Critical Reflection

1 How do your products represent social groups or issues? 

 

In today’s world, almost everything is digital but even with all the new technology, one thing that hasn’t gotten much better is customer service. A lot of people still have to deal with long wait times, confusing phone menus, and customer service reps who don’t seem to care. It’s honestly kind of a running joke at this point how bad customer service can be. 

In our project, we really wanted to show that frustration. We show a man who comes home after a long day at work, and instead of relaxing, he has to deal with a computer assistant. It’s super tiring for him, and you can just see him getting more and more angry and drained. 

On the flip side, we show the customer service rep  but instead of being in an office, they’re chilling at the beach, not caring at all. They’re totally relaxed while the man is losing it. We thought that would be a fun but real way to show how disconnected customer service can feel sometimes. It’s like they don’t even realize  or care  how much people are struggling on the other end. 

By showing both sides like this, we highlight a real-world issue: how frustrating and uncaring modern customer service can feel. 

 

2 How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’? 

Everything we did in our production connects back to the same idea: customer service is frustrating and the people on the other end feel super distant. 

The colors, the settings, even the acting style all push that message. For the man stuck dealing with customer service, we used darker lighting and had him in a cramped, messy room. We wanted it to feel heavy, tired, and stressful  like he’s trapped. 

For the customer service rep, we used bright lighting and an open beach scene. Everything’s sunny, happy, and super chill for them. This contrast really helps show the gap between what the customer is feeling and what the service rep is doing. 

Even little things, like the hold music being weird and annoying, add to the brand of frustration. Our "brand" is about how technology and customer service aren’t always the helpful tools they’re supposed to be. Every part of the production builds on that idea. 

 

3 How do your products engage with the audience? 

We wanted people to relate to what was happening right away. Almost everyone has been stuck on the phone with a useless customer service line at some point. We knew if we showed that feeling clearly, people would instantly connect with it. 

We didn’t just want to show someone being frustrated  we wanted the audience to feel that frustration too. That’s why the scene with the man gets longer and longer, with him pressing buttons, repeating information, getting transferred, and growing more and more exhausted. The longer it goes on, the more annoying it gets  just like real life. 

At the same time, when we cut to the beach scene, it’s supposed to make people laugh a little, but also make them mad. It’s like, “Wow, they really don’t care.” By mixing frustration and humor, we keep the audience interested but also make them think about how crazy the situation really is. 

 

4 How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions? 

Before we made the project, we did a lot of research into how customer service actually works now, especially with automated systems. We found out that a lot of companies use complicated phone trees and computer assistants on purpose not just to help people, but to save money and avoid having to actually talk to customers. 

We also looked at how customer service is shown in movies and TV shows. Usually, it’s either played for laughs (like a joke about getting stuck on hold forever) or it’s shown as super robotic and annoying. We decided to mix both. We showed the frustrating reality of it, but we also exaggerated it a little with the beach scene to make it even more clear. 

A lot of traditional media would show the rep in an office, looking bored or tired. We challenged that by putting our rep somewhere totally unexpected  the beach. That way, it’s not just that they’re lazy  it feels like they’re living a whole different life while customers are stuck suffering. 

Our research helped us understand the real problems people have with customer service, and then we pushed those problems to the extreme in our production to make our point stronger. 

 

Final Word Count: 1,640 words  AICE MEDIA CCR QUESTIONS #6219 <-------- THE WORD ! BE COOL! STAY IN SCHOOL!!!!!!!