What is the title of the film? What is it about?
The title of the film is Food, Inc. The film features agricultural content in the United States. If highlights the agribusiness across the United States. The paper relates corporate affairs and agriculture. It also provides an insight on the negativity of production on the society. The film comes with a conclusion that production of food via the agribusiness leads to the production of unhealthy foods. Additionally, the food is environmental friendly to both humans and animals. The film uses interviews from people to justify its objectives and claims.
Why did you choose this documentary to view? What did you expect to learn or experience from this film?
The reason for choosing this documentary is the fact that it addresses an issue that affects a lot of people in the modern United States. The documentary is an analysis of what people feel towards the agribusiness. This provides a real feature to relate to and come up with a conclusive judgment based on these reactions. From the film expected to gain a solid position on what my stand is when it comes to the production of agribusiness foods. From people’s experience it is much easier to come up with a solution to this question. Additionally, the experience the film maker uses to develop this particular film is outstanding. I expected that the film would provide me with the insight on how well to develop a documentary based on real reactions from the public. According to Severson the strategy in the creation of this film is enough to produce a film maker with the qualities of providing a similar outstanding film maker (par, 3).
What was the central point of this film? That is, what was the overall focus, goal or mission of the filmmaker? Think of it like an essay: What was the thesis statement?
The central point of this documentary is to highlight the harmful side of corporate production of food and vegetables. The central point also revolves around how deep the modern society is sucked into the health hazards of corporate manufactured food. In the film maker’s objective, the film was aimed at sensitizing the society on the effects of the consumption of corporate manufactured food. He relates other people’s experience to achieve this objective. With the modern society exposed to significant health hazards, the documentary highlights corporate farming as a cause of health hazards (Severson, par 2). Another mission in the documentary is to provide the society with enough evidence and information on whether or not industrial production of food is advantageous or hazardous to their health.
How did the filmmaker support that central point? Topics? Facts? Stats? Interviews? Comparisons? Describe them; don't just list them.
The main feature used in the documentary to address its objectives is interviews. The documentary included a significant portion of its duration to air interviews from the people and also companies involved in the production of industrial goods. Interviewees provided much significance in the topic than any other support feature. It can also be argued that the film maker used facts to portray the negativity of industrial manufactured goods. According to Severson these facts were proven by professions in the medical field (par, 7). The author argues that it is an undeniable fact that the increased exposure to diseases in the current society is caused by the food we consume. The same fact is reiterated by the author when he argues that the production of industrial food involves the use of biochemical nutrients which has long term effects to the health of both humans and animals (par, 4).
How did this film compare to your expectations? What, if anything, did you learn from it, intellectually or emotionally? How did it impact you? That is, did it inspire you or change your perspective in any way?
The film well described and highlighted my expectation of it. From reading a synopsis of the film, I had an idea in mind that industrial manufactured food has negative impact on human and animal health. However, I could not come up with specific evidence and information to make it my final conclusion. In the documentary this gap was filled. The documentary efficiently provided information and evidence on how hazardous industrial manufactured foods are. The film maker’s incorporation of real interviews made the film more realistic and effective to its objective. The reaction of major companies in the food industry towards the film made it more appealing to the audience (Severson, par 8). The film did not change my perspective on industrial manufactured goods. However, it further explained my perspective to make it more realistic and applicable.
Describe at least five examples in the film in which the filmmaker effectively used some of the techniques listed below by making the scene easier to follow or understand, drive home a point, enhance the drama/emotion/impact, keep your attention
The use of archival footage was very effective in the film. The use of this feature was effective in that it provided the audience with a history on industrial manufactured food. This was important such that the audience could easily see the development of the story as it reaches the current society. The use of cutaway shots was also very effective. Short and precise answers helped the audiences to capture the drift of the film without much concentration. The scenes in the documentary were well fitted with appropriate sound which kept the film more interesting. The film maker also incorporated natural sound to create a reality depth in the content aired in the film. The use of text and graphics made the film more practical and real. Inserting interviews names, company names and titles made the documentary easy to follow up and confirm their allegations. The editing technique of the documentary is also outstanding. The camera work was impressive throughout the whole film. In a scene where the film maker used flashback the editing used the appropriate color and fading to create that past illusion.
Works cited
Severson, Kim. Eat, Drink, Think, Change. New York Times. Web. June 3rd, 2009. Web
