sketches

ISA

Isa’s project is about addressing the misrepresentation of asian cultures on brand identities found in local supermarkets.

QUESTIONS
Have you showed this packaging to your family? What is their reaction to this? Maybe that’s also something you can use in your film. You have now been living here for a little while, so I wonder what the reaction is of people that have never experienced our western misinterpretations. I think older people could be a perfect target for that.

FEEDFORWARD
Your own experiences are ofcourse a really good base for your movie. We also have this dutch tv-show called “keurings dienst van waarde” even though they are not really focused on design elements, they are very much focused on the products in supermarkets and they research misinterpretations about ingredients, and misinterpretations in general. Their approach is to always visit these companies and factories they are addressing, and at the same time they visit actual “authentic” producers of a product. They did this for example with Apple cider, where they compare supermarket ciders with real apple ciders from the uk. In this process they “portray themselves as a kind of “silly customer” with many questions about the product. I found this English tv show that is similar (I haven’t seen it, but it might be worth checking out their kind of journalistic approach to how ridiculous some of these products are. You can also watch the dutch version on YouTube but the subtitles that are generated in English don’t work very well with dutch saying.

With regard to your research question:
I could not really find it written anywhere, but I think especially for your research having a research question with structured subquestions can help you move forward and think of a well written storyline.

A planning could also help you in how much team you want to spent on each part of research, it helps getting many things out of your head and puts things In perspective.

Isa’s questions
::/From what direction/perspective do I want to address these issues?/::
::/(Should I educate, or critique? Or both?)/::

This is ofcourse a very serious and problematic topic, and should be addressed in a critical way. I think however that critical could also be addressed in a satire kind of way. Outline with humor how ridiculous these design choices are. I think your previous approach of reverse orientalist brand identities is a good one. This kind of approach I think will make people realize this is a problem (so it’s educational), and at the same time critiques and ridicules the way we are designing these brands.

If you are making a movie, don’t just make it only humorous but have a very serious and critiquing undertone.

::/How closely should I interpret the contents of my research paper into the film?/::

I think the contents of your research are extremely important and should be the foundation of the movie, build and create idea’s up from the research you have.

::/(Should I follow the structure and points made specifically, or a more abstract, artistic interpretation?)/::

This is a tough one, you can go a little abstract but the point you are making has to be very clear ofcourse. Remember that we are living In a country where many things regarding cultural appropriation / and cultural misinterpretation aren’t understood very well. I mean I only figured out about 3 or 4 years ago that the Chinese food as we know it is nothing close to how the Chinese eat their food because of Frans Bauer a dutch folk singer that went to china and could not order his “usual” dutch Chinese food. ([YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD6OpVQs5XM)). I think that sums of for how little our country actually knows about other cultures.

::Are there possibly other mediums that can compliment the film?::

Maybe you can also look at asian filmmakers, how do they direct, visual style, etc? Is there elements there that you can use for your film?

Reference tip:
[Food Unwrapped - All 4](https://www.channel4.com/programmes/food-unwrapped)
[YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAyKoTa_bUQ) < this is the dutch version in English with subs
The politics of design - Ruben Pater