Gone Viral

Gone Viral follows the story of Ken Bone who gained the attention of social media following the 2016 presidential debate of Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, by asking them about if they were elected as president what steps would they put in to meet energy needs, how the would do it and how to keep it environmentally and economically friendly. He received a large range of attention from celebrity's, twitter/social media users and TV hosts. The documentary discusses how this impacted his life and what his life's like now.

https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2021/11/10/gone-viral/

What style of documentary is the above?

I would say that gone viral is an expository documentary as it follows the typical documentary structure which features sit down interviews with those involved, it features footage of the moment that he gained attention as well as the up roar on social media, showing screenshots, articles and news reports that have been posted discussing it. Also following the structure of expository structure, it has been edited by using J & L cuts to carry the dialogue from interviews to pair with footage, this works well as it can give a more visual way of looking at the story. If we tried to look at comparing the features of this documentary with other genres it is made slightly clearer. For example, Gone Viral won't be a poetic genre documentary as it follows a general structure and is not just an assortment of footage as well as features a voice over. Gone Viral also wouldn't be a observational documentary as it recalls the story rather than watching it take place. It also would not be performative as the director, Savannah O' Leary, does not involve herself in the process of making the documentary with Ken. This is why I think that the feature of Gone Viral correspond to being an expository documentary.

What is the subject matter? 

Gone Viral explains how Kens life changes in such a short amount of time and what that means going forward. Gone Viral can be linked to trends - how trends form and what they may be picked up for, for instance how most people in the US at one point knew who Ken was due to trends in social media and television and how like all trends eventually they die out, like how ken describes he feels at the end of the documentary. It also follows mental health, how Ken felt whilst he was in the spotlight and how that then changed. Ken says that when he was on television he often found him self "shaking" as he knew the public had expectations of him and he didn't want to disappoint them. He said he often needed help from his wife doing simple tasks as being in the spotlight had taken such a toll on him. Also a main subject matter would be politics in general. This would be because the main reason for his fame was from the political debate and how the question he asked was reflecting on his life. He worked in a coal power plant and asked how the candidates changes to energy would effect his job. Based on which way the election went, there was a concern that Ken and other people in similar lines of work were fearing for their lively hoods due to job changes.

What are you connecting with? Is it the character, the subject matter, something else?

There are many factors into how Kens character and the subject matter made Ken gain fame. For instance, many US citazions may relate to Ken through job, age, clothes, political worry's or could just relate to him in one way or another and if many people feel that way others may follow. When the world was in such a minefield of politics with people either being democratic or republican, Ken Bone was just an ordinary man that people ended up liking which gave a bit of positivity amongst all the negativity.