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THESIS

l

This is to certify that the
thesis entitled

AGAINST ALL ODDS
The Bittersweet Youth

presented by

Yu Ying Wu

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

M . A . degree in Te lecommunicat ion

WV

_r

 

Major professor

Date April 5, 2001

 

0—7639 MS U is an Afﬁrmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

 

 

LIBRARY

Michigan State

University

 

 

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DATE DUE

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Weﬁaana

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6/01 cJCIRC/DateDue.p65-p.15

 

AGAINST ALL ODDS:
The Bittersweet Youth

By

Yu Ying Wu

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan Stage University
In partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
For the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Telecommunication

2001

ABSTRACT
AGAINST ALL ODDS
The Bittersweet Youth

By

Yu Ying Wu

The young people in Taiwan experience a very constricted life due to the rigid
educational system and traditional social value. Their time of youth is full of exams that
force them to postpone their dreams for the future. However, they still keep the hope to
ﬁnd whom they are and what they want to do in the future.

This thesis will provide the production of a documentary that will reveal the struggle
between these young people’s self concept and the outer world. Ultimately, it is intended
to help the audiences understand that the congruence of self-concept and choice in life
would help them ﬁnd a better life.

This paper is a supplement to the video program in which the producer’s motivation
and video design methods are revealed; important documentary theories and methods are

brieﬂy reviewed; and the result of a group evaluation and its implications are presented.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The making of this thesis would not have completed without a lot of people’s kind
help and support. I’d like to thank them here for helping me step into a new stage of my
life.

I have learned so much from Professor Robert Albers. His instructions of how to
make a good documentary will always be an important guide for me to keep on the track
of making documentaries in the future. I also have to thank him for his patience to help
me translate my interview into English at the postproduction stage of making this
documentary.

My committee member, Lisa Whiting, and Tom Lietz support me greatly by help me
through some technical problems of editing. Lisa also gave me the greatest conﬁdence
on what I have made and what I will be making in the future.

I would like to thank engineer Gary Roettger for his time to help me when I need it.
I am grateﬁil to any one who participates in the production procedure.

Finally I have to thank my parents and Jim for their supporting me to search for my

dream and fulﬁll it. My life would not be complete without them.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................. 1
CHAPTER II
THE EDUCATION SYSTEM AND YOUTH SELF CONCEPT IN TAIWAN .......... 3
Nation Wide College Entrance Examination ........................................... 3
Introduction ....................................................................... 3
The Education Selection System ................................................ 4
Current Issues ...................................................................... 5
Self Concept Development .............................................................. 6
Chinese and Western Perspective .............................................. 6
Adolescent Self Concept and Academic Achievement ......................... 8
Parenting Practices in Taiwan ................................................... 9
CHAPTER III
HISTORY AND THEORY OF DOCUMENTARY ....................................... 12
French Lumiere ................................. ' ........................................ 13
Robert J. Flaherty and American Documentary ..................................... 14
Dziga Verto and The Soviet Documentary ........................................... 16
John Grieson and The British Documentary ......................................... 17
CHAPTER IV
DEFINING DOCUMENTARY ................................................................ 20
Deﬁnition of Documentary. . ............................................................ 20
Documentary Style ....................................................................... 22
CHAPTER V
PRODUCING A VIDEO DOCUMENTARY . ................................................. 25
Commtmic'ation Objective ................................................................. 26
The Procedure of Making the Documentary ............................................. 26
Pre-production ..................................................................... 26
Production ....................................................................... 28
Post Production .................................................................. 30
Target Audience ...................................................................... 31

iv

CHAPTER VI

CONTENT DESIGN ........................................................................... 34

CHAPTER VII

EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION ...................................................... 37
Group Evaluation ..................................................................... 37
Conclusion ............................................................................... 41

CHPATER I

Introduction

People begin to ask the question of who am 1, what am I going to be during their
early adolescence. In Taiwan, under the competitive education system that stresses
scores on exams and the National Entrance Exam to higher education, young people
have to strive harder ﬁnd their direction. This thesis will involve the production of a
documentary that will reveal the struggle between these young people’s self-concept
and the outer world.

Both Lin Rau Chieh and Conrad Hsien have grown up under the educational
system in Taiwan. They had to pass one entrance exam before senior high school,
and another one before college. The drilling preparations for these exams and the
high expectations of their families forced them to postpone their dreams for their
future. However, these dreams are not forgotten. Once they are freed from the
constriction of the Taiwanese educational system, they try to listen to their own voice
and live the life that they really love:

Besides their stories, this documentary also examines the social systems and

values that inﬂuence our young people today. Within a society that categorizes

people into elite and non elite by these exams, young people could easily lose their
own voice and lead their life trying to meet the standard ands expectations of others.

By using real life footage and interviews. this documentary paints a picture of
these young people‘s experience. Ultimately the producer hopes the audience will
understand that congruence of self-concept and choice in life would lead them to a

better life.

CHAPTER II

The Education System and Youth Self Concept In Taiwan

Nationwide College Entrance Examination
1. Introduction

In Taiwan, about one hundred thousand high school graduates engage in a
national ritual of taking the Joint Entrance Examination of Universities and Colleges
each year. Yet only about 40- 50 % of students will actually get to enter a university
or college.l This competitive selection process for admission to higher education
has brought various social criticisms and psychological concern for these young
adolescents into the spotlight. In the psychological dimension, there is permanent
tension, achievement motives mingled with chronic anxiety, the overwhelming
pressure of the expectations of family members, the elation of success, and in most
cases, the despair of failure. The exam system has been criticized for the heavy
psychological burden it places on both youngsters and their families. The intensive

drilling and rote memorization involved in preparing for the exams has also been

 

' Lin Wen Yin, The effects of National Entrance Exam of Colleges and Universities. Education

Research Information. 1993.11, p. 105

denounced as suffocating students’ potential creativity and handicapping them to
pedagogical innovation.2
2. The Education and Selective System

When a high school graduate registers for the Entrance Exam, he/she decides the
basic ﬁeld in which he/she would like to study. There are four areas: Group A-
Natural Science and Engineering; Group 8- Arts and Humanities; Group C-
Biological, Medical and Agriculture Science; Group D- Social Science, Commercial
and Legal Studies. All the departments of the universities and colleges are also
classiﬁed into the above mentioned four groups. Each applicant can only apply for
admission to departments within any one of the four groups. On his/her application
form, an applicant indicates his/her preference in departments as well as the
institution to which the department is attached. He/she has to list these choices
according to the order of his/her preferences. This is a very important step because,
afterwards he/she will be admitted to a department of a speciﬁc university or college
based on that order and no change would be allowed. Many applicants list up to
some sixty or more choices of department they would like to attend. However, only

those with very high scores gain admission to both the ﬁeld of study and institution of

 

Wei-fan Kuo, “Nation-wide College Entrance Examination ~Current Practice and Critical Issues."

National Taiwan Normal University press. 1993. p 3-4

their ﬁrst choice. In most cases, choices are not honored since entrance to a certain
department is based on the score of the exam.
3. Current Issues

The high school curriculum and teaching are greatly inﬂuenced by the powerful
effect of the Entrance Exam. Children are exposed to the pressure of the entrance
exam early in their education. As Professor Kuo wrote. “They are conditioned to
view schooling as truly relevant only when it helps them to climb up the education

3 A common

ladder and to be successful in the next level of entrance exam. “
assumption is that getting into one of the better high schools is a good indicator of
one’s chance of being admitted into a more prestigious institution of higher learning.
This assumption clearly leads to hot competition for admission to high schools that
are highly ranked academically. “High schools are criticized for only serving as
preparatory agents for the entrance exam by conﬁning their educational processes
toward this single purpose.“4

The coaching service is an enterprise that developed in responsive to the

Entrance Exam competitiveness. Students come to coaching schools for drilling

after their regular classes. Some coaching services are designed for students who

 

3 Wei-fan Kuo, p. 6
4 Wei-fan Kuo. p. 8

failed the Entrance Exam in the previous year to devote their whole time to prepare
exclusively for the Entrance Exam. As portrayed in the documentary, Nan-Yang
Street in Taipei is known for it’s coaching services.

The preparation for the test is another issue. The debate centers on whether the
test construction for the JEE subjects should be an achievement test based on the
estimation of what has already been learned in high school, or rather a scholastic
aptitute test aimed primarily at forecasting a student’s success in his/her future at a

university.

Self Concept Development
1. Chinese and Western Perspective

The term self-concept has many deﬁnitions and meanings. It is often
treated ”like people often treat money; highly important but spent carelessly.”5
Generally, self-concept is central to personality. In modern terms, it is represented as a
central self-schema. According to Baron and Byme, self-concept is “a system of

affective and cognitive structures about the self that lends coherence to each

 

5 Graasfsma & Bosma, “Identity and development : an interdisciplinary approach," ed. Hark A.

Bosma, Thousand Oaks, Calif, 1994, p. 181

individual’s self relevant experiences.” 6 A person’s self-schema serves the function
of a cognitive framework, to guide behavior and process information about the self.
It represents ”. . .. all of our current knowledge and existing memories about ourselves;
and our conception of what we were like in the past, what we are like now, and what
we may be like in the future”7 From the western perspective, self-concept
development is viewed as a life long process. It is the circumstances of our lives and
the way we deal with these circumstances that continually shapes us as an individual.
Generally the development is divided into categories. One can be approached in
terms of speciﬁc domains, such as cognitive, social and moral, or theories of
development, such as behaviorism and psychoanalysis.8

When referring to Chinese self-concept development, scholars adopt similar
approaches or frameworks to those used by western theorists. Yet one marked
difference is that they do not diversify the viewpoints and distinctly label them into
different psychological categories. Chinese perspectives seem to build solely upon
some integrative framework, such as that of Confucianism. In traditional Confucian

thinking, the self is very well deﬁned within the social context or milieu. An

 

Baron, R. A., and Byme, D.. "Social Psycho/05»: Understanding human interaction “ 7‘’1 ed.,
Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1994, p. 214

7 Baron and Byme, 1994, p. 175

8 Baron and Byme, 1994, p.273

individual’s self, identity, and roles derive meaning from his relations with others.9
Recent research has also shown interest in the socialization of self-concept of Chinese
children and adolescents. It has been found, as in the Western literature, that
self-concept development beneﬁts from supportive relations with parents and family
harmony.l0
2. Adolescent Self-Concept and Academic Achievement

Many researchers have shown that for Asian students, it is their fear that
“ educational failure will lead to negative consequences that motivates them to strive

”11

for excellence. In terms of educational aspiration and attainment, “Chinese

students view school as a place which prepares them to earn money, acquire luxuries,
and eventually enter high status colleges and thus establish an outstanding career.”l2

American high school students are more likely to view school as a place which would

teach them to understand science, improve their critical thinking, and make them

 

9. Sing Lau, “ Self Concept Development: Is there a Concept of Self in Chinese Culture?” Growing
up the Chinese way” The Chinese University Press, 1995, p. 360

'0 Berndt, T.J., Cheung,P.C., Lau,S., Hau,K.T., and Lew,W.j.f., Perceptions of parenting in Mainland

China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong: Sex differences and societal differences. Developmental

Psychology, 29, 1993, p.156-164

Sternberg, L., Dornbusch, S., and Brown, 83., Ethnic differences in adolescent achievement: An

ecological perspective. American Psychologist. I992, 47: p.723-729

° Chen. Lee and Stevenson, “Academic Achievement and motivation of Chinese Students: .4 C ross

National Perspective. " Growing up the Chinese Way, The Chinese University Press, 1996, p.83-89

useful to the society. ‘3 The difference can be proven from the ranking of university
majors in Taiwan. The top desired majors are subject to change according to
economic development trends. Most students and the parents decide majors according
to the ranking list.

Another study that examined the preferences of Chinese high school students
conﬁrmed that the new generation of Chinese students gradually sketches out a new
destiny. The study made by Lau and Wong indicated that these adolescents placed
greater emphasis on personal and competency values. The four most important
terminal values for them were: freedom, true friendship, happiness, and a comfortable
life. ‘4 These young Chinese are tired of following the rigid and traditional cultural
formats and want to escape them.

3. Parenting Practices in Taiwan.

For young children, parents are very important part of socialization. Parenting
practices have a signiﬁcant inﬂuence on child development. With respect to
parenting practices, Baumrind’s three major types of child rearing are broadly studied.

The three major parenting typologies are authoritative, authoritarian, and

 

‘3 Lau er al,. 1995, p.250

H Lau, S.. and Wong, A. K. “Value and sex role orientation of Chinese adolescents.” International

Journal of psychology, 1992, 27(1): 3-17

pennissive.15 Authoritative parents are warm, loving, responsive and supportive.
They “respect their children‘s independence, personality, characteristics, point of view,
interests, and motives; they communicate well with their children, encourage give and
take in discussions, and are clear about the reasons for directions.” In contract,
authoritarian parents are “highly controlling, rely heavily on punitive discipline. and
provide relatively little warmth.” Finally, permissive parents are “nurturant. but lax
in disciplining and rewarding their children.”

Cross culture studies have been done to compare the parenting practices among
western cultures and Chinese culture. Mostly Chinese parenting practices are

'6 However, studies have

described as “ restrictive, controlling, or authoritarian”.
also found that the concepts of parenting practices are different between Chinese and
the western culture. While for Americans, “strictness is sometimes equated with
manifestations of parental hostility, aggression, mistrust, and dominance, for Asians,
, 17

parental strictness may be the reﬂection of parental concern, caring or involvement’

According to a research by Stevenson, Chen, and Lee in 1992, in response to young

 

'5 BaUmrind, o. 1967, I971, I978

C hiu, L. H. “C hild-rearing attitudes of C hinese. Chinese- American and .4 nglo American
mothers. " lntemational Journal of Psychology, 1987, 22, 409-419

Chao, R. K. “Beyond parental mothers and European-.4 merican mothers: Their aims of control
and other children rearing aspects related to school achievement“, Dissertation. University of

California. Los Angeles. 1992

children’s wrong doings, Chinese parents often try to discuss and explain misbehavior
to their children. However, if they continue the negative behaviors, direct forms of
discipline, such as punishment or actual use of physical punishment, would be used.‘8
To the parents, the use of authoritarian parenting was well intentioned, rather than
punitive. To the children, the parent’s use of authoritative parenting makes them
emotionally secure, and more receptive to their parents’ occasional use of

authoritarian discipline. Pro. Wu points this out in the documentary:

“ When parent’s authorization is not accepted and respected by their
children, they use physical or mental punishment to force their children
to do whatever they said. For these children, they might seek a way to
compromise. They would reason their parent’s behavior and change

their own opinion. “

 

'3 Chen, Lee, and Steveson, 1992.. P.83-89

11

CHAPTER 111

History and Theory of Documentary

The invention of cinema was the result of the artist’s, as well as the scientist’s
attempt to reproduce actuality. French People started to adopt the term of
“documentaire” in their travel ﬁlms. Films of travel and exploration helped to
sustain the early nonﬁction ﬁlm. For most people in the early years of the century,
these ﬁlms provided them a window from which to view the world. They provided
fact and fantasy. By 1908, the word “travelogue” was being used to describe the
short travel lectures.l

In the early 19205, the American Robert F Iaherty and the Russian Vertov began
laying groundwork for documentary moving pictures. The continental realists ﬁlms,
part of the avant-garde, were starting in Western Europe. Not until British John
Grierson was the documentary used as a social instrument.2

This chapter brieﬂy reviews inﬂuential ﬁgures, their theories, and their

movements in contemporary documentary history.

 

' Jack C. Ellis, The documentary Idea: A Critical History of English Language Documentary Film
and Video, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1989. p. 46 & 271
2 Jack c. Ellis,, p.271

12

French Lumiere

On March 22, 1895, the Lumieres were invited to show their ﬁrst ﬁlm, La sortie
des ouvriers de l'usine Lumiere (Workers leaving the Lumiere Factory). The ﬁrst
ﬁlm was no more than 30 seconds long, shot by a stationary camera from a ﬁxed
point. This short ﬁlm encompassed a new world of movement, an exciting novelty
that provided a view of the world that no one had ever seen this way before; what
John Grierson admired as the “ ﬁne careless rapture” of their observation.2 With his
invention of cinematographe3, Lumiere brought the documentary moving picture
closer to a reality. In Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory, Lumiere used a
theatrical device of opening and closing doors to frame the action of the arriving train
and passengers. Dai Vaughan calls the beauty of the Lumiere’s ﬁlm “ harnessing of
spontaneity“. By showing the continuation of movements, they exploited the
audience’s amazement at seeing moving pictures of familiar things. His emphasis
here was not only recording reality, but also “to shape this footage with a ﬁdelity to

the subject’s inherent nature and structure.” 5

 

2 Forsuth Hardy, ed ” The course of Realism,” Grierson on Documentary. London: Faber, 1966,
' p.199

3 C inetographe is the ﬁrst lightweight, portable camera launched in 1895.

Richard M. Barsam. A critical History of Non Fiction Film. Revised and Expanded. Indiana

University Press 1992. p.27

Barsam, p.28.

13

Robert J. Flaherty and American Documentary

While the Lumiere brothers are credited with making the ﬁrst nonﬁction ﬁlm,
Robert Flaherty was among the ﬁrst ﬁlmmakers to observe and record actual life.
John Grierson designates Flaherty as the Father of Documentary — the creator of
documentary methodology. In the 19205. F laherty made his ﬁrst ﬁlm, Nanook of the
North, in collaboration with the Eskimo subjects of the ﬁlm, to tell a story of a
real-life Eskimo family and their struggle against the bleak Arctic. He observed the
natural material in its location and interpreted the material from “a complete

6 His method was

understanding from inside of such material and its relationships.”
to immerse himself in the subject, to shoot everything to capture cinematographic
images that would preserve the realities of what he perceived. It is in Monan, his
second ﬁlm, that Grierson ﬁrst applied the term “documentary” in English. The
realistic day-in-the-life narrative structure of Moana attempts to provide an actual
account of Samone’s life with its beautiful prayers, dance, and almost extinct ritual
art—tattoos. F laherty employed what John Grierson called “the ﬁrst principles of
documentary”:

It must master its material on the spot, and come in intimacy to ordering

it. ....... It is important to make the primary distinction between a method,

 

6 Paul Rotha, Documentary Film, 3rd rev. ed. New York: Hastings House, 1952, p. 106

14

which describes only the surface value of a subject, and the method, which
more explosively reveals the reality of it. You photograph the natural life,
but you also, by yourjuxtaposition of detail, create an interpretation of it.
(Grierson on Documentary I48)
Dziga Verto and The Soviet Documentary
The Russian propagandist tradition was a product of social and political events
that took place after the 1917 revolution, with both political and technological factors
inﬂuencing ﬁlms produced. The beginning of the Russian nonﬁction ﬁlmmaking
can be seen most clearly in the work of Dziga Verto. In 1917, at the age of
twenty-two, he completed his ﬁrst theoretical manifesto, “About the Disarmament of
Theatrical Cinema.” In 1918, Verto joined the Moscow Cinema Committee and
assisted the production of Film Weekly (Kino-nedelia), the ﬁrst Soviet newsreel,
which appeared in forty-three installments. During this period, Verto began to
develop his cinematic principles of “life caught unawares” and of montage. In 1922,
Verto began to produce the Kino Pravda series. Verto invented what became known
as cinema verite, “photographing ‘life unawares,’ subsequently restructuring it
through editing, and thus creating a new construction with its own aesthetic validity

that is far more revealing than the life it represents. “7

 

7 Barsam, p. 69

15

For Verto, the camera eye was better than human eye, not only because it had the
technological ability to transform reality, but also “because it was not limited
existentially by its human qualities and was, thus, inﬁnitely perfectible by man.” 8
John Grierson and The British Documentary Film

John Grierson was the father of the documentary ﬁlm movement in the
English-speaking world. He was the person most responsible for developing the
concept of the Soviet propaganda documentary into the British documentary ﬁlm,
introducing the Western audience to several important Soviet nonﬁction ﬁlms by
Eisenstein, Vertov, Turin, and Dovzhenko. 9 For Grierson, documentary ﬁlm should
not only provide a “creative treatment of actuality,” but also should be used to control
and manipulate the audience. Financially supported by the Empire Marketing Board
(E.M.B), a government organization at that time intended to cement the British
Empire by promoting trade and a sense of unity among its various parts, Grierson shot
Drifters in 1929. This ﬁlm successfully transforms small, independent herring
ﬁshing efforts into a large, industrial operation. Compared to Flaherty’s world,

Grierson said, “Its subject belonged to Flaherty’s world, .....it did, however, use steam

 

8 Barsam, p. 71

9 Elizateth Sussex, The rise and Fall of British Documentary: The story of the ﬁlm Movement

Founded by John Grieson , Berkeley: University California Press, 1975

16

and smoke and did, in a sense, marshal the effects of modern industry.” ‘0 Drifters
made clear Grierson’s deviation from Flaherty in the way of presenting a social point
of view.

John Grierson had been trained as a sociologist and spent three years in the US
on a Rockefeller Research Fellowship in social science. He told his staff in EMB
Film Unit that they should take themselves as propagandists ﬁrst, ﬁlmmakers
second.H In 1934, the Empire Marketing Board was abolished by the US
government, and the ﬁlm unit was moved into General Post Office to become the

GPO Unit.

 

10

Grierson on Documentary, p.22
” Ibid., 90

17

CHAPTER IV

Deﬁning Documentary

Deﬁnition of Documentary

According to Alexander Kluge, a documentary is shot with three cameras: 1) the
camera in the technical sense; 2) the ﬁlmmakers’ mind; 3) the generic pattems of the
documentary forms, which are found in the expectations of the audience that
patronizes it. ' For Franju, it has to be more beautiful than realism, and therefore it
has to be composed. It is not reportage, newsreels, not even entertainment. “It is
an elaboration of a whole aesthetic of objectivity and the development of
comprehensive technologies of truth capable of promoting what is right and what is
wrong in the world.”2 Documentary ﬁlmmaking is a process of selection. To
compose, ﬁlmmakers “ choose images and sound from real life and sometimes restage
real experiences against their actual background”. 3 With the help of narrators
explaining it to the viewer, the ﬁlmmakers shift and reorganize his material to

transmit ideas, persuade audiences, orjust to reveal an aspect of the world. Most

 

l Alenander Kluge, A Retrospective, The Goethe Institutes of North America. 1988, p.110
2 George Franju, Documentary Explorations- 15 interviews with ﬁlm-makers, Garden C ity, N.Y..

Doubleday, 1971. p. 119

18

documentarists have centered their deﬁnitions on the purpose, functions, and the
effects of documentary. In Theorizing Documentary, Michael Renov deﬁnes
documentary as a ﬁlm “ to record, reveal, or preserve, to persuade or to promote, to

analyze or interrogate, and to express. “ 4

Grierson says, according to Parker Tyler,
that the ideal of documentary is “to draw men together into a homogeneous global
group by portraying them so that the essential humanity of each nation will shine

through its strange clothes and exotic habits”5

A central idea must be present in a
documentary, with all the ingredients of an integrated ﬁlm of any kind: drama,
conﬂict, an over all idea.

It is obvious that many documentaries do generate action in the audience, and,
depending on the circumstances, many of them are made with that intention. But
some documentary ﬁlmmakers only want to show an aspect of the world, as it is. for
the understanding of those who are not aware of this aspect. Song of Ceylon is an
example of the kind of ﬁlm that is quiet and subtle, yet to watch the ﬁlm with total

attention is almost to imagine oneself a part of Ceylon. It aims only to show, not to

convince.

 

3. George F ranju ,p.223
4. Michael Renov, ed., “Toward a Poetics of Documentary,” Theorizing Documentary, New York.:

Rouledge. 1993. p.21
5. Renove, p.29

19

But the discourse of documentary is distinguished from feature ﬁlm. Both John
Grierson and Paul Rotha Soughtto identify the distinctive features of documentary in
a double movement of opposition: l) The documentary was to be distinguished from
the ﬁction ﬁlm because it concerned itself with “ actuality”, and referred to an
observed world, not an imaginary one. 2) It was to be distinguished from simple
“ ﬁlm of fact”; a documentary ﬁlm was “creative”, not simply reproductive, in its

interpretation of the real. 6

Documentary Style

From one author to the next, many styles of documentaries can be identiﬁed.
Bill Nichols, in his chapter “The Voice of Documentary” from New Challenges for
Documentary, has identiﬁed four: direct address, observational, interview, and self
reﬂexive.7

Direct address was the ﬁrst mode developed from the Grierson tradition. It
“ beﬁtted a school whose purpose was overwhelmingly didactic, and employed a

8

supposed authoritative yet oﬁen presumptuous off screen narration.” In most cases

 

6

Renove, p.35
7 Alan Rosenthal, New Challenge for Documentary. Berkley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1988.
p. 48

8. Rosenthal 48

20

the narration dominates the visuals; footage only serves as illustration or counterpoint.
Filmmakers of direct address mode stress the impression of objectivity and the viewer
of the mode expects to see a world unfold through linkage built between sequences
and events.

Observational documentary allowed for “an increase in the ‘reality effect” with
its directness, immediacy, and impression of capturing untampered events in everyday
lives of particular people.” 9 Observational ﬁlmmaking allows control over the
subjects in front of the camera and makes use of editing to improve the impression of
real time. This mode offers the viewer unfettered access to people in action and
leads the viewer to draw a conclusion about the ﬁlm subjects.

Interview mode uses direct address in that characters or narrators directly speak
to the viewer. This mode incorporates the style of direct address, in which the major
part of the ﬁlm’s argument comes from the social actors’ comments or response in the
forms of monologue or dialogue. “Sometimes profoundly revealing, sometimes
fragmented and uncompleted.” says Nichols, “such ﬁlms have provided the central
mode for contemporary documentary.” '0

The reﬂexive mode “mixes observational passages with interviews, the

voice-over of the ﬁlmmakers with intertitles, making patently clear what has been

 

9 Rosenthal, 48

21

”11

implicit all along. The ﬁlmmaker of reﬂexive mode is “always a participant -

witness and an active fabricator of meaning, a producer of cinematic discourse rather

”'2 The ﬁlm serves

than a neutral or all-knowing reporter of the way things truly are.
as a stimulant to awake the audience‘s consciousness of cinematic form rather than

historical world.

 

‘0 Rosenthal, 49
" Rosenthal,49
'2 lbid,. 49

22

CHAPTER V

Producing a Video Documentary

Every producer of documentaries starts the difficult, all consuming endeavor of
assembling a documentary from his or her own ideas. Generally, these ideas fall into
several categories: to expose and correct injustices and inequities, to improve a
speciﬁc community, to entertain an audience, or to make money. But from my
perspective, the making of a documentary starts with a simple purpose in mind: to
illustrate what I have learned along the path towards the completion of my graduate
degree.

What to make my documentary about is a difficult decision since it would be my
ﬁrst production work that would voice what’s going on in my mind. Professor
Albers’ words rang true in my thoughts: “ Produce something you are really interested
in from your heart”. So here it is, the story of young people of my country whom I
am concerned about and who I’ve been interested in communicating the story to the

rest of the world.

23

Communication Objectives

A variety of factors in Taiwan have constrained and limited the development of
young Taiwanese people’s self-concept. The educational system, societal factors,
and the overall system of government have impacted how the youth of Taiwan think
and feel.

For many years the education reformists proposed lifting the shackles of the
Entrance Exams by canceling them or raising the entrance rate to higher education.
This ﬁlm will not support these reforms, but it will provide an alternative from the
endless arguments about the fairness of the Entrance Exams and the negative impact
of the exams on students’ creativity or compatibility. With the goal of expressing the
student’s point of view, this project will clearly illustrate the student’s ideology
through the actions and experiences of subjects as they struggled in their lives to
search for themselves. Ultimately, the producer wants the audience to understand that
congruence of self-concept with their choice in their life will help them ﬁnd a better

life.

The Procedure of making the documentary
1. Pre-Production

Communicating what the producer wants to say is an enormous task. Even

24

from the very beginning, ﬁnding the subjects to tell their stories with verve and
personality is a lot of work. The producer started with people that have words to say
about their experiences growing up in Taiwan. Fortunately, it is a topic quite
familiar to them. For most people, it is like opening up an old scar in the deepest
comers of their minds. They had similar experiences of burying their noses in
textbooks from day to night, steadily muting their own voices, and ﬁnally forgetting
who they really are and what they really want. So, the ﬁrst decision that has to be
made is: should the producer tell an exclusive story or a story that is common and
familiar to most people? This decision also has to be made with the consideration of
time and time of the people involved. For a student’s project such as this, both
resources are limited. In terms of the project, the producer utilized the best available
utilities and resources that could be obtained during a three-month production period
in Taiwan. The producer decided to shoot the stories of a college student who just
ﬁnished the struggle searching for her own self-concept and another subject who had
been successful in being loyal to his own voice despite all the unfavorable factors of
the educational process.

The ﬁrst subject, Lin Rau-Chien, is a freshman in Yun Ze University. The
producer knew her through Professor Chiou Jiuan-Fey of Yun Ze University. The

second subject, Conrad Hsien, currently hosts music programs in a classical radio

25

station in Taipei.

To offer a theoretical opinion on the stories of these subjects, the producer
contacted three professors: Professor Lin Wen Yin, specializing in youth psychology,
Professor Jou Yu Huey, social psychology, and Professor Wu Chih Yin, family
relationship development. These professional interviews are supposed to provide
theoretical concept for what the student subjects experienced.

During the pre-production phase of the project, the producer also planned for the
crew, the facilities, the color theme, and the setting design of the documentary. The
best camera location for a documentary is reality, but it is the director’s duty to
integrate the interview setting, to select which reality, and to compose all of it
creatively.

2. Production

The production stage is comprised of videotaping the interviews and the B-Roll.
The interviews are the soul of a documentary, and therefore planning the interview in
advance is very important. Michael Rabiger suggests in his book, DirectigiThe
Documeng'y that “You want to direct rather than follow your interviewee.” (P. 60)
This can be difﬁcult for a beginning director in some cases. On the interview set.
being both a cameraman and an interviewer, the director had to focus on the camera to

manipulate the shot size and also listen to the interviewee carefully so the shot

26

composition can be changed at the right point. The director also found out that
preinterview is crucial to success. She talked with each of the interviewees before
the taping to make sure they fully answer directly to the point of the questions. Such
preparation can also help ease an interviewee’s feelings of intrusion or unfamiliarity
when speaking in front of a camera. The director also selected the interview settings
carefully. Lin’s interview is taped at her high school campus and college campus.
Set in front of a sculpture of a little girl holding a book, the high school setting gives a
reminiscent and solemn atmosphere when Lin talked about her high school life. In
contrast, the college campus setting background is bright colored so it gives a mood
of being freed from the interviewee’s high school life and experience.

The director set the second interviewee Conrad in his office with a picture of
piano keys and a classical musician in the background. The interview with Conrad
was more difficult. Even though the producer had explained the interview and the
questions to him before the taping, problems still emerged during the interview. As
Michael Rabiger said, ”people oﬁen recount the same events in more than one way.”
When the director asked about his relationship with his father during his early
adolescent, Conrad simply responded, ”It was a relationship that was full of yelling
and punishment.” The director felt sidestepped by his response but still wanted to

know more about it. As Rabiger suggested in his book, “to initiate a sensitive topic

27

is to ﬁrst invite generalized, impersonal comment.” (p. 62) The director then left the
question alone and moved on to the next question. It was about Conrad’s feelings of
going through the period and what he would have done to change the situation.
Conrad answered this question well and talked about how his relationship with his
father would be different if something had been done differently in the past. That
response gave a bit more insight about his relationship with his father. The art of
interview is to listen carefully with one’s heart. There are always different ways to
probe a question, and they can lead to different answers.

The B-roll shooting adopted the ﬁgurative strategy. The shots of the daily high
school lives, the images of high school students studying, the entrance exams, and the
youth on the streets are used to represent the actuality of these young people, and later
on to be rearranged as poetic order. Still footage and reenacted footage were also
shot to illustrate the subject’s past experiences.

The main problem of the production phase was the audio recording. Even
though it was shot with a decent digital camera, most of the outdoor scenes were
recorded with a noisy background. Some distorted audio was due to the producer’s
inexperience.

3. Post Production

The postproduction phase included adding narration to describe reality and tell

28

the story, and putting the footage together to creatively impose the producer’s purpose.
Transcribing the footage and logging the tapes was done before the ofﬂine editing
took place. The producer logged all the interviews and edited them into sequences
on paper. The narration was added to help the sequences ﬂow, to reveal the
producer’s point of view, and to support the visual and direct its meaning. Montages,
simple continuity, cut, dissolve, and superimpose are the basic elements of the piece.

The documentary was designed to ﬂow in the following order at this point: The
meaning of self-concept and its development, the days of the subjects’ early
adolescence in Taiwan, the entrance exam, and family relationships that inﬂuenced
the subjects’ self- concept development. Music played an important role in the
production for its capacity to manipulate the tempo and moods in each sequence.
Both instrumental and lyrical music were used to establish the mood and to increase
the aesthetic energy of the scenes. The lyrical music was selected carefully for lyrics
that helped to shape the intensity of the sequences and properly stand for the

producer’s voice. Ten pieces of music were used throughout the whole program.

Target Audience
1. Students

This program is intended to share the experiences of other youth with students to

29

remind and encourage them to search for their self-concept while in an educational
and social environment.

High school students are striving hard to pass the entrance exam. They don’t
have much spare time to think about their interests and develop their own personal
self-concept. However, this doesn’t mean they don’t hear the importance and
necessity of their own voice. Often college students start to think about this problem
of self—concept. Harren (1966) studied the decision making among college students
regarding their vocational decision making process. Harren found:

“The Exploration, Crystallization, Choice and the Clariﬁcation stages
exist; that although they are analytically distinct, they are inseparable
and that an individual may be in a different stage with different
vocational relevant decision at the same time.”
According to James’ and Vrooms’ research (1965),
“There is a reorganization of attitudes, goals, or concepts so as to
increase the congruence between self concept or self expectation
and the selected occupation’s potential for fulﬁlling these
expectations.”
In each stage, students are inﬂuenced by different factors, such as family or

social-economic structure.

30

2. The parent

There can be little doubt that the family is inﬂuential in student’s determining
vocational choice. Parents in Taiwan believe in the ranking system and typical
Taiwanese parents have a strong inﬂuence on their children's decisions. This video
program is also intended to broaden parents’ point of view so they can understand
their children’s interests. Hopefully parents will then encourage and support their

children in the development of their own self-concept and their vocational decisions.

31

CHAPTER VI

Content Design

This 28-minute documentary focuses on the subjects’ educational experiences
and their self-concept development to illustrate the conﬂict and restrictions on the
young Taiwanese.

The videotext applied the interview-oriented mode mixed with observational and
reﬂexive modes of documentary. The main content of the program is composed of
the interview, off-screen narration, titles, and b-rolls. The narrator played the role of
the director’s voice to address to the audience. The reﬂexive mode of documentary
was used to awaken the audience’s consciousness of their relationship with the text.
For most of the school scenes such as the classroom, school activities, and the
Entrance Exam, the observational mode is adopted to observe people‘s activities. The
director shoots these scenes outside of the classroom unobtrusively to get the most
natural or realshots. Editing is used to enhance the historic discourse of the events
and the linkage to the subjects.

The program started with a montage of Nan-Yang Street with the main subjects‘

voice under.

32

" I knew I had to go to the best high school and the best college
since I was a little girl. "
“ My time of youth was studying and studying, in school or in
tutoring classes. "
With titles intercut, the montage opens the stories and reveals the theme of the
documentary: These young people have to struggle for their self-concept. Then a
scene of kids playing transforming to students studying in the classroom attempts to
symbolize the loss of a happy childhood and the beginning of a different life. The
program is hence laid out time wise with events signifying each stage of the subjects’
youth: seats assigned according to grades, the competitive exams, tutoring classes,
and the Entrance Exams. Interviews of the experts are placed between each of these
events explaining these young people’s self concept development under these
circumstances and how social factors such as the educational system, social values
and the family values affect these young people’s self concept development. Some
footage, such as the boy playing piano, reenacts Conrad’s learning and loving piano
during his childhood. Shots of Lin's keeping a diary and ﬁlling out the application
card intend to give the audience an impression of reality and represent the events from
the subject’s story. Before the Entrance Exam scene, another montage was used to

give an overall scene of how the Entrance Exam is held. The narrator posing a

33

question of what’s after the all-devoted exam follows. With the music under to give
the sense of being expelled by the Entrance Exam, the montage is intended to lead the
viewer's empathy to a climax.

Following Professor Lin’s comment on young people’s career decisions, the
program ended with both Lin and Conrad‘s conclusion of their self-concept searching
journey. They ﬁnd their life so far “fulﬁlled and worthy.” As the titles said on the
ending montage, “ .....Any decision about the future is tinged with hopes and fear. It

is a gamble between disappointment and richer living.”

34

CHAPTER VII

Evaluation and Conclusion

Group Evaluation

After the completion of the documentary, a viewing session was conducted to
test the documentary’s effectiveness in communicating to the viewer, as mentioned in
chapter V. The documentary’s goal was to communicate the voice of the young
people and to help viewers understand that the congruence of self-concept and choice
in the young people’s lives will allow them ﬁnd a better life. It is the producer’s
intention that the documentary provides the young people’s viewpoint on the
educational system and society, and how both impact self-concept. By revealing the
young peOple’s stories of growing up, the documentary reinforces the concept that
individuality should be more respected and valued, and that a healthy environment is
important in the development of self-concept in young people.

The documentary evaluation was held on March 16, 2001, with 12 Taiwanese
people‘in attendance. Their ages ranged from 24-45; eight were students; two were
housewives and mothers, two were former high school teachers. The group’s

background is ideal as they all had some experience with the social and educational

35

system, whether it be in taking exams themselves or living with people who have.
The evaluation consisted of a questionnaire with a “before viewing” and “after
viewing” section, followed by a free discussion. The following is the summary of
their evaluations from the questionnaire as well as comments from the discussion
session.

When the evaluation group was asked how they chose their own major after the
exam, ﬁve of them said they were strongly inﬂuenced by their parents’ opinions, two
people ﬁlled out the application card based on the grades and the ranks of majors, two
people did so based on the ranks and their interests, and two followed their own
personal interests. But, all of the viewers had similar experiences to those portrayed
in the documentary. “ I felt the pressure to get in a good school since I was a little
kid too,” said one evaluator. “The exam experiences in my high school are similar to
the characters in the documentary.” Another evaluator said, “The lack of
opportunity to explore my own interest is very similar.” The evaluator continued, “I
was told that to get the highest score is the best way to be successful.”

The evaluation group felt that watching the documentary evoked memories of
their days as constrained youth. During the discussion session, the teacher said, “I
knew how our students were feeling when they were asked to memorize Chinese

literature. I didn’t want them to, but it was the best way to get the good grades.”

36

Before viewing the documentary, most of the evaluators deﬁned self-concept, as “A
person knows who he is and what he wants”. Some of the evaluators had a better
understanding of it as they thought, “self is deﬁned by the family and the friends
around oneself. They would inﬂuence one’s self concept the most.” However
when the evaluators were asked if they understood more about self-concept after
viewing the documentary, most of the evaluators didn't think so. Only a few of them
pointed out that the documentary helped them realize more. One said, “Individuality
is predicated upon free thinking ﬁrst.” The other said, “People should be able to
choose out of their own free will, and have the ﬁnal say about their own fate.” Other
evaluators thought the documentary did not provide new information about
self-concept. One evaluator said, “But it emphasizes more on the connection
between youth’s self concept development and the whole environment they are at.”
But importantly, most evaluators changed their opinions concerning the
educational system and youth development after the documentary. One evaluator
wrote, “The education system should be able to help students explore their own
talents and interests, and give them the opportunity to develop their gifts.” Another
said, “The teachers and parents should allow students to express their thoughts, no
matter if they are right or wrong, odd or normal.” One of the teachers said, “ The

documentary can remind all of us to pay more concern to the educational system in

37

Taiwan. The system should be more humanized, notjustjudging the students based
on grades. We should teach these young people to take the responsibilities for their
own choice.” As for the documentary content and structure, all of the viewers found
the students’ stories interesting and felt the students are a proper representation of the
experience of youth in Taiwan. Seven evaluators strongly agreed that they were
entertained while watching the documentary. The others agreed with this statement.
Taking into the consideration the documentary’s length, eleven viewers agreed or
strongly agreed it conveyed a complete story. Only one viewer was not sure about
this. The last question was on the evaluator’s opinions about the production
elements. The most highly ranked elements were the quality of images, continuity
of the storyline, and the B-roll used. One viewer said, “The b-roll used in the program
tells its own story and has a strong connection to the interviews.” The other viewer
said, “this b-rolls is very properly used, such as the praying alter. It is an interesting
way that the scene is ironically dissolved to the students preparing the entrance
exam.” Also, the evaluators thought the background music was also highly effective.
“The music used at the entrance exam scene is very provocative, since it reminds me
of how I felt when I was taking the exam.” The lowest ranked element is the quality

of sound in the documentary.

38

Conclusion

Although the message of helping viewers have a better understanding of the
deﬁnition of self-concept is not as strong from the evaluators’ responses as the
producer would have preferred, the documentary still successfully fulﬁlled its
communication objective. Helping viewers understand the situation of youth’s self
concept development in Taiwan and its close connection to the environment was still
communicated. Due to the limited sampling in the United States, high school and
college students and their parents were not chosen for this group evaluation.
However, it is the producer’s hope that regardless of where the students may live or
what culture they may be from, this documentary can still stimulate action and
concern for the next generation to provide all students a better living and working
environment. Through this form of story telling, the documentary provided the
viewer a complete picture of youth growing up in Taiwan and has awakened concern
in viewers about how the educational system, social values, and parental practicing
affects young people. It achieves this emotional and informational appeal to its
target audience.

The producer has noticed from the viewers’ responses that people have great
expectations for the educational reformation currently underway. One viewer

pointed out, “It seems that young people these days have more freedom to choose

39

with their own free will due to the education reformation. They are given multiple
access to higher education.” However the other viewer said, “Though the education
system is reforming, the fundamental problems are still there, that they have to help
students to think and make decisions, and take the responsibility themselves.”
Overall, this is an important and interesting issue worth further investigation.

Television is a powerful medium that can be used to reach a larger audience in
Taiwan. If a series of documentaries on this subject communicate different young
people’s stories in Taiwan, the indifferent attitude of Taiwanese society may change.
Another option could be that programs from different points of view could be made
with a more encompassing viewpoint on the subject. For example, stories that
portray more of the interactions between the youth and parents could be produced and
would provide an idea of how the youth could express their opinions and
communicate with their parents effectively. These documentaries could be dubbed
and sent to educational institutions and youth consulting ofﬁces throughout Taiwan
and even the rest of the globe. The more people are exposed to the documentaries,
the more concern and action can be evoked, improving the lives of students and

parents everywhere.

4o

APPENDICES

41

APPENDIX A

42

Audio Script

(Title: A Street called “Bu shi Street ")

(Title: Where hundred of extension institutions exist for thousands of students to come
to study for all kinds of exams everyday.)

Lin : I knew I had to go to the best high school and the best college since I was a little
child. It seemed I had no other choice in my life.

(Title: My time of youth?)

Conrad: My time of youth was studying and studying, in school or in tutoring classes.
The only goal ahead of me was to pass the exam.

(Title: Against All Odds, The constricted youth in Taiwan.)

Narration:
Growing up is a bittersweet experience. In Taiwan, almost all young adolescents have

tasted the same bitter, the stress of exams.

Thousands of students enter high school every year, starting the life that is full of

exams, competitiveness, and expectations to go to the best college.

Their day of youth is a marathon race, with one exam followed by another one.

For most of them, when asked the question of “Who am 1, what am I going to be?”

They are confused and frightened.

43

Still they harbor dreams in their deepest mind, till they grow up.

Conrad:
I have liked music since I was a little kid. It started when I heard the lovely sound that
come from an LP, and it happened to be playing classical music. I was attracted by it.

Then I started my interests and love in classical music.

But I didn’t get much support to be a musician. The elders always told me, I wouldn’t
have a good future by being a musician, that I should be a lawyer, a doctor or an

accountant.

Prof. Lin:

A person starts to build his own self-concept by knowing the difference between
himself and others, and from his singular reaction to various experiences. He notices
there is something about himself that is different from others, that he has a special

talent.

Rau Chieh

I wanted to be a doctor. When I experience the death, sickness or misfortunes of
people around me, even just a puppy, I know only a doctor could save a person’s life.
I have always felt each person’s life is precious. 1 would like to do something valuable
to help people.

But my father always said, it’s better for a girl to be a teacher. I would have a more

stable life.

44

Prof. Lin

But our young people didn’t have a supportive environment of healthy self-concept
development. The pressure of the entrance exam forces the school, families, and
students to sway to an extreme side. They only see value deﬁned by the grade on the

exam.

Rau Chieh

I was in one of the best classes in 5th grade, which meant everyone would take exams
to go to a private high school. We had the pressure from a young age. At that time,
our seats in class were assigned according to our ranks. The ﬁrst through 15‘h sat in
the front, 16th through 30‘h sat in the middle, and the rest sat in the back of the
Iclassroom.

I took seven exams to go to that high school.

Prof. Wu

The elite system is dominant in the society. This ensures that only those who excel in
the exams will be respected by the society. If they fail the exam, they will be

abandoned and left on their own.

Narration

Certainly not everyone can ﬁt into the system. Those who don’t are out in the street

without much social support.

Prof. Lin

Because of the selective system, teenagers face the strong pressure of steeping into the
next stage of education. Life in school is mainly focused on these exams. The only

standard of these students is their score. Teachers and their families would push them

45

so hard to head to the direction they have arranged.

Narration

To be competitive in their following education stages, many students started preparing
for high school in their early childhood. They have gone to commercial coaching

schools or private tutoring classes since they were eight or nine years old.

Rau Chieh

I went to many tutoring classes as a kid, to learn math, science, calculation, piano, and

painting.

Narration

Learning in these extension schools could be fun in the beginning. Gradually, all the
learning has to emphasize grades in the class, however. We heard the teach tell ten
year old kids in the extension classroom, it’s all right if you can’t answer my question

here, but your better answer it right when you are in school.

Rauchieh

I learned English since my 3rd grade. But I still speak very poor English now. I was
forced to learn it because my parents think it’s very important, it’s not out of my

interest.

Prof. 'Wu

The parents want their kids to learn what is praised by the society. They try to sculpt
their children to what is useful in the society, not as what they really are. If the
children don’t listen to what the parents tell them, they will soon be marked as

“pariah.”

46

Narration

Nan Yang street is famous for its hundreds of extension institutions. Everyday,
thousands of students come here to take courses for all kinds of exams.

Going to an extension school is a common experience for students in Taiwan. The
memory of studying in a classroom from day to night comes up ﬁrst when they are

asked oftheir high school life.

Conrad

I spent a lot of time staying in either a school classroom or private tutoring classes.
All I learned was from books. We had to study and memorize again and again until we
made sure that we could handle those exams. I was not taught much about dealing
with my own life. I knew how to read and memorize, but I didn’t know how to live a

good life.

Rauchieh

It is something I didn’t doubt that after high school, 1 had to go to a national
university or a medical school. That’s what I was told by teachers, parents and even
classmates. All my classmates knew that they had to study hard, so they did. I would
be strange if I didn’t study.

But I always wished I could learn more in school, notjust information from books. I
liked painting and other artwork. I knew I could do it well, but they didn’t see it. They
didn’t compliment me for my talent for art or music, and then it’s gone. I was not

encouraged to do what 1 was interested at that time.

Pro. Wu

Once they go to high school, which is the critical period of their self concept

47

development, life is already planned out for them. The ﬁrst step is to go to the best
senior high school, and then the best college. They are not left with much space to

think about what they should do with their own lives.

Rau cheih

All the criticism and assessment is based on my grade. I remembered we had three
tests everyday because they wanted us to memorize everything. We even had to
memorize paragraphs in Chinese literature, which I don’t think is necessary. But I still
had to follow their schedule. I had no void in the class and started to lose my

conﬁdence.

I remembered one time my teacher asked the whole class, who Is not studying? They

pointed me out. Those made me doubt myself too.

Prof. Jou

The self-concept development is connected to the family, education, and to the
relationship with people. The Chinese think other people deﬁne an individual. It Is
like throwing a stone into water; we no longer see the stone, but we know it is there
by the ripples. It is different from the western way. They treat a person as an

individual. They are like single sticks on the ground, visible and separate.

Prof. Lin

These young people would care very much about how their friends see them. If a
person is smart enough and popular, he or she would be more conﬁdent of himself.
And that leads to a positive self-concept development. If it were negative, that would

be a vicious circle.

48

Rau chieh

I knew I didn’t want to live a life like this. But there was nothing I could do to change
that. I was afraid that if I fought with them, there would be damages. So time went by,

I remained silent and wasted my life at that time.

Conrad

As a teenager, I wanted to keep my own interest in playing music. So I tried to ﬁnd a
chance to learn it in high school. I didn’t hav etime to learn it well to be professional,
but at least I could do what I was interested. Actually I had to rebel against teacher,
my parents to keep music as part of my life. However, most of them time, I still had to
cope with the entrance exam. But I told myself that as long as I passed it, I can have

more freedom to look for what I want.

Narration

Every effort by teachers, parents, and the students during the three year period was to
prepare for the entrance exam. The exam takes place for three days in the summer.
The whole family goes to the exam battleﬁeld. The parents wait outside in the
hallway, supplying water, foods and the greatest support.

People pray for it. They tie wishing notes on the praying alter to give the best wishes

to their families and friends for the best grades.

The parents pray for good grades for their kids so that they can go to the best college.
Students pray for the freedom from the constrained life, and the freedom to search for
their own life.

But the question is, if the students were not taught aobu ht ereal meaning of freedom,

how do they live a life on their own that is free.

49

Prof. Wu

These young people are very anxious about their next stage of life when they are
ﬁlling out the application card. Some of them have to rely on the elders. They either
don’t know what their interests are, or their interests are too vague. So elders would
jump out to decide for them. On the other hands, elder’s decisions might not be these
young people’s interest. This had been a dilemma for many high school graduates in

Taiwan.

Rau cheih

When I lloked at the list of majors in college, I was so confused. None of them meant
much to me. I remember what my father told me before the exam, that I don’t have to
worry about what to major in college. All I need to do is to concentrate on the exam.

They would make the best decision for me.

So when it’s time to make the decision, my father didn’t allow me to choose with my

free will. I ﬁlled in Chinese literature and philosophy. And he erased both of them out.

So they didn’t; have the chance to think about their future and speak for them. Even

though he though about it, these though might disappear after the elder’s advice.

Conrad

When] was ﬁlling out the card, my parents, teachers, and other elders strongly
interfered my decision. At that point in time, I could only take their advice, because I

didn’t’ know what would be the best for me.

50

Prof. Lin

How can we ask these young people to decide that their future would be at that time?
WE didn’t’ give them the time and space to think about tit because their life before

college was all taken by exams. Unfortunately the selection system in Taiwan is only
based on the scores of one exam, and the students decide their major according to the

score too. The whole decision process is malfunctioning.

Lin
My father ﬁlled out the card for me. He want ed me to study business or be a teacher.

He thought that’s the best for a girl. And I can’t argue with him even though I know

that’s not what I want.

Narration

But the thought of having someone else to decide her future, instead of her herself,

frightened. She thought of taking a risk the ﬁrst time in her life.

Rau cheih

At that morning to hand out the card, my father was not able to go with me. I decided
to change that card. I couldn’t imagine how my future would be if I didn’t do anything
on that card. I told myself that I needed to give myself some time to ﬁgure out what I

really want.

Narration

A couple days later, her name was posted on the column of Department of Chinese

Literature, Yun Ze University.

Rau cheih

My name was there. I couldn’t believe it myself, neither could anyone. My father was

51

so shocked when he saw my name there. He refused to talk to me after that. He
thought I was playing a bigjoke with myself.

He was so angry that my family started to blame me for that.

Narration

Seeing her name on the list should have been a happy ending for all the hard work,

but it was the beginning of another struggle.

Rau cheih

During the two weeks tense relationship with my father, I felt that I did something
wrong. Their blame made me guilty for what I had done. I told myself that maybe I
shouldn’t have done this; 1 should just be a good daughter and listen to my father. I
knew he didn’t that out of concern for me. So when he asked me to transfer my major

to college, I seriously considered it.

Prof. Wu

Parents would try to authorize and control their children, If their authorization was not
respected and accepted, they would punish their children, physically or mentally. So
it’s more difficult when these young people try to struggle for their own opinion. We
found a tricky situation from our research that when the punishment falls upon these
young people, they ﬁgure out a way to explain the parent’s behavior and then talk

themselves into accepting the disagreement.
Rau cheih

I can’t complain to my father. I can’t even argue with him. What he told me is what it

is in the real world. I can only listen him.

52

Narration

So Lin continues her battle between her father and her self-concept. She tried to
transfer to the major of business after her ﬁrst year in college. It’s her decision after

being exposed to the wide variety of knowledge in college.

Rau cheih

My father asked my why I made such a big circle. I told him that without this circle, I

might never understand what I really want.

Narration

Circles in life mightjust be something these young people need. Conrad experiences

this circle too.

Conrad

After three years in law school, I felt that I couldn’t forget my interest in music. It’s
something that really love. So I tried to volunteer as an administrative assistant in an
orchestra. Afterl gradated, I decided to give up my law school degree and work hard

in a classical radio station.

People couldn’t agree with my decision. I could be a good lawyer with a good future,
why give it up? I was confused too. I wondered, did I really make the right decision?
But after I devoted my time to it and worked hard to prove that I can e successful in
radio and classical music, they realize that it’s something that made me happy and

made me proud of myself. They are proud of me now too.

Looking back on my life so far, I feel lucky that I can integrate my work and interest.

It’s a key point to my happiness. I would be suffering if I were working on something

53

1 am not interested in. So it’s a right choice to change my ﬁeld, and there is nothing
that would stop me from going in this direction.

It is my interest and love for music that fosters my belief and motivation of life.

Prof. Lin

Young people these days want to work in a hot profession. That’s understandable and
that’s how the social value is in the society. But the value of a person’s life would be

so improved, when he loves his work and could devote his whole life for it.

When 1 person is really successful in a profession and this profession gains more
value from this person, then he would be somebody. Only contrary, if a person’s value

has to be proved by a profession, he mightjust be nobody.

Rau chieh
I have to say that through all these struggles and searching, my life so far is fulﬁlled

and worthwhile.

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APPENDIX B

55

Group Evaluation Questionnaire

Dear Participant,

Thank you very much for participating in the evaluation process of this video
documentary, Against All Odds - The Bittersweet Youth. Please answer the
following questions from your own perspectives. Please feel free to ask

questions if there are any. Your time is very appreciated.

1. Did you ever take the College Entrance Exam to go to university in Taiwan?
YES NO

 

(If yes, please answer 02; if no, please skip to Q3)

2. If you did, how did you choose your major after the exam? Please select one
of the below or describe others.
__ Follow my own interests.
_ Fill out the application Card based on the grades and ranks of majors.
__ My Parents strong opinion inﬂuenced me.
_ Others

 

3. How do you perceive this documentary compared to your own experience of
your youth? Which parts of the subject’s experiences are similar and close to
yours?

56

4. Before viewing this documentary, what was your understanding of “self
concept”? Please describe your understanding.

5. Do you understand more about Self concept after viewing this documentary?
If yes, what is your new understanding?

6. I think the stories in this documentary are a proper representation of the
youth experiences in Taiwan.

__ Strongly agree Agree Not sure Disagree Strongly disagree
7. After viewing this documentary, are any of your thoughts or opinions changed

concerning the education system or youth development? If yes, in which
aspect?

8. I think the documentary ﬂows smoothly throughout the program.

_ Strongly agree Agree Not sure Disagree Strongly disagree

9. I ﬁnd the subjects’ story interesting.

__ Strongly agree Agree Not sure Disagree Strongly Disagree

57

10. I kept my general attentiveness while watching this program.

_ Strongly agree Agree Not sure Disagree Strongly disagree

11. I think the program conveys a complete story, taking into consideration the
program length.

_ Strongly agree Agree Not sure Disagree Strongly disagree

12. Please comment on quality of the following production element.

a. Pacing

_High _Above average Average Below Average Low

b. Quality of Images
_High _Above average Average Below Average Low

c. Quality of Sound
_High _Above average Average Below Average Low

(1. Continuity (smooth transitions between shots)
_High _Above average Average Below Average Low

e. B-roll used ( Footage laid between interviews)
_High _Above average Average Below Average Low

f. Music used throughout
_High _Above average Average Below Average Low

58

APPENDIX C

59

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