Documentary Project - Have You Seen This Man?

In preparation for our AICE Media Portfolio Project, one of our first projects in class was to create a 7-10 minute documentary about any subject we wanted. Without even thinking for a minute, it was clear what we would choose to do.

Earlier this year I had singlehandedly sparked a social phenomena at my high school involving a singular image of a blue emoji eating a cookie, leading to an almost cultish following by students and teachers alike garnering thousands of cumulative likes on Instagram and social media. 

It would have been unjust not to choose this focus for our project, and we got to work. Unlike most of my media projects, our group was able to schedule accordingly and create a coherent plan before the deadline. Because of all the interviews and b-roll we had to shoot, we made sure not to shoot everything last minute and have some time to schedule with our interviewees as we would have at least four, requiring lots of time to shoot.

We based the structure of the documentary on the Banksy documentary "Exit Through The Gift Shop," creating a mysterious aura around the person who started the "cookie muncher" trend (me), covering my entire body and distorting my voice like Banksy would. 

Exit Through The Gift Shop

Have You Seen This Man?

While the topic of a blue emoji invading my school is an interesting story to document, we also wanted to analyze an important question which is how does a joke become viral? What we discovered while making our documentary is that it requires spontaneousness, originality, and mass dissemination, a bundle of different factors which were not necessarily realized until organized in a video format. 

While documenting reality is something that my mind is not used to doing, this project was an excellent exercise in such, helping me realize that interesting stories lie in our daily lives. I definitely enjoyed making this project and it received high approval ratings and viewership online on the @cookie.muncher.secret.society Instagram page, serving as an excellent way to wrap up my accidental social experiment. 

Note: Cookie Muncher was an independent project separate from AICE Media.

>>> Link to documentary! <<<