A Study Of Group Portrayal In Public Interest Documentaries

Public service documentaries not only have a social function but also have public service attributes,focusing on the daily lives of ordinary people as the theme,exploring in depth the relationship between people and people,people and society,so as to reveal new connotations of social development and reflect the changing trends of society,thus making people pay more attention to the social justice in society and enhancing the well-being of society.In some of the previous public service documentaries,the creators have focused on the service recipients,the marginal environment or entirely on the public service events,paying less attention to the organisers behind the scenes.In the past,most documentaries have focused on the people they serve,the circumstances on the margins,or on the charity organisers.It is therefore worthwhile to record the image of the organisers on film.It is also worth considering how to create and present an appropriate image of the public service community in a limited time frame,showing a group with commonalities,while not losing the sparkle of the individuals.In this paper,we start from the group image of the public service organisers and analyse the process of shaping the group image in the context of our graduation work “Stories of Public Interest in Dongguan:Our Choice”.This paper is structured in four parts,which are an overview of public interest documentaries and group portrayal,the selection of content for group portrayal,creative strategies for group portrayal and reflections on the application of creative practice.Firstly,it defines the concept of public interest documentary,discusses its development trend and the embodiment of group portrayal in public interest documentary.Secondly,the content of group image shaping is preset,and a complete symbol of the public service is constructed based on the text of the work “Stories of Public Interest in Dongguan”.Through exploring the process of public welfare groups,different meanings of public welfare symbols’ characterization are deeply explored,creating the story layer of the documentary,and clarifying the visual and social significance of group image shaping in public welfare themed documentaries.Thirdly,this article takes “Stories of Public Interest in Dongguan” as an example,and through the narrative and audiovisual strategies of group image building,it constructs a three-dimensional image of public welfare organizers from the creative level.Finally,the article and the work are combined to make a summary reflection,in an attempt to provide some valuable reference for future research on group portrayal in public service documentaries.