Consumerism- The Digital evolution
I am Levi Phillips, my proposed idea revolves around consumerism within the digital age and the evolution of it from previous ages, highlighting the contrasts within them, along with the pros and cons of the digital age being birthed and shaping our new society, how it has moulded consumerism as we know it. I will be doing a documentary on consumerism within the digital age. The client for said project brief is known as CMP Media and the target of the brief to essentially produce a documentary which relates to culture in the digital age, relating it to a topic hence why my idea is consumerism in the digital age.
The digital age, also known as the information age is typically used to refer to the time when period in when the introduction of technology such as the personal computer, it began in the mid-twentieth century and has continued into present times. This allowed for the ability to transfer information at a much easier and quicker rate.
This has adapted several forms of our use of consumerism within the current age, the easier aspect of having all these forms of payment at your disposal has became a very appealing view for our society. Why send a check and have to wait several days for the check to be sent then for the money to be processed into your account when you can do a payment through your phone which is much faster? It also becomes much reliable as you don’t have to worry about the human error of postal services and such, which is a possibility you have to consider. Although this does have its pros, the cons are that due to the digital revolution, many jobs that once were ever so common have become very rare. However the postal services are able to rely on the digital age via shopping websites which need their products to be delivered however by doing that local business and market retailers who suffer. This signifies the point that no matter the benefits of the digital, someone or something also suffers from it. The statistics show that with the use of technology, cash is becoming a less popular form of payment, getting challenged by things such as debit cards, who are becoming much more popular. However how long will it last before things such as Apple pay and E-Pay take over, this becomes significantly more relevant with the changes to support the environment, will the production of plastic cards be changed for more payment via phone? Especially with the consultation exercise in October 2018, the Government made regulations to ban the sale of plastic straws, cotton buds and stirrers, subject to certain exemptions, which will come into force in England in October 2020. A ban on cotton buds is already in place in Scotland. But how long will it take for further bans to be made?
I will be doing a documentary on consumerism within the digital age. I mostly will be focusing on statistics along with the aspects academic research and perhaps google scholar. Categories to separate them into would be:
Forms of payment
The use of it within video games and micro-transactions
The use of adverts within social media to promote businesses
The loss of jobs from the digital age along with the rise in more digital age centred jobs.
As for how long I will allocate to this documentary, although the majority of filming is actually quite easy as it mostly focuses on the use of mobile phones and technology as a whole. Perhaps I could either focus on just filming exclusively with a voice over or having some aspects showing myself. The time frame I have for the project as a whole is from now (16th of December) Until the 22nd of January. The filming and editing process will likely take a few weeks, 2 or 3 to be exact. The resubmission date is the 5th of February.
In terms of significance, the most important topics out of my four to cover are regarding the credit cards and other forms of payment, which is the main basis, followed by the jobs fitted for consumerism within the digital age, then adverts for consumerism and new ways of advertising, such as social media, then gaming and micro-transactions. The order I will tackle this in is by starting with the payment methods, gaming and micro-transactions, advertising
, and lastly jobs based in consumerism, trying to leave and important message regarding it, highlighting the positives and negatives of it.
As for the audience, it will be centred around 13-19, Younger Audiences focus on the visual appeal, which I will have to consideration for my documentary, a brand style will be important regarding this, adopting an important scenery for it. Since this is the digital age that the documentary will focus on along with consumerism, visuals of money and credit cards, along with digital software The younger audience prefers adverts that centre around benefiting their life than distracting this, so I should also take that into consideration for my creating, presenting it as informative and beneficial to them, this could be through the use of the thumbnails or the title. The sense of unity is important as I need to embody a sense of community or a clear idea within the documentary to cover something they can adopt to their ideals and perspective of the documentary. One benefit of the time allotted for the minimum and maximum of the time allowed for the documentary fit the typical attention span of the youth audience as they wish to receive the most information they can within a short amount of time.This results in rigid scheduling, increasingly minimal but essential content, and an emphasis on staying organized.
For my analysis upon similar products,take Digital Age: Short Documentary, released by Harry Stainer, it is a 7 minute and 48 seconds documentary talking about the various changes and the gradual evolution into the digital age, with his core focus being film. He includes a very inviting intro, featuring a variety of pictures detailing the use of analog films and movie titles, accompanied by music to make it suit his own narrative on the documentary. Features such as black and white, to help date the products to a further time period than they might actually see, he also shows several newer age film usage, with the digital cameras becoming ever so common in this age.
The core focus of the documentary focuses on why we are heading into a digital age, specifically focusing on film as the core narrative to relate these points to. Harry also includes an interviewee within his documentary to help detail his points, along by getting a person to help relay his knowledge within the documentary to help create a sense of more people reconsigning such changes within the film industry, and society as a whole.
He uses key factors to help display the change into the digital age within film, his first evidence of such being Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which is known as the first movie to use digital cameras within such products, this film in particular is important not only for being the first film to rely on the use of the digital age nut also because it features such of both digital and analog cameras, which shows how the change was not sudden. His second evidence is 28 Days Later, his use of this is also a reason behind the digital age, specifically referring to the quickness that the film needed to be made for. The final film shown as his evidence is Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones, this is because it is the first big blockbuster movie to feature an exclusive use of digital filming equipment.
The documentary also features a wide variety of individuals from various backgrounds and ages, even gender, showing his ability to provide information from different sources to include within his documentary. Despite these variety of individuals they all accompany the same message, perhaps the one that Harry specifically wanted to display, which is a good use of interviewees, which is that although film has a personal value and feels more rewarding in the production of such movies, and that digital is much easier and truly is the way forward.
I have used this existing product to influence my project by making it necessary to have several key factors within it that relate to said changes to the digital age of consumerism such as the introduction of formats of payments as debit cards and E-pay, along with micro-transactions which are practically exclusively digitally purchased.
In conclusion, I have made several configurations of my project to fit the brief of culture within the digital age, given to me from the client CMP Media, choosing my project as consumerism and referring to it within the digital age and changes that have been made to adapt to it. I have analysed similar forms of products, analysing how they’ve presented their documentaries in the format, along with things such as design amongst other factors. I’ve made research into facts regarding the topic so i can present them together in a conclusive analysis of data. Showing key factors that support my project fo the digital evolution in consumerism and the forms of payment,the use of it within video games and micro-transactions, the use of adverts within social media to promote businesses,the loss of jobs from the digital age along with the rise in more digital age centred jobs, and along with the environmental factors that new forms of payment have introduced.The the time frame I have for said project is up until the 22nd of January, with that being the submission date, the resubmission date being the 5th of February. The primary audience ranging from 13-19 year old in terms of orienting the documentary for.
