For this blog, I decided to deal with the subject of human trafficking. This is a subject of deep importance, since over 20 million people are directly affected by it. Every continent and every type of economy is currently being affected by this $31.4 billion enterprise, which is guilty of trafficking 1.2 million children per year. Most victims of human trafficking are women who are forced to prostitute themselves, or are forced to work under sub-human conditions. Currently, there are more slaves in the world than at any other point of the history of humanity.
To approach this project, I used an expository mode of documentary. Instead of a voiceover I used titles in a way similar to the titles used in the film Nanook of the North. The titles and captions help to understand what human trafficking is, how it works and who is affected by it. It gives very basic information, meant to create awareness of the crime rather than giving a solution to it. I tried to develop it in an essay-type of narration. I begin the documentary by explaining what human trafficking is. After this I get to how people are kidnapped and what they do to them. At the end of the documentary I give statistics taken from the UN; I do this to attribute veracity to what I am saying, as it is done in many expository documentaries.
Instead of videos, I decided to use photographs and black slides. I tried to relate each photograph with what the title was saying as the photograph appeared, or relate it to what the black slide before a photo stated. The purpose of doing this is complementing the statement with a related picture to create a stronger emotion than the emotion they would create if looked separately. Furthermore, I use audio to mark even more the tone of the documentary. At the beginning of the documentary, before any words appeared, I added the audio of a woman crying, in relation to the topic. The song that I chose also has a mellow and sad tone, which I though went really well with the captions and pictures.
This is the link to the video. Enjoy.