Information of my project

Software project outline

Martha Rosler’s work “Semiotics of the Kitchen” (1975), is considered a critique of traditional women's roles. Rosler examines everyday life through women’s experience and uses video as a social instrument to protest traditional gender representation. In “Semiotics of the Kitchen”, Rosler parodies a cooking show host, and she apron around her waist with deadpan humor to represent a traditional housewife’s life. Inspiration for the main idea of the project comes from this video, and her article “Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment”. The gender stereotypes dictate that men have higher status jobs and women as members of a disadvantaged group should stay at home. Moreover, media usually presenting the bias gender media images to audience, it negatively impact women' social status. Since women’s movements, female roles have improved today, scholars explored feminist theories encouraging society to change gender stereotypes, but it still deeply influences some region, such as Asia. Even though the concept of independent working women also become popular in China, the traditional gender stereotype is deeply influence Chinese people.

This documentary is examining the gender roles in China. The main idea of this project is come from my sister’s friend – Hong. Hong is a independent working woman, who working in the jewelry store. She earning money, buy car, just like the man do. She keeps working, even though she gets married. However, she has decided to quit the workplace when she pregnant, because the parenting issue of family. She gives up her ideal and dream to become a housewife. I want to know that how and why her feeling change from the independent working woman to a housewife. Hong’s story is the common and normal situation in China, women have to quit the workplace when she get married or pregnant. Even though government encourages women to participate in the workplace in recent years, women have to stay at home for childcare in sometimes. This documentary also interview the younger generation, their views of traditional gender roles have changed today. This is why we see working women and mother is a welcome entity but not an anomaly. The purpose of this project is appealing people to change biased views of women, and offers the equality of gender roles in the society.

At the same time, it also explores the expanded documentary media forms. With the development of computer technology, filmmaker attempt to enhance the visual effect through the computer graphics (CG). “Digital visual effects build on stylistic traditions established by film-makers in earlier generations even while providing new and more powerful tools to accomplish these deeds” (Prince, 2012, p.5). Digital effects not only used on the film, television, it also alter the reading of documentary media forms. For example, the BBC’s  “Walking with Dinosaurs” (1999). It uses the CG to create the virtual dinosaurs in the documentary. Thus, a documentary adds the animation, it as the expanded screen of documentary that improves the requirement of aesthetic of audience.

Inspiration for the editing style comes from Adrian Goycoolea’s work “Viva Chile Mierda Trailer” (2013). I attempt to film the daily life of my sister’s friend as the main story, and also interview other people to describe this situation. I try to use the animation effect into this documentary, which to change the traditional documentary media form. All of materials are depended on the real story, I use camera to record the videos, and then combine it through the software. I use Nikon 7000D and Canon 600D to record this story, and Marantz PMD-661 for recording sound. For the digital animation, I use the Wacom CTL-470 to draw the picture, and then combine it as the GIF files. The mainly editing software: Adobe Premiere CS6 and Adobe Audition CS6 for editing this video, and use Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Adobe Illustrator CS6 to create picture and animation. The length of this documentary is 5 minutes, it not only indicate the gender role in the society, also express the digital effect change the documentary media form.