What it is?

First of all, our product is a documentary and it is talking about the misunderstanding of students study aboard in China. We found many people in China always don't understand the problems or difficulties of students who are studying abroad.

For example, Chinese people might think the students who can go abroad for studying are those from rich families, or those very good at English, after going abroad, they are very good at translation, and they are no longer need to work hard in school.

But those thinking are too simplify to describe studying abroad students. We think it is a very interesting topic for documenting . After our discussion, we decided our title for the documentary production as "Study Abroad".

Our opinoin 

As both of us are studying abroad, sometimes we have heard about those myths of study abroad, and when we look on the computers, there are so many people who have myths to us, which I mean is the group of students who study abroad.  Sometimes, those myths may cause problem to us.

Also, even though nowadays, people are more open-minded, and there are fewer people who have a wrong view of student study abroad than before, but both of us think that there are still many people who think us wrongly and therefore we want to show the truth.

Overview

So now, let’s talk about the overview. We decided to use performative mode to our documentary, it is the main mode that we’d like to use, but also, it might contains some elements of participatory mode and expository mode as well.

At the start of the documentary, we’d like to use a shot of computer which shows a website that people are giving their views and opinions. Those opinions are about what people think about student study abroad.

After that, we decided to use subtitles to give information about what we talk about in this documentary, which is some information about our topic.

After giving the information, there will be some location shots which show it is in China and slowly focus on one person, who is one of the main characters (the actor) of this documentary. In this part, we are going to show how a student prepare to study abroad, in which we will show what they need to do for going abroad.

During this part, we would like to use some voiceover to talk about the narrative, to talk about what people would think about student study abroad, also, it will have some interview shots. But here, we will not use the proper interview, we just show the answer of the question we ask, that is the participant's own opinion , just like that in The Eagle Huntress, there are some old people to talk about their view of women being eagle hunter.

Then, there will be some transition and location shots of the UK to show that here is foreign country. We might film one of us to show a normal school day in our school or we might choose another student to film, and this is another main character. Also, in this part, we will put some interview inside as well, some of them are the opinions that students who study abroad just like us, and some of them are the opinions from people who have a wrong view. And we will use the same structure just like what we do before.

Once the day is off, our film would come to the end, and we might use subtitles again to give a conclusion.

Also, in both part, we may add some animation to explain the narrative which combines with the voiceover.

Target audience

For target audience, 

-   The first target audience is the Chinese people who are in 15-50 aged group, particularly students and parents. Those who are relevant in studying abroad might be willing to watch.

-   The second target audience is English people who are interested in this topic, with the same age as our first target audience. Because as documenting, we will film a daily life for a Chinese student studying in the UK, British people who are curious about international students might be interested in this documentary production.

How our product relate to the target audience

First target audience

We will apply performance mode and participatory mode because we are involved in studying abroad and the reason why first target audiences are around 15-50 ages is that they might be the people who are preparing to study in other countries or the people who are the parents of the studying aboard students. 

Performance mode is the best way instead of just using voiceover and interview to show our narrative, since it is a visual way to talk about narrative and it is more clear. Using performance mode is more entertaining so that audience may enjoy more and are willing to watch.

Furthermore, we might use animation to explain the narrative. It is another excellent way to show narrative to such a large group of target audience.

second target audience

The English people might not know anything about this topic so that they may be curious about that. Our main purpose is let them to know our daily life and how people in our country think about us. 

The animation is made in English and our interviews which are in Chinese will have English subtitles so that English people are able to watch our production. 

Using the comments of studying aboard students from internet can be the evidence to proof those misunderstandings are true, since English people might not read about those comments before.

how can we achive our purpose and what technologies we will use for achiving purpose

To make the documentary more real, we used varieties of technologies in the starting scene. We will use a clip to show the commentary on studying abroad. We might use Premiere Pro as a editing software to edit the adding text and translated subtile, as we want those comments can be shown in the whole screen.

Moreover, as we want to add some animation to explain the narrative further in our film, we are going to use powtoon for this secession. It is a simple website to make animation. That is the reason why we choose it.

About the interview shots, the location might be schools, home, parks or some places which are quiet. The reason why we want to find these locations is they are relevant to our topic.

For example, as we are talking about studying, using some places in school can fit in this topic. We used to think about interviewing in the cafe, as we thought it might be a good place where the participants might feel relax and less pressure. However, we found that there are too many people in the cafe, and it is too noisy to film interviews.

As our topic relates in both China and the UK, we consider to record music bu ourselves. In the China clips, we are going to record the music in traditional Chinese instrument which Melissa can play and it called Gu Zheng. By doing this, we can represent China and some people in China have outdated thinking mode and they might be wrong.

For Gigi, as she can play piano and most of her piano pieces are Chinese songs, it is a good way to combine the UK and China.  It can also represent the hybridity thinking mode, so her piano pieces can be the non-diegetic music of some interviews when those people have quite open-minded view of the topic. Because piano is a western instrument, we think it can represent the UK culture.