A Quick Message From Manousos...

Being off ill for such a long time has not stopped me from attempting to create something for my Media Portfolio. Through boredom as much as anything I decided to make a short promotional video for my documentary using what resources I could find. I don't think this is too bad considering it was done using only a webcam, a microphone, footage from the internet and windows movie maker. Obviously the real thing will be of far better quality, and prehaps the accent will be a bit more fluent when I am not as ill! Still, it was something I had great fun working on!

Slightly off topic, but..

..I thought I would post up this music video. It is again from the artist NiVo from Goin' Through and he is joined by friends and members of his record label bringing the bad state of Greek political afairs into their music. This music video makes a statement of how British and other global media view the state of Greek politics in the wrong way and mocks the government themselves as merely playing childish games. The video also has elements of governmental scandals thats have taken place in the past (i.e. sexism in the workplace, politicians in strip clubs, politicians lying on television etc). However, I believe that some of the strongest scenes in the video are of the gang singing the song about the poor state of politics in front of the Greek Parliament building in Athens. I just thought this was a great video and inspires me to do a good job in my own project, and I am a great admirer of NiVo for having the courage to create media like this. He deserves a lot of respect!

Second Script Version

I have made some quite drastic changes to the original documentary script. Here is the final form which I will be using in filming. Obviously if I come up with any other ideas before I start shooting I will post them up. I will also be posing up details of important things that have changed throughout the script at some point too.

Giasou Agglia. Me lene Manousos. Eimai 18 kai apo tin Athena.

Like many young people, I am a student and it has long been a dream of mine to travel to the UK and carry on my education at a good university. However, being from Greece it does not look like this is going to be able to happen. Don't get me wrong, my country is my favorite place in the world. We have the nicest weather... The tastiest food... The craziest sports… The hottest women... The most eventful history... And of course it is my home. I love it. The politics however, well... Welcome to my Big Fat Greek Politics. Pame!

Greece is a country that is filled to the brim with history and it is something that our people never forget. We find here that most of this history is glamorised in the eyes of the west by Hollywood, and even in western news accounts a lot of misinformation is given about our state of affairs. This means that many people fail to see past this glittering view of Greece that is portrayed on their television screens. They do not realise the vast amount that the people of this country have had to live and put up with over the years, with many of the problems even stemming from their own governments. It is perhaps this that gives Greek people in particular such a loud and rebellious and stereotype. But in context, we are a small, Eastern European country who has had many foreign invaders taking control and stripping us of our wealth, the Ottoman Turks and Hitler’s Nazis being the guiltiest parties. But this has proved merely a starting point for the economic problems currently facing Greece with modern issues making things even worse.

I am proud to say that we Greeks have always had a love of overthrowing oppressive regimes. This is not without reason. There is a strong feeling amongst the population that governments here work only for themselves, and not for the good of the people. Athens itself is of course the birthplace of democracy as we know it, so for the people to be so badly neglected here is a disgrace, as it would be anywhere else. During the 60s and 70s, the country was controlled by this man, George Papadopoulos, leader of a fascist military dictatorship. There was much violence against the people under Papadopoulos, and his oppressive methods took place mostly through use of the armed forces and the police. This soon led to a campaign of protests and uprisings amongst the people, especially young people like us. However; this government had no wish to change their policies and crushed many of these, mainly peaceful, demonstrations using in some of the most violent ways possible.

The most famous example of this is known as the Athens Polytechnic Uprising. It took place on 14th November 1973 and began as a mainly peaceful protest by students against the policies of the government. Personally I find what happened next was absolutely despicable. The students, protesting in a barricaded area were charged down by a tank, with twenty-four being shot dead, including one boy of only 17 years. As I have already said it is not in a Greeks blood to allow them to sit down and keep quiet about something like this. The uprising grew overnight in stature and in violence and by morning the fascists were gone. Now it is this same passion for the good of the Greek population as a whole I believe is being shown through today’s rioters and protesters against the present government in Greece.

The state of the Greek economy has become a joke in the eyes of many Europeans. Many do not understand why the people of Greece have such a problem with paying increased taxes in order to help the economy. After all they got themselves into these problems in the first place right? Wrong. The political situation in Greece became no less complex than it had been under military rule. The system is now made up (like in the UK) of two parties, PASOK and Nea Democratia. During the 1990s the newly elected PASOK government introduced what they described as new and modern liberal ideas. It all sounded very promising, but this modernisation of Greece included the entering of the country into the single European currency.

To be able to do this they needed to save money. This task was undertaken by severely cutting national welfare, completely neglecting the healthcare system and extensively privatising many of the nations businesses. The government claimed that this would be good for the country as a whole; however because of this the average wage for a Greek person ranges from about a half to a third of the amount paid to someone in the UK, with many people struggling to even buy food at regulated EU prices. The situation became so bad that after the year 2000 at least a third of the population were living at or below the poverty line. What happened next? More cuts with the education system being more or less completely destroyed. This is where my problems lie. Not only because of the poor state of the schools I have no chance of even applying for university, but should I even get the chance I will simply not be able to afford to go.

I have already told you that one of my dreams is being able to go to a good university and study. My friends at school always called me the Vivliofágos (the Bookworm) because I always used to have a book in my hand. Now I still read, but mostly on the internet to get a feeling of the outside world, perhaps too much. I have recently been reading about the British expenses scandal and the uproar it caused in the UK. I hate to say it, but in Greece and much of the rest of Europe this almost laughable. This is purely because the same thing happens here on a daily basis and on a much larger scale. Remember how betrayed and outraged everyone was over that one scandal. Now imagine this. In Greece we had almost fifty scandals of equal size and controversy from within our government as yours in only fifty four months. And people wonder why we are unhappy. This situation is made no better by the role of the police force. I have also recently seen on the internet, this footage from London of students being mistreated by the police. Again, this is another common occurrence in Greece with many people viewing the police here in the same light as they did under the military dictatorship. Their methods of dealing with even the most simple of situations have been described as brutal and thuggish, and in the main they are perceived as being puppet soldiers for the governments used to put down any opposition that may come their way, no matter how innocent or peaceful.

In fact it was this problem with the police that sparked recent rioting in the first place. Let me tell you the story of a Greek boy, three younger than myself, who was out on the night of December 6^th 2008 with his friends in the Athenian suburb of Eksarheia. He and his friends were doing what any young people would do on a night out; they were out laughing, joking, and (crucially) voicing their opinions. The boy and his friends were confronted by two police officers who disagreed with what was being said. The boy’s name was Alexandros Grigoropoulos and that night he was shot dead by one of the two police officers. Like me, Alex was a young man deeply frustrated by the poor situation he had been put in by his government and by letting his feelings be known he suffered the ultimate price. What kind of democracy is that? This tragedy proved to be the final straw for the Greek people and following his death began national unrest, strikes, protests and anarchism against the government who had been deemed responsible. A resurrection of the uprising in 1973 had begun. Scenes like this became common all over Greece and similar protests became common throughout other major world cities, including London, Paris, Copenhagen and Rome.

If the situation was not bad enough, by 2010 things were spiralling completely out of control. The economy was completely crippled. The government had made things no better in its lies to the people, through its corruption and through its over spending on needless projects. The issue of the police may even have been overlooked had the government invested in other areas of public interest, but this was never going to happen. On May 5^th scenes like these returned to the streets of Greece. The introduction of further austerity measures in exchange for a €110bn bailout merely worsened the situation. People who have no education, no healthcare, no jobs, no prospects and a future of depression and poverty were now being forced to take further wage cuts, face even higher taxes and have none of this money put back into the country. A mass demonstration and a national strike took place on this day in protest to these unfair requests. How can people who can barely afford food manage on less money and increased taxes? Would the people of the UK stand by quietly and watch this happen to their country? I don’t think so.

What angers me about what is going on here in Greece is the attitude taken by many western societies that we are morally wrong to protest. The idea that this movement is merely communist or anarchist is completely wrong and I am outraged that it has been portrayed as such by the global media. The protests and the violence in Greece are being fought against a capitalist regime which has completely failed to deliver freedom and democracy to its people. People have said to me that the Greek people are morally wrong to protest as they have done and that we are no better than the government itself if we do. All I can say in response is that if things are not drastically changed, things will never recover and ask in return how can we expect to see solutions and progress made by the very same people who caused to the problem in the first place? Whether you agree with what is happening here is entirely your decision, I have no influence on that. I will however say that if people are being mistreated, do they not have right to stand up and fight? Democracy here is not yet dead, it has only been forgotten and we need to again remind those at the top what is most important.

Kalinihta Agglia.

Epharisto.

Documentary Theme Music

Kaneis Lathos - Maro Litra featuring TNS

Another quick post today. I have decided to use the above peice of music as the theme of my documentary. It is modern, it has a good beat, it is Greek but apart from all of that it also has quite a dark edge to it. This is the sort of feeling I want to give the documentary. The music is special as it can be seen at face value as quite an upbeat song, but when used in different ways it can also bring in other emotions that correspond with images onscreen. This is why I believe it is the perfect peice to use. The title 'Kaneis Lathos' translates as 'Make no mistakes' which is quite relevent to the message being put across by the people towards the Greek government; to make no more mistakes otherwise change will come.

Development of Ideas

Given the uproar among students over the raising of University fees, I have decided to use this to my advantage in my documentary. As young people are my target audience and it is effecting them so much, I have decided to introduce a theme such as this to dwell on, giving them yet more in relation to the character on screen and more of a common purpose too. Whilst changing my script I will be taking developments such as this into account and putting them in when needbe to add another dimension to the programme. There are also other minor changes that I have made to the script which I will explain in a later post.

A thought occurs...

Only a quick post today.

I am currently going over my original script to check it over and make it more quirky in places.

Whilst I have been doing this I have started thinking about how to submit my final peice of work.

I do not believe that five or six minutes is in any way long enough to produce a good documentary. Therefore I have decided to go with my instinct and go with however long my final peice of work happens to be. I can then edit it later to make it fit, or I could submit what I believe to be the best five minutes of the documentary. Whatever happens, I do not want to miss out on any important details just to cram everything in in a very scrappy and unorganised way.

Sorry OCR!!!! :P

Starting Script

Giasou Paidia. Me lene Manousos. Eimai 18 kai apo tin Kriti stin Ellada.

Like many young people, I am a student and it has long been a dream of mine to travel to the UK and carry on my education at a good university. However, being from Greece this dream is slowly drifting away from me. People in England may be aware of the recent rioting and protests that have taken place here, however from the research I have done, I am unsure whether or not you realise why they are happening and who is behind them. In many ways I am proud of my nationality, however the way things are run over here make many things very difficult to do, with getting a good education being very high on that list. I feel it is important that the people of the UK and Europe know the truth, what is really happening here, both sides of the argument. This is my story. This is my Big Fat Greek Politics. Pame.

Greece is a country filled to the brim with history, both good and bad. We find here that much of our history is glamorised by the global media, with films such as 300 and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin giving a rose tinted view on what has happened here in the past. However many people fail to see past this and don’t realise how much the people here have had to put up with, even from their own government. Put into context, we are a small, Eastern European country who has had many foreign invaders taking control and stripping us of our wealth with the Ottoman Turks and Hitler’s Nazis being the guiltiest parties. This was merely a starting point for the economic problems currently facing Greece with modern problems making things even worse.

Here in Greece we have a history of overthrowing oppressive regimes, with the general feeling amongst the population that governments are there for their own benefit, and not that of the general public. During the 1960s and 70s, the country was under the control of a military fascist dictatorship under the guidance of a man called Giorgos Papadopoulos. The violence and oppressive methods used by this dictatorship through means of both the armed forces and the police soon led to a campaign of protests and uprisings amongst the general population. The government had no wish to change their policies and crushed many of these mainly peaceful demonstrations using force. One such demonstration during November 1973 even led to the charging down of a barricaded area with a tank and the shooting dead of roughly 24 protesters. The people however, outraged by what had happened, started to fight back and by morning the government was overthrown. It is this passion for the good of the population that you see today also in the rioters and the protesters of today’s government, although for very different reasons.

The current political problems in Greece can and have been compared to those of the military dictatorship. With neither of today’s main two political parties, PASOK and Nea Democratia, showing any real desire to actually help sort out any of the problems facing Greek society today, despite the promises they have made. It can be argued that the welfare of the state is being overridden by the personal greed of politicians both in office and in opposition. Reading about the recent British expenses scandal is laughable in Greece with the same thing and much worse happening here on a daily basis. Another comparison that can be made to the dictatorship is the role of much of the police force. Their methods have been described as brutish and thuggish amongst a number of many other things and not just against criminals. They are perceived as puppet soldiers of the government used to quash any feeling of revolt or revolution against the government, no matter how innocent the victim accused. It is not fair to say this about the entirety of the police force with some of the local officers being close family friends.

However, there is still evidence that many within the force are just as corrupt as those controlling them. In fact it was the shooting of fifteen year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos by a police officer in an Athenian suburb that led to the widespread protesting against the government in the first place. Like myself, Alex was a young man frustrated by the poor situation his government had placed him in, and when verbally confronted by the police officer about his views he let his feelings be known, which unfortunately led to his unnecessary and untimely death. This tragedy proved to be the catalyst to fight against oppression once again with protesting and riots being inevitable.

The state of the Greek economy has become a joke in the eyes of many Europeans, with many not understanding why the people of Greece have such a problem with paying increased taxes in order to help the economy. After all they got themselves into these problems in the first place right? Wrong. Alex’s death shook the ground for an even greater social movement against the government, whom the Greek people feel have got them into all of this financial trouble in the first place. During the 1990s the newly elected PASOK government introduced what they described as new and modern liberal ideas. This modernisation of Greece included the entering of the country into the single European currency. However, to be able to do this they needed to save money. They did this by severely cutting national welfare, completely neglecting the healthcare system and extensively privatising many of the nations businesses. The government claimed that this would be good for the country as a whole; however the opposite was evident from the state of the general public. The average wage for a Greek person ranges from about a half to a third of the amount paid to someone in either the UK or the rest Western Europe, with many people struggling to even buy food at normal EU prices. The situation has become so bad that after the year 2000 at least a third of the population were living at or below the poverty line.

This would not have seemed so bad if the government were at least trying to put money back in to help people. Nevertheless, what money the country did make always seemed to go into the back pocket of the politicians or was wasted on useless project such as the huge Christmas Tree in the Athenian central plaza, which was duly burned down as a result of the 2008 protests. It is this theft and waste of people’s money that has aroused such anger within the people. The PASOK government did in the end fall due to their lack of social policies and Nea Democratia took over, though mostly due to PASOK’s loss of supporters than their gain. Unfortunately Nea Democratia took PASOK’s corruption to a whole new level, with even more cuts in public spending and even more tax increases issued on a public who were basically broke anyway. The Education system has been particularly affected by this bid to try and save money. Under PASOK the education system was at least readily available to all, but under the new leadership it was quite literally destroyed leaving people like me with no education, meaning no job prospects leading to basic poverty for me in the future. The destruction of the education of those who could lead the country out of this dire situation in the future must surely be seen as a step backwards rather than forwards by the government and one which is seeing many of Greece’s gifted young people pursuing careers abroad.

The riots themselves are a reflection on how the Greek people feel neglected and betrayed by the governments which they entrusted with their not only their money, but their lives. It is an outcry that something needs to drastically change; otherwise revolution could well be inevitable. From what I have seen from the British press, an idea has spread that this is a revolt led by both Communists and young Anarchists. This is not true. Although they are involved, this is a popular social movement against a Capitalist regime that has proved to have no interest in the rights or needs of the Greek people, with the majority feeling the need for change. I am not going to tell you what to think. Whether you believe these riots are right or not is your decision. I will however express my own opinion that although violence is wrong, sometimes the only way to get what you need in life is to stop and make a stand. I am neither communist nor anarchist, however I believe the suffering of my people needs to end now, and if revolution brings around the chance of that happening then I will support it to the very end. The original idea of this documentary was to give you a real insight into what is happening here, and I hope I have succeeded in doing that.

S’epharisto gia tin prosihi, kai ta logia tou NiVo:

Ellada, Signomi, An thes n’allaksognomi [Greece I am sorry, but if you want me to change my mind]

Prepei ki esi na matheis n’agapas [You must learn to love me back]

Papse na me paideveis kai na me koroidevis [Stop giving me a hard time and messing me about]

Kai ta oneira mou Ellada, mi skorpas.. [And please don’t throw away my dreams]

Planning & Research: What's left to do!

So far I have done the majority of what is required, however I still wish to do a few more things before moving onto the actual filming stage:

• I need to finish off the rest of my potential script. This is near completion but not quite finished yet.
• I will then adapt this formal script into a more light hearted one which suits my audience more but still exercises the point of the documentary.
• I may possibly storyboard the layout of the documentary, however I prefer to go on instinct and go with what looks the best after filming on these occasions.
• No one wants to be filmed or recorded from my target audience about the issue of the documentary which is REALLY annoying. However I will make one last concerted to try and get some footage before I give up all together!
• I will also need to start roughly designing the ancillary tasks.

I hope to have completed the majority of these after the half term break so keep watching the blog to keep up to date with my progress.

Acting

In the documentary there will be only one actor needed, and that will be the presenter. I am happy to take on this role as it means that I can firstly record at my own convenience and I will also be able to go over what is recorded over and over again until I am completely happy with what has been produced, instead of demoralising an actor for hours on end! I also believe this is a good idea as I know and am passionate about the subject of the documentary. This will save me from having to explain the issue to an actor who will then have to try and understand what is going on as well as reinterperating it and putting it across in his own way. I also speak a good amount of Greek so it will mean that the Greek character will have a decent, believable accent as well as being able to pronounce difficult words in the correct way. It sounds a bit vain, but I am really looking forward to it! :P

Location and Presentation Planning

In terms of how I want the layout of my documentary to look, I am taking a lot of inspiration from my original music viedeo research. Because the documentary is for young people, I am trying to go for a format which they will be comfortable and farmiliar with, and the music video format is one which the vast majority of teenagers across the developed world are aware of. Many R&B or HipHop music videos have the main characters/ the singers onscreen with a variety of objects against a plain background, which is usually either black or white. The character will be wearing contrasting clothes to the background to make him more visible onscreen.

I want my presenting character, Manousos to be portrayed in a way such as this. This way I hope that the audience will relate more to him as a young character, who has the same sorts of feelings and attitudes as they do, but whose cultural background is the only difference. I also plan to use Greek objects in the background such as Komboloi, Frappe and more modern things that are popular in Greece such as their Mobile Phones (which incidentally you can never get them off!) to show that although he is different, in many ways he is the same as the audience.

In the parts of the documentary where the presenter is not the main focus, video clips and images will be used along with voice overs to tell the story and show how things progress. The internet is full of video clips and pictures that will be useful for this project and it will be my main source for such parts of the documentary. From the audience research that I gathered I have decided not to include any interviews as part of the project. From the comments that people gave me, they wanted to be given the facts so they could make up their own mind of what to think, rather than having other peoples opinions thrust apon them.

In the background there will be a variety of modern music being played, however although the genres of music will be very similar to what is listened to by those in the audience, the music itself will be Greek, again linking the subject of the documentary to the audience it is aimed at. I will post details of what music I will probably use later in the project, however I think I will fully decide after I have filmed and put together the basics of the video so that it fits in properly.

From the surveys, a lot of young people thought that presentation of the documentary was a very important factor in making them watch. I hope that my ideas here will not only fulfill their wishes, but also be seen as trying out a very new and modern take on the layouts of documentaries. Fingers crossed that it will be a success!

Survey: Interesting Statistics

From the survey answers I have posted below I have made some charts of some of the things that I have found out. The two below are the ones which interest me the most and will help me in making my documentary.

This is a pie chart showing how often those who took part in my survey watch documentaries. From what I have found out, the majority do watch documentaries at some time or another with roughly 40% actually watching them quite alot. Although no was brave enough to say that they watch them all the time, it was encouraging that only 10% of the people asked actually didnt watch documentaries at all.

Another part of the survey which I found really useful was when I asked which parts of the documentary young people found the most important. I asked each person to pick two answers out of the choices given above. What I found really interesting was that people told me instead of finding out what other people's opinions on the topic of the documentary were, they would much rather be given a good amount of facts from which they could make up their own opinion. I was also interested in seeing that the pesentation of the documentary was also high on peoples list, with it even being above the use of evidence and the idea behind the documentary.

Survey: What do young people want from Documentaries?

For some primary Audience Research I decided to hand out some surveys to young people about what they wanted to see in a documentary which would make it more relevant to them. I chose people who roughly matched the description of Lucy and Tom earlier as they are my main targetted audience. I have scanned in each of the surveys completed below. I found reading through the answers very interesting and it will no doubt help me in making my own documentary. To see what people have written you can click on any of the images below to see a larger version.

         

The Presenter of my Documentary

Manousos is a Greek student. He is from a working class family, those who are worst affected by the riots. Although he is angry, because he has at least a basic education he is able to see both sides of the argument. He is passionate about the subject and agrees with the principle of the riots in general, however he can see why people in the UK would be confused about what is happening. He of course is similar to Lucy and Tom as he has the asparations to do well, but unlike them he feels unable to fulful his aspirations due to the lack of support from his government. He feels that it is important for them to know the truth behind the riots and to be aware that this is not the end of them by any shot.

My Target Audience

Lucy and Tom are examples from my target audience sector. They are young, educated people with an open mind and good career prospects. Being students, they are of course full of life and always up for having a laugh. They are well into popular music and celebrity gossip, however they are also news aware with strong opinions of what they believe is right and wrong. The poor state of the economy at the moment is having an effect on everyone, even students such as Lucy and Tom, which makes me think they may be interested in investigating how other young people around the world are being affected, making them think more openly of how lucky they are. A young presenter will be used to connect with the target audience and use of popular Greek variations on the music they enjoy will hopefully help this further.

Rough Documentary Outline

1. Introduction
2. Background to Greek Politics
3. Riot Catalyst - The Death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos
4. How young people reacted
5. It was not just a student revolt
6. The Reawakening of 2010
7. Where we are now
8. Conclusion

Estimated time: Six Minutes (Roughly 50 seconds per section)

Audience Research Planning

Audience Research One
The showing of a rioting clip. How does this make you feel?

• How does this clip make you feel?
• Why does it make you feel like this?
• How do you think the people in the video are feeling?
• What do you think has sparked off this feeling?
• Do you know what and where this is taking place?

Audience Research Two
General questionnaire about the riots. What do you know?

• Do you know any Greek people?
• Have you ever been to Greece?
• Were you aware of riots in Greece in 2008?
• Were you aware of the follow up riots earlier this year?
• Do you know what the event was that triggered off these riots?
• Do you understand why they took place?
• If you know people with Greek links how do you think they would have felt at the time?
• Did you realise that the main cause for the riotting was that young people felt mistreated and betrayed by their government?
• How does this make you feel?
• How would you feel if as a young person, your future prospects and the future of your country had been jeapordised by the poor actions of the government you trusted and elected into parliament?

Audience Research Three
Questionnaire about young people's documentaries. What do you want?

• Do you often watch documentaries?
• Do you enjoy watching documentaries and why?
• Which part of a documentary do you feel is most important?
• Facts
• Opinions
• Presentation
• Use of evidence
• Being an original idea
• Do you feel a documentary should be biased? Explain why.
• Is there anything that you feel could improve the content of a documentary?
• Do you feel that documentaries are aimed at audiences of young adults?
• Is there any way that documentaries could be made more relevant for a younger audience?
• Is there anything that could be included to make a younger audience member feel more in touch with the issue in the documentary?

Mood Board - Greek Rioting

In comparison to the last post, this beautiful and culturally inspiring country turns into chaos, as the pictures below show.

Mood Board - Modern Greek Life

Here I have developed my mood board further by placing images most modern Greeks associate with everyday.

Greek Riots 2010 - Research

2010

Background:

• Giorgos Papandreou comes to office with his PASOK government.
• March 5^th 2010 they passed the cost cutting, Economy Protection Bill.
• On April 23^rd requested a bailout from the EU and International Monetary Fund.

Austerity measures

Included:

• Public sector pay cuts
• Pension reductions
• New taxes on company profits
• Increase tax on luxuries
• Increased VAT

The measure aimed to save around €30 billion through to 2012.

Through doing this, the EU and IMF would agree to give Greece an immediate €45 billion loan charging interest of roughly 5%. The total package would add up to roughly €110 billion. Papandreou submitted this bill to his parliament on May 4^th. The bill was put up for a vote which would take place on May 6^th.

This would become the biggest government overhaul in a generation. However the Greek people already feeling cheated by their governments for getting them into this mess in the first place did not agree that they should be the ones who were paying for this huge debt, especially seeing as they would be the ones feeling the cuts the most in the first place. New Democracy (who had recently lost office) vowed to vote against the bill, however being in the minority it was predicted it would probably pass anyway.

Greek Riots 2008 - Research

Background Rioting

2006 –             Government attempts to reform Education system

2007 –             Student groups begin demonstrations which end in conflict with the police.

2008 –             Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens appointed.

2008

Murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos

• 
  
  Fatally shot by police officer Epaminondas Korkoneas
• 
  
  Protesting in the Eksarcheia district of Athens
• 
  
  Part of protesting group of Students
• 
  
  Led to widespread rioting and engaging of police.
• 
  
  Riots spread to Thessaloniki and then protests in the rest of Europe including London, Paris, Frankfurt, Copenhagen and Madrid.
• 
  
  Newspaper Kathimerini called the rioting ‘the worst Greece has seen since the restoration of democracy in 1974’.

Archbishop proclaimed "the youths are not enraged for no reason”

Although this was the catalyst of the rioting, there were deeper reasons lying behind the revolt. There was a widespread feeling of frustration from young Greeks about the economic and educational state of the country which is affecting the spiralling unemployment rate.

People in general also feel betrayed by the Government as the inefficiency and corruption it promotes only makes the situation worse. As it is a socialist government people feel that they should be working harder to make things better for the people, rather than for personal profit.

Communism – KKE

The Communist Party of Greece used the death of young Alexandros as a way of gaining political support. It showed the police’s role in the shooting as escalating authoritarianism, with them being used almost as soldiers to lay down their ‘marshal law’. This was a clever move by the communists, playing on the fear of ordinary Greeks who already view the police in a suspicious manner due to their corruption and ‘thuggish’ methods. The important thing to remember is that this was NOT a communist uprising.

PM Kostas Karamanlis of ‘New Democracy’ declared the passing of 7 new laws to help out those businesses who had suffered loss or damage during the riots. The measures also aided those businesses who were unaffected, which was seen to aid the people and offer jobs to level out the rate of unemployment.

The Greek public saw this as at last a small positive move by the government, however they were not told how much these laws would affect the already spiralling debt.

My Big Fat Greek Mood Board

For my mood board I have decided to use videos of pictures which display certain characteristics that I wish my piece of work to carry. Below is a very stereotypical version of Greece, something anyone from this country may expect to find when visiting as a tourist. However, when you compare it to my other videos posted it you will find that life in Greece is not all as nice and relaxed as you would imagine.

In many respects this is a true representation of the country. Ordinarily life goes on relatively quietly and peacefully until something goes wrong. The Greeks are a very passionate breed and if they do not like something then they will not hesitate to tell you about it. Years of oppression from other cultures has left them demanding only perfection from their own government, however the government themselves had other ideas. Below I have displayed the kinds of images for my mood board that I want to portray through my own piece of work. Do not get me wrong, such images do not appear very often in Greek society, but when they do they are devastating. Some people may find the images a little disturbing.

All of the images posted give me great inspiration to carry on with this documentary. As a viewer from another culture, you should be asking questions all the time, and I believe that these images will both shock and intrigue a British viewer, and it will therefore be my job as the person documenting to answer these questions through my filming.

Documentary Thoughts - One

I have found a two part documentary already made on YouTube with a lot of the material I need already on it. I have posted both below and will use the content as part of my research into the Greek riots for my documentary. This is not how I wish to present the documentary itself, but it does give a good idea about how some of the content might work in my own peice. The first part of the episode is posted at the top, the second at the bottom. I will post my notes on the events when I next have the time.

Part One

Part Two

U-Turn!

I have now returned to my original idea of the documentary. I am aware that I have concentrated the majority of my research thus far on the idea of doing a music video based on mise en scene and representation, however I believe this will also come in useful as I work on a documentary as I can apply what I have learned here and be more creative on the documentary because of this.

My original reason for wanting to do the music video was that I believed it would be too much of a strain on my other A Levels if I was to do the documentary, however I now realise that it would probably take up as much, or even more time than I had thought. Also, because of the huge amount of scope I have in the making of the music video I am finding it very hard to come up with one definitive idea of what to do.

I have already outlined my idea for a documentary earlier in the blog. I want to create a documentary based around the history behind the greek riots, showing the lack of knowledge people have here in the UK of what it is actually about and explaining through a young Greek man's eyes how he feels. As he is young the audience will hopefully through this feel some connection with the character and thus will listen more to what he has to say and will feel the emotions he is feeling. I guess this adds another dimension to the documentary rather than just basing it on plain facts.

I have a very clear image in my head about what I want to and how I can do it. In some ways it was a very good thing that I did the research into the music videos before I decided to swap, as I want to make the documentary something a little more in touch with a modern audience than what an ordinary documentary would do e.g. using a young presenter who is talking about a passion rather than a subject/ bringing in modern influences such as music which young people can relate with to etc. Also I feel that because it is a subject I feel so strongly about, I would come up with a very good peice of work, whereas the fact that I am struggling to come up with an idea for the music video means that I probably am not best suited to creating one.

I have really run out of time to keep switching ideas now, so this one is going to have to stick!

Ευχή μου τύχη!

This Years Coursework Objectives

For this years coursework I have set myself ten objectives to fulfill throughout the year:

1. I will be more creative when coming up with an idea.
2. I will try and develop ideas as far as possible.
3. I will take into account my research when creating the piece of work.
4. I will take into account other people's advice and input when asked.
5. I will put more effort into the planning and research on my blog.
6. I will look into my subject area as far as I possibly can before filming.
7. I will try out more creative camera angles when shooting.
8. I will only use people who I think are good for the part needed.
9. I will put my time outside of sixth from to good use when filming.
10. I will not take any decisions relating to the final product lightly.

Music Video Thoughts - Three

I was searching YouTube for some new music and I came across two more videos which I really liked. I have posted them up on here so that I can refer back to them in the future should I want to. Sorry, they are both in Greek again guys, but sadly thats just the kind of music that I listen to! Below each of the videos I have posted what I like about each one and why.

'Otan Se Eiha Protodei' by Professional Sinnerz

Although I am not the greatest fan of this song (in fact I think it is awful!!!), I do find the video itself interesting. I find the use of the overhead camera angle and the almost stop motion aspects really unusual, and yet somewhat effective. I think this shows a lot of creativity from the director of the video as I have never seen it done in any video before and is something I can take inspiration from in terms of trying lots of different effect, camera angles especially.

'Erota H Polemo' by Anna Vissi feat. Goin' Through

Again what I love about this video is the simplicity of it all. Like with the song by Mihalis Hatzigiannis I posted previously in 'Music Videos Thoughts - One' I feel that all of the shots in this video are all very simple and yet put together very well. Although they are similar in that respect, you have to say that the two are completely different in all other respects aside from the fact they both feature the singers and not much else. Something else I really love about this video is the way they layer and edit the mise en scene using digital software, something that I will be able to do this year through the use of after effects on the school computers. The video I think also has a very dark quality to it with its use of mainly reds and blacks, combining well with the music itself which I believe is very important when making the video. You want to create a peice to fit the music, not create the peice and just sticking a randomly chosen song on top.