Friday, Week 6 - Lesson 20

The Rise of Narcissism 

A short documentary created by Catalyst that focuses on the effects social media has on people's personal perception of themselves and slowly creating a narcissistic epidemic all over the globe. Studies have proven that people are becoming more self absorbed than ever before due to the overwhelming social media outlets with countless opportunities for people broadcast their life on a large scale. The documentary states that people with more followers on social media or more 'friends' on Facebook usually score higher on the Narcissistic personality inventory questioner. This is due to these personalities posting exessive amounts of information, believing that people are interested in what they're doing with their life. 

There is a huge difference between self-esteem vs narcissism:

Self-Esteem:

• Represents an attitude based off accomplishments and achievements.
• Our values and care we have shown to others.

Narcissism:

• This is based off a fear of failure or weakness, a focus on one-self and unhealthy desire to be seen as the best and a deep rooted feeling of inedequaty. 

To fight this epidemic it is crucial that children are instilled with a sense of self-esteem offline so they don't feel the need to base that off their online profile and 'friends'. It is important that they have a healthy sense of true esteem before they reach the age that they can begin uploading. 

This documentary was quite interesting and focused on similar issues that have been covered in our planning for our own documentary. There was corresponding elements that will be seen in our final assignment so this confirmed in our minds that certain ideas can be executed properly. We have continued planning and will have our entire planning essentials completed by the end of the weekend so we can begin filming on Monday. We probably won't have an completed rough edit by Wednesday so we will be showing Mr Andrews on Thursday or Friday of this week. 

Week 7, Wednesday - Lesson 18

We have decided that we will be basing the documentary off my treatment and taking elements from Kartya and Holly's treatments. We are now in the process of completing the following to ensure we have it all prepared for submission:

• -       Crew Roles
• -       Release forms – people to be in film
• -       Production Schedule
• -       Location report
• -       Shooting script/ shot list – Incorporate three treatments
• -       Interview questions + images
• -       Editing schedule

Our entire documentary will focus on the impacts of social media on body image for young, female teenagers. We aim to have a rough edit completed by Wednesday so we can receive feedback, allowing us to work on it for the next week and a half.

Holly and I will be away for tomorrow's lesson so we will need to continue working on our documentary planning at a later time.

Week 6, Monday - Lesson 17

We have finished our treatment and have successfully completed the design suite of our documentary task. After looking at all three treatments we are still undecided about which treatment we would like to mainly base our documentary off. We have all chosen to focus on body image and all of them are participatory types so this makes the process easier when deciding. Many elements of the other two will be taken and incorporated into the main one as all offer different strengths. Next lesson we will need to:

• Make a final decision on what treatment we would like to take as the base.
• How we want to incorporate the other two treatments into that one.
• Establish if there is lap overs to ensure we don't repeat ourselves.
• Produce a production schedule.
• Produce a script.
• Combine treatments to create a main one.

Once we have completed these tasks we will be able to commence filming. We aim to have all of our footage shot by this Sunday which will allow two lessons to edit for our rough edit to then be shown on Wednesday. We will then have another three lessons to edit, we will use this time efficiently so we don't have to do much outside of class time. This will then allow us five days to fix up anything before the final production of the documentary is due. 

Week 5, Friday - Lesson 16

I have decided what notes I will be pulling from the Mirror article. I have nearly finished my treatment and my three-column script, I just need to remove some words and decide if all is necessary in the treatment or if it can have the same effect in the three-column script. I will be working on this over the weekend as it is due Monday. The following notes is what I will be including in the documentary. I will be using a range of voiceovers as well as pull quotes as this will have a greater impact than just the voiceover.

‘Thinspiration selfies almost killed me’ (25/2/16) http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/thinspiration-selfies-killed-me-anorexia-5245488

India Edmonds, 17, developed anorexia at the age of 14 after becoming obsessed with ‘Thinspiration’ images, which led her to starving herself. She began making herself sick, cutting food from her diet and followed a demanding exercise regime.

After six months of dieting, India’s weight plummeted and she eventually blacked out.  India spent seven months in hospital from March – September 2013

(She said: “I love looking back at my pictures to see how my body was changing. My favourite pose was standing in front of a mirror and photographing my thigh gap and seeing how big it was getting.”  Chillingly, India received thousands of messages from girls who wanted to look like her at her lowest weight – skeletal.)

During a Mirror investigation, it found pro-anorexia Instagram pages, including 12-year old Anna who has over 2,000 followers predominately other sufferers, with some as young as the age of ten. Her profile consisting of tips and body goals to aspire to. She captions her images - 

(One like = one hour of fasting,” It has 27 likes.)

(“0 Calories today”)

These images and captions normalize these extremes to others, believing that this is acceptable and a way of living. This is evident through the comments on the images, with many of them contain shocking comments, these include:

(“WOW! How many purges?” asks on 13- year old user. “I wish I was that skinny.”)

Lucie Russell, Director of Campaign at Young Minds has dedicated her life to supporting teenagers with mental health issues. She states,

(“Seeing these girls connecting in this way is very concerning and worrying,” Russell says. “They are encouraging each other to get thinner and thinner and no one is there to stop it.”)

The majority of social media platforms require users to be of a certain age but there is no way of enforcing these rules.

A spokesperson for Instagram states (“Instagram is a place where people can share their lives with others through photographers, but anybody found encouraging or urging users to embrace anorexia or other eating disorders will result in a disabled account without warning.)

All social media platforms provide a report or block option but with over 70 million images shared Instagram per day, it is extremely difficult to control and monitor what is being shared on the Internet.

Week 5, Thursday - Lesson 15

In Today's lesson I have just been reading more of the article I had in the last blog post. I am just trying to decide what to take out of it to quote in the documentary. There are some points that are more prevalent than others that will have a greater impact on the audience. I will be going ahead with the pro-disorder websites as my source and will be quoting the article. I need to ensure that I cohesively link my participatory to this information so it flows well in the documentary. Reading this article and the comments of younger girls is shocking and I think this a crucial part of my research and documentary. I will be going through my draft tomorrow with Mr Andrews and the final is due on Monday. I am very excited to begin filming and editing the documentary.

Research - 24/2/16

'Thinspo' vs 'Fitspo"

I have been researching about how social media can make teenagers feel insecure due to the overwhelming amount of distorted and manipulated images of other people's appearances. Many will resort to dieting and unhealthy ways to obtain these body types which are unrealistic. These ways can lead to serious illnesses including anorexia and bulimia as well as others. It has become apparent that social media platforms are also perpetuating these conditions with blogs and journals of pro-ana and pro-mia sites where people view and obey. These communities are a place where sufferers can confined in one another, but they encourage and promote anorexia and bulimia. These 'safe' places include many commandments, tips and goals in order to stave oneself and lose weight. Many included 'thinspiration' images for others to focus on and aim towards.

Thinspiration:

Also known as 'Thinspo', is images of skinny women to motivate ones self to lose weight. It is strongly associated and promotes eating disorders.

After a quick google search, the first photo to appear was the following:

Another trending fad is 'fitspiration' - These images include people that are used to motivate people to get fit through exercise and substantial meals. 

The line between 'thinspiration' and 'fitspiration' is quite thin. As both show 'thin' people who aren't necessarily healthy so either can have a negative impact on teenager's perception of body image. 

Week 5, Tuesday - Lesson 14

I have completed majority of my treatment and have tweaked the changes that were critiqued on my draft. I was initially finding it quite difficult in picking a suitable source to find to comment on a certain aspect of how social affects the youth's perspective of their personal body image. I stumbled across alarming statistic that I have incorporated into my documentary as a voice over that states, "A People magazine survey illustrated that 80% of women who answered felt that images of women on television and in the movies make them feel insecure.” A large proportion of women feel negatively about their body just after viewing an advertisement on television on a movie, how do they feel after being bombarded with images all day? This social pressure can't be blamed on celebrities or those in the public eye, this pressure is coming from friends and family members due to the abudent amount of images shared on social media each day. These images distort one's personal view of their own body image as they are constantly being reminded or constructing a social idea of 'beauty'. These social ideas lead teenagers to photoshop and in a lot of cases, dieting. Social media perputulates dieting trends and eating disorders as people strive for unrealistic body goals. This led me to looking into pro-ana (anorexia) and pro-mis (bulimia) journals and blogs which promote starvation or unhealthy eating and exercise habits. I have just begun researching different blogs to understand the concept of them so over the next few days I will be looking at someone that I could directly quote, this could be a professional or a spokesperson, perhaps someone who has overcome their disorder and shares their experience to help others. As my treatment displays two women and one being under the healthy weight limit, this will cohesively link with the pro eating disorder journals. Although, this is a quite upsetting element of the effects of social media this is an extremely detrimental and accurate effect that social media has on teenagers which needs to be addressed. This will inform people about the effects as well as strengthen the argument of Social media has detrimental effect on young women.