"Stand up! Asian Women"
7
[The most challenging task]
This is our last week in Bangkok. Reviewing what we have done
within last two weeks, we met a lot of people and understood more
about the social issues. However, to make our report more in-depth,
it was not easy. The forthcoming week was even more difficult. We
have to face another new challenge, local report and documentary
production. Frankly, how could two "outsiders" dig deep
into the local social problems effectively within a couple of days?
TV News Report
Mr Magimai, the lecturer who came from India, gave us a brief
introduction on TV news and documentary production. After his lecture,
our first big challenge came up. We have to produce a TV news report.
Owing to the topic must be based on the local social issues with
timeliness; it could hardly decide the theme.
We underwent an intensive brainstorm. Finally, we decided to
use the Internet indulgence problem over child as our main theme.
We spend a whole day on script writing, shooting and editing. Mr
Magimai watched our finalized production and he said our production
was professional!
News Documentary
We started our documentary production followed by the news report.
This homework was even harder then we thought. Despite our theme
the massage parlor was assigned, we knew nothing about the massage
business in Bangkok. No one in our group was Thai. This made us
frustrated for a short period of time.
We did the research from the local people. Some said that the
massage parlors aren't solely on providing massage service, but
practically, they are brothels. It did no longer exist any qualified
massager. Many of the therapists are only teenage girls. Prostitution
was one of the main social issues in Bangkok. It was really a significant
issue to explore with a probe.
Our group was strongly interested in the above topic. However,
how could we find the "brothels" within two days? How
could we gather all the information and complete the interviews,
shooting and editing on time?
The difficulty wasn't only lacking of time. It was also about
the language barrier. We couldn't speak in Thai but most of the
Thai massagers could only speak in it. We needed a translator. All
the translators arranged were male, with such a sensitive topic,
it was hard to persuade the interviewees expressing their feelings
towards their lives in "brothels". At last, we forced
to give up this reporting angle.
Language barrier was a big obstacle. We changed our angle to
explore the advantages and disadvantages of massage, particularly
how customers judged the therapist if he or she was qualified. We
believed that this problem was not solely happening in Bangkok,
but Hong Kong or mainland should also pay attention over the existence
of "massage traps"………………
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