"Catfish" Analysis. This documentary was made by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. Both begun filming Nevs life as soon as they sensed a story unfolding in the late 2007.

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Nicole Tatara

Media Text: Catfish

‘Catfish’ is a story that follows a young photographer Nev Schulman who lives with his friend Henry Joost and his brother Ariel in New York. Oddly an eight-year-old girl named Abby from Michigan sends him a painting of one of his photographs, which she had made by herself. They later become friends on Facebook, which gives him access to Abby’s family: her mother Angela, her husband Vince and her attractive older half sister Megan whom he starts a relationship with. As he begins to get to know more and more about Abby’s family, there are things, which do not add up and create suspicion amongst Nev, Ariel and Henry. Finally they leave off to Michigan in order to find out the deserved truth.

This documentary was made by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. Both begun filming Nev’s life as soon as they sensed a story unfolding in the late 2007. None of them had the slightest idea that this particular project will lead to the most unsettling months of their lives. All characters in this film are claimed to be real this includes Angela who has been interviewed by ABC's  and the  who have spoken with her neighbors and most importantly her family. Personally it additionally reminds of a documentary made in 2007 about child art ‘My Kid Could Paint That’ by Amir Bar-Lev. In which the movie follows the initial artistic career of a young girl , who gains fame first as a painter of abstract art, and then becomes the topic of controversy regarding if she truly completed the paintings herself or did so with her parents' assistance.

The target audience for the ‘Catfish’ is anyone who uses media like Facebook, MySpace, twitter etc. which is practically everyone nowadays seeing as most friendships are actually made through the use of Internet. No matter if the documentary is real or not it still carries a very important message across to people any age from children to elderly people. Even though it is rated 13 due to the content of mostly Nev’s and Megan’s conversations, personally I feel like the moral of the story should apply to anyone with an Internet access.

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The film itself raises a very important question as to what is real and what isn’t. Things which we see in real life on various types of media may not necessarily be true as shown in this particular text, one person was able to create many accounts using pictures of people they have never met whilst creating false friendships. The ‘Catfish’ is claimed to be a factual text and the events, which we see on screen have actually happened to Yaniv ‘ Nev’ Schulman who’s the main character in this film. However the realism of this film is a ...

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* This essay is far more descriptive that analytical and uses an informal register and few technical terms. It treats the text more like a book than a film, ignoring the impact of documentary codes and conventions on the representations constructed.