"Street Food" is a Netflix original series that mainly appeals to an audience with an interest in food and travel, with its pilot episode following the story of a seventy three year old woman in Thailand on her journey to becoming a successful chef. This woman, named Jay Fai, grew up in a slum watching her mother sell food at the market near to her home. The family wasn't making enough money after her drug-addicted father ran away, and so Fai became a seamstress in order to provide support and help her mother to put food on the table. However, she explains that her career was cut short following a fire triggered by a collapsed stairwell in which she lost all of her sewing equipment and personal belongings. This creates an emotional response as the audience will sympathy for the woman, thus making them more likely to continue watching in the hopes that she is able to turn her life around. Fai explains how she taught herself how to cook in the hopes of helping her mother's business, and how she began to put her own twist on traditional recipes. Her story begins to look more hopeful when she says that she made just enough money to be able to rent a shop to sell her food from following a risky decision to buy more expensive yet higher quality ingredients. After becoming a popular chef for her unique menu items such as dry tom yum soup and crab omelettes, Jay Fai was awarded a Michelin star and announced that customers had to reserve tables in order to be able to be served as she was so popular. This story of overcoming poverty and achieving dreams also educates the viewers on how the authorities feel about street food. Stories are shared of street vendors being chased away and food stalls shut down despite being popular part of Thai culture, with some people even travelling in taxis to visit their favourite restaurants after they have moved to a new location. The show is intended for a global audience, and can be easily accessed by anybody with a Netflix subscription. However, the fact that the documentary is exclusive to one streaming service doesn't affect its audience as Netflix is a highly popular site amongst a range of demographics due to its variety of content, and has approximately 139 million worldwide users. Documentaries are also becoming increasingly popular with modern audiences, which means that a great variety of people are able to watch it and learn about the importance of street food in Thailand. A sense of inspiration is installed in viewers through stories of personal discovery and growth, and watching a person who has come from a background of poverty become successful allows the audience to share a feeling of price with the chef - a feeling magnified through the sharing of Fai's life story alongside footage of her cooking and interacting with customers. The producers used a range of techniques such as flashbacks, music to create varying moods and emotive language and recounts to allow the audience to not only learn about the chef's background and the bigger picture in regard to street food in Thailand, but also so that viewers can connect with Fai and root for her business. Flashbacks can allow viewers to feel as though they know the chef and her experiences. This makes it easier for people to empathise with her former situation and gain a sense of satisfaction when she becomes a success. Not only is this a feel-good viewing, but it offers information in a bite-sized and easy to follow format. Because of this, it's suitable to a wider audience as well as ensuring that people are learning while still being entertained by the documentary.
"One Strange Rock" is a geographical documentary which was created by the National Geographic and hosted by Will Smith. This means that not only does the audience know that the information that they are receiving is factual, but that it will be delivered in an entertaining and engaging way. In addition to this, the use of celebrity endorsement can help to draw in a larger audience, meaning that more people can be taught about the content that the documentary has to offer. The first episode, titled "Gasp", opens with the Canadian astronaut famous for the iconic line "Houston, we have a problem" discussing oxygen. Chris Hadfield - who spent one hundred and sixty six days in space - shares the story of experiencing a sudden pain in his eye whilst in space, causing it to tear up. Due to the lack of gravity the tear grew and leaked into both eyes, causing momentary blindness. He was told that there may be contamination inside his suit and so had to flush it out by releasing his oxygen supply. This dramatic story hooks the viewer, drawing them into the documentary and making them wonder what will happen next. Following this hooking story, the programme then cuts to an astrobiologist in Dallol, Ethiopia, named Felipe Gómez Gómez. His favourite location, Dallol, has toxic air, no fresh water and no forms of life that require oxygen. He has, however, found bacteria living in an acidic lake. He says that without oxygen, life can't grow any bigger than the size of a "pinhead", and yet there is still life there. The programme shows scenic shots of this dangerous, acidic location, as well as footage of Gómez collecting some of this interesting bacteria. Open ended questions and statements attempt to make the audience want to continue watching in order to find out what's going on. After a few minutes of footage in this barren landscape, the documentary cuts to Danakil in East Africa as Smith begins to explain how there is enough oxygen on Earth to sustain so much life. Kidane Belay, an African salt trader, explains how his family have been harvesting a particular salt desert found in Denali for many generations. Unknowingly, we all rely upon this desert due to dust storms that are capable of travelling right across the sea. By introducing this scene, the audience will begin to wonder what it's significance is to the Earth's supply of oxygen, and due to the lack of linear structure people are more likely to keep watching in order to gain answers. In this documentary, footage is shown of the dust storm - originating from the Danakil Desert - from space as it reaches South America. The African dust settles in the Amazon basin, fertilizing the ground and allowing plantlife to thrive. Smith explains that the rainforest produces "twenty times more oxygen than all the people on the surface of the Earth could consume", but because of the amount of life there it uses up all of the oxygen it creates. However, despite the fact that it doesn't provide us with any air it still helps us to breathe. After having made this enlightening yet curious point, the documentary introduces climatologist Doctor Rosa Maria Dos Santos to help explain why, despite it not delivering any oxygen to us, the rainforest still helps us to breathe. It is revealed that water is carried up from the forest floor through trees before evaporating after reaching the leaves and becoming a "flying river" of clouds that travels over the top of the Amazon. These clouds condense into raindrops again after hitting the Andes and flow back into the Amazon basin. While doing so, rock is eroded, sending sediment and nutrients into the sea. This sediment contains silica, which an algae called diatom uses to create new shells, allowing it to reproduce. Diatoms can multiply their population daily, and they photosynthesize to create the oxygen that humans need. The documentary takes an interesting twist when it explains that when diatoms die, and their shells collect on the sea floor - which can cause it to rise after many years - deserts can form. When sea levels drop to expose this sediment, it becomes a desert exactly like the Danakil Desert, where dust storms made up of deceased diatom shells that fertilize the Amazon rainforest originate from. The documentary comes back into a full circle, showing how a continuous chain of events allows life on Earth to breathe. Will Smith's narrations help the audience to relate to what they're watching, especially when he explains that he believed that the Amazon rainforest was the "lungs of the Earth". Most people who don't have a geographical or scientific background are unlikely to know how we actually get our oxygen, and so this documentary may help people to understand the significance of the rainforest. The documentary is contextually relevant following recent fires within the rainforest that made the international news. Bearing this in mind, the documentary acts as an eye opener and can be used to show people that we need to take better care of our environment as it does more for us than what we realise. By having professional guest speakers with careers in relevant scientific and geographical fields, the audience is further assured that the information that they're learning is in fact accurate. In addition to this, by having things explained by experts it is easier to understand for an audience perceived to have no prior knowledge. the programme delivers information in small sections before moving on to another location and sub-story. This means that viewers won't switch off and the pace of the documentary stays consistent and interesting throughout. By having small sections of information being delivered, people are more likely to retain the facts. This is because it is easy to remember multiple short sub-stories than one long and information-packed documentary. Because of this, I believe that this programme is a success. From the perspective of a viewer, I found it very informative and easy to follow, and I was captivated from start to finish.
The last documentary that I watched was "Stacey Meets the IS Brides" - a documentary hosted by Stacey Dooley that aims to have a positive impact on the British public, and some to make viewers gain a more compassionate stance on the debate as to what should be done about the IS brides. Emotive scenes of a mother in a camp's healthcare centre with her sick child are designed to stir a sense of empathy in the audience, while another mother cries as she speaks about how she wants a better life for her children. Dooley herself even expressed her views, saying that she felt as though help should be given to these women. However, the programme allows the viewers some room to form their own views as - being publicly funded - the BBC isn't tied to any political stance of viewpoint and so doesn't need to promote any particular message because of this. The documentary is interesting as not many people fully understand the circumstances in which these women live, and it is presented in a very raw and unfiltered manner. A scene in which Dooley confronts one of the brides through a fence shows that, despite the more human scenes shown, the environment is still hostile and dangerous. Not everyone is willing to speak to her, and so she moves on until she finds someone willing to share their story. Dooley's visit to some of Syria's IS bride camps should serve as an eye-opener to show that grooming can happen to anyone. The nationalities and ages of the residents are so diverse, with women from over fifty different countries living there. Some of the women moved to Syria as teenagers, while others joined the extremist group as middle aged adults. One woman in her forties admitted to coming to the country to be with a man she had fallen for after meeting him online. She swore that is she had gotten an indication that he was bloodthirsty then she would have gone "running". Her conversation allowed the audience to see that it isn't just young people that have been conditioned to accept extremist views, which some people often assume. The documentary is highly educational as well as appealing to the audience's empathy, and shows the efforts to deradicalize the women living in these camps that many viewers may not have necessarily known about before watching the programme.
Social action and community media productions can promote a wide variety of causes and educate society on a whole range of different topics. I feel as though all of the documentaries that I watched were not only informative, but entertaining too due to having a captivating narrative and having the information delivered in small portions that allow the viewers to process and take on board what they are learning.
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