Critical Reflection

    The documentary Jonah serves to explain the contrast between outside perspectives on what autism entails by looking toward the parents and therapists of Jonah in order to explain what autism is and how it affects others around Jonah.  

    When it comes to certain groups that are represented within my documentary, I tried to make them explicitly referenced in order to give reassurance to that particular group.  This group that I tried to represent was not only autistic individuals themselves but mainly their relatives and how they have been affected by autistic individuals.  Speaking out beyond the surface-level things related to autism, like symptoms, is what I was trying to show within this documentary.  For example, I wanted to point out how my family, my parents, in particular, were affected by the diagnosis, along with the issues that arise when raising an autistic child.  By focusing on these abstract, less commonly spoken about topics related to autism, I hoped to shine some light on some of the less fortunate things that come with a diagnosis of autism.  By conducting interviews in which my parents would simply speak their minds and give insight on the true nature of the diagnosis as opposed to sugar-coating it, it would accurately describe what many other individuals with autistic relatives potentially faced.  However, I believe I pointed a little too much emphasis on the relatives affected by autistic individuals, as opposed to the autistic individuals themselves.  My brother, Jonah, was meant to be the main focus of the documentary, while also focusing on my parents in order to discuss more complicated topics, like raising Jonah.  I believed I didn't put enough focus on Jonah himself, which ultimately wouldn't accurately represent autistic individuals themselves since I didn't allocate enough time for Jonah to represent them.  I recorded Jonah over several instances of time, like here, however, I believed in order to truly represent autistic individuals, I should've conducted a more rigorous interview with Jonah, as opposed to the one slightly present within the documentary.  

    The outline, along with the interviews in particular was intended for my documentary to connect with the audience.  My audience would consist of people with autistic relatives, along with individuals wanting to learn more about autism, which would be about 18-50 years old range, with male and female.  When it came to my outline, I tried to make it easy to follow by having a slight narrative that goes along with it.  For example, I'd start with an introduction for Jonah, then move towards the diagnosis, then discuss what autism is, and in the end talk about Jonah's progress.  By pairing this plot with 'raw' direct interviews of my parents, it produced a more genuine feel for the audience as they were able to follow along with the story as a whole, but get invested when it came to instances in which my parents would get emotional, or talk about the future.  One video that I used as a production example is from a YouTuber called Mark Rober, whose son has autism, and he makes a video about how his son has progressed through life.  I followed this convention of having a narrative, similar to the video, however, I wanted to lean towards a more unconventional style that can be shown via the long interviews.  When incorporating these two contrasting ideas, the whole idea behind Jonah's diagnosis and other abstract ideas can be engaged with the audience by adding a sense of genuineness throughout the interviews, especially the ones at the beginning.  

    A large portion of the research behind this documentary was essentially living with my brother Jonah.  As opposed to talking about a subject I knew nothing about that I would go on the internet and research for, I've lived with my brother Jonah, which helped fuel this documentary itself.  Similar to the video mentioned above, this video was a major influence in producing this documentary, as I followed the convention of the narrative that went from talking about the diagnosis, all the way to my parents and therapists talking about the future.  But since I lived with Jonah, I had a rough idea of how my parents felt about his diagnosis, which I would show when conducting the interviews.  I wanted to ask questions that felt like a conversation but also wanted to actually know more about my brother's life from a documentary perspective.