
To me, the atmosphere was tense. It was repetitive, grueling work that will go on until the sun rises. For them, it was just another day. Faces were unfazed and words were barely exchanged just directional words. They barely spoke any Malay so it was difficult for me to ask questions. I just couldn’t get in their head. Their culture and the way they think is so far beyond me. To me, it doesn’t look like that they enjoy it. Maybe they define joy to be something different to ours. This just serves me as a reminder that a lot of things in life are subjective and others may find beauty in what others don’t.
This is the social media page link: https://instagram.com/loremipsumfilums?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
CCR
How do your products represent social groups or issues?
One of the primary themes in my documentary is representation. I find that media in Brunei is always focused in the prettier parts of the country. It always has to do with something patriotic. The Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque has been photographed to death already. Maybe try something else.
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In my documentary, I planned to represent the garbagemen of Brunei. Since they are always overlooked by everyone in general. When the trucks pass by, people close their noses and run away. People refer to them as derogatory terms. My documentary might not be able to solve that problem but it does help put the spotlight on them a bit more. Due to me not catching any useable interview footage, I find that it watered down the theme of representation by a great deal and that is the main flaw of the documentary. It was simply a result of not having any money to give them compensation for their time, lack of official permits to gain access to some of the facilities that I wanted to visit and ultimately, waiting time for approvals and language barriers. If my house-style was taken away, at its core, it’s just another documentary that just observes subjects from afar not really humanizing them.
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However, one thing it does do well though is the representation of surroundings. The none commercial areas. Especially the tracking shot of the roadside view. That is the shot that I’m most proud of. That encapsulates the whole documentary. My country the way I see it. I find that part of the country to be more beautiful than the towns and since that road is on the way to schools, a lot of people can probably relate to that like “isn’t that the road to my school?” There is a more detailed explanation of the beauty of that view in my Product Development.
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Another thing that my documentary represents is labour and that is one of its themes. The shots and effects emphasize that feeling of repetitiveness. The closeup shots create the intimacy from heightened detail. Observing one thing and one thing only, one by one. I tried representing labour the best as I could. I tried to put my mind in these people’s shoes and got my own interpretation which is of a person who hates their job but they would probably think different and they do when I interviewed them, they keep saying their job is easy and stress free. However, that juxtaposition of negative and oppressing images with positive mindset probably makes it more interesting. If interviews were to be included this would be executed better because of how positive the words of the workers are. Both visual and audio are presenting different truths.
How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
During most of the process, it actually never occurred to me that I had to establish a sense of branding. It is because my mindset is towards creating the product first and swept aside those kinds of aspects for later. I just wanted to make something good. I tried my best.
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However, that doesn’t mean that my production does not have a sense of branding at all. It occurred to me when I was in a call with my friends asking each other about our progress on our Component 3. My friend Haris asked me if his work can be compared to another local artist doing mixed media and that if it looks the same or not. I said no and he went on about other things and emphasized the fact that we all have our own style including me. I was pleasantly surprised that he finds that I have my own style when I think that it looks the same as others.
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As it is known, to have a brand is to have an identity to your product. When it can be separated from everything else, it becomes easily recognizable. From that, it can be well-known. The ‘branding’ sense I established was a result of my tendencies to put abstract scenes in my films. It can be seen throughout my projects I have done when taking Media Studies so far.
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In addition, the double-page I made for the documentary followed the house-style of my Component 1 project. So, I put the masthead of the magazine [LEMONHEAD?!] in the article. Since, the magazine is a people/culture/life magazine, the meaning for the name was a question which was what do you need for life? Oxygen! For Lemonhead, it was what does life give you? Lemons. It's a play on the popular statement. The ''head'' was added to the lemon because lemonheads are what the magazine refers to the people featured in the magazine. That was a conscious decision that I made to establish a sense of branding as well as the film company name [loremipsum films] which I came up with during Component 1 Preliminary Exercise. The meaning behind the name is that loremipsum is a placeholder text you get in Adobe apps. When using the text tool and click on the canvas it immediately puts down loremipsum. I utilized a lot of that throughout my two years of using Adobe apps and I grew to like it. I always pondered why does that combination of letters look so good and there must be mathematical calculations on why that is and since I lack creativity in coming up with names I just used loremipsum. Since it is not copyrighted, I just use that for my media studies.
How do your products engage with the audience?
As for audience, my target audience is everyone. Literally everyone needs to know about these people. They need to be paid attention to and my documentary can give audiences that time to reflect. It’s intimate filming style can give audiences that experience. Audiences watch and gain a new perspective without being there directly. A hypodermic needle model.
My documentary engages with audiences non-verbally. Actions might not be enough since garbagemen does only collecting throughout the night. I provide an aid by utilizing editing and motivated shots to create meaning, convey thoughts and create comparisons to the viewer. By utilizing jump-cuts with a variety of shots and can make for an interesting view. Conveys a lot of things in a short period of time. By utilizing long takes, I force the audience by giving them a clear signal to pay attention to this thing I am showing. The final cut of this film prioritizes showing rather than telling.
How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
Research inspires me a lot. It informs me of what has been done and what is not. One of my researches I conducted was about the genres of documentary. I was surprised to know how many of them there were. It helped me gain a new perspective of the medium in general. Opened my mind to vast spaces. It is quite difficult to pinpoint the conventions of documentaries there are so many types and so many nuances to each of them that they seem to really have no boundaries. Like some things that these filmmakers do, I thought weren’t allowed or not counted as films. Normal exposition or observatory videos on Youtube or Tiktok can actually be considered as documentaries. Since these videos are so saturated, it became its own thing. If videos like that were to get proper screening or released in the 1940s, it would definitely get that treatment in my opinion. Series of stock footages could be considered as one too!
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In this day and age, the most popular form of documentary is the exposition kind and that became the norm. Documentary at its purest is observation. So, it must be the main convention of documentary. It’s ironic that when a documentary only follows that one convention, it looks like it’s breaking everything all together only leaving one making it look very different from the typical exposition documentary. I never knew they could be made like this. Examples of these are Samsara, Baraka and Sans Soleil.
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That documentary I put in my research about the Cannibal Warlords was my previous understanding of documentary and it got shattered by further research but I didn’t put it in because I am not intellectual enough to say much about it.