After watching the documentary titled The Rise of the Crisis Actor Conspiracy Movement, I find that this documentary mainly talks about a large number of hoaxers and conspiracy theorists’ questioning on the formal narratives hidden in every mass shooting, which is greatly covered by the media. As a matter of fact, this documentary has used the talking heads during the narration process because various different people have expressed their own ideas concerning the discussed issue. Personally speaking, I have to say that this format is effective because it can better convince the audience concerning the reality of this video. At the same time, this format is better to arouse the resonance of the wide public due to their listening to the first hand information from the speaking people in the video.

As for who is the audience for this documentary, what is a must to mention is that the government and the wide public. The government is the party that has staged the tragedy and that would like to manipulate the wide public. As to the public, it includes those who are the family members of those who have been involved in the tragedy as well as those who have not experienced the tragedy in any way. For one part, this documentary would like to remind those who have been involved in the tragedy learn to protect themselves and learn to pursue their supposed rights. For another, this documentary aims to warn those that have not experienced the tragedy in any way to pay more attention to such issue in order that they won’t become the victims.

Generally speaking, what the filmmakers would like to get across to the audience is that they have to judge what is right and what is wrong based on their own observations rather than hear from others or see from the news. The more detailed condition is that some news may be fake and they have been modified in order to make it better accepted by the wide public. In this circumstance, there is no doubt that the audience have to make efforts to detect what has been covered, contributing to their finding the truth all the time but not be confused in any way.

When it comes to the interview techniques that have been used in this documentary, two interview techniques have been employed to help tell the documentary story and they are respectively indirect interview and direct narration. On the one hand, indirect interview plays a key role in telling this documentary story because the subjects can be seen. In this way, the audience can know who are the ones that are speaking, which can leave a better impression in their mind. In so doing, the audience are easier to give their sympathy to those subjects. On the other hand, direct narration takes function in that the subjects depict what the audience see or relate a story over visual imagery so that the audience can directly suppose that they are the subjects and they can be more engaged in the due time.

Last but not the least, the aesthetic elements that have been used in this documentary will be elaborated on. The most obvious aesthetic element this documentary employs is music, which has set the negative mood for this video. It can be understood in this way that this documentary would like to criticize the government’s idea to manipulate the public and its staging the tragedy. In the meantime, the close-ups have been employed as well whenever the subjects are interviewed.