The documentary that I have chosen to deconstruct for this part 0f the assignment is “The Great Hack”. It is a very interesting documentary that outlines how a company called Cambridge Analytica was able to manipulate people’s political position to assist in gaining a victory for the Republican Party in the 2016 United States Presidential Election. This was achieved by attaining and analysing peoples online data and essentially play with the psychology of the entire country, without their consent or awareness, to influence the democratic process. They identified specific groups of voters in specific areas that did not strongly lean left or right and manipulated what they saw through their social media accounts to align their point of view with Cambridge Analytica’s clients agenda, in this case Donald Trump’s election campaign. They essentially brainwashed individuals from certain neighbourhoods and location to get them to vote for who they wanted them to.
I chose this documentary because in the current zeitgeist of information technology our online presence is quite prolific and this demonstrates how the data we generate about ourselves can be easily used against us to manipulate our identity and opinions.
The documentary as a whole is made up of a culmination of many different elements from archival footage, court room footage, to camera interview pieces and much much more, however the particular sequence I have chosen to do a close analysis on is a segment where the documentary focuses on a American voter that has began legal proceedings to attempt to gain access to the 5000 data points of information that the company has on him and is doing an interview about said lawsuit.
It begins in a seating area with the camera in a static position slowly zooming into the back of a man sitting in a chair, it then cuts to a close up of the mans hands using his mobile phone, slightly out of focus in the beginning but then sharpens around his hand and phone. There is a slightly distorted narration happening simultaneously, almost as if we’re hearing a person having a conversation. The scene then cuts to a close up of the man walking through a doorway, the camera is hand-held for this shot and tracking his movements behind him, sometimes going slightly out of focus, you can hear his foot steps and a voice out of camera shot say “ok we’re ready guys” this creates some gritty realistic visuals for us to get an impression of a behind the scenes feel. It then cuts to a formal interview setting with both the interviewer and interviewee in a static shot, and the only audio that can be heard is that of the interviewer introducing her guest. The sequence of shots to follow while the interviewer is talking is interesting, it cuts from actual footage that would be aired for the interview and specific stylistic shots of the interview by the documentary team. This allows the audience to engage with the content of the interview whilst maintaining continuity with regards to the feel of the documentary itself, this is a technique used throughout this production.