We live in a world that is full of plastic. Plastic shopping bags, water bottles, toothbrushes, and even parts of your clothes are among the everyday items that are made from plastic. But plastic isn’t always the answer to everything, and the current state of our environment is rapidly going downhill.
People have been mass-producing plastic items since the 1950s. We produce hundreds of millions of tonnes of plastic items every year and production numbers are only increasing unfortunately. Disappointingly, most of these plastic items are only used once and then thrown away.
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Only a small portion of plastic is actually recycled and turned into other plastic things. We have been drilled our whole lives to recycle and some think that is actually happening, but really it’s not especially in big cities. The majority of plastic ends up in landfill or, in the worst-case scenario possible, our oceans. That’s why A Plastic Ocean documentary was filmed. Directed by the Australian journalist Craig Leeson, it explores plastic and investigates the devastating impacts that plastic has caused on our environment, especially our marine life.
What started as an adventure to film a blue whale, the biggest and heaviest animal on the planet, leads to the discovery of a shockingly thick layer of plastic debris floating in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Craig, alongside Tanya Streeter, a world record-breaking free diver and environmental enthusiast, then travels across the world to report on the devastation caused by years of plastic use. One of the comments made by Craig Leeson is “I could see plastic everywhere”, this is when they are going out on the boat and they find rubbish slick in the ocean. The film presents panning and zoomed-out shots of the marine animals and the clean environment around them, these shots were used because they wanted to show the extent of the damage by plastic. This contrasts with real-life footage of extremely polluted cities and dumps full of plastic rubbish. Some beaches even look like dumps from the amount of washed-up rubbish. The juxtaposition between these images sends the message that our actions and choices can severely impact the planet and the animals living on it. Some use of diegetic sound is when they are filming the birds, they are squawking and the city noise of cars, and pollution is in the background. The language that the narrator uses is trying to disgust the viewers with what they are seeing and contribute to this world with all the plastic they are using. Another member on the boat comments saying “Where could have it come from”. This would make the viewers feel guilty that they have contributed to this bad situation. The narrator uses phrases like “I started to wonder what was happening in other oceans elsewhere on the planet”, this puts doubt and fear into the viewer's head that there could be a crisis on our hands and we are making it worse every day.
Throughout the film, quite a few experts are interviewed to provide further information about some of the problems that come from plastic. Craig Leeson uses multiple different structures to portray his message about plastic in oceans. One of these is the use of cinematic film techniques which enhance the viewer's experience. An example of this is when they use a close-up camera shot of the dead bird as Tanya Streeter is dissecting it because it has died from consuming plastic. The use of long shots was also utilized in the film when they are trying to emphasize the suffering that happens with the bird's family. This is also known as mise en scene and the example is when Tanya is sitting on the ground and dissecting the bird and there is another bird of the same kind watching on in the background, this shows how cruel it is to have birds suffer with a gut full of plastic. In the film, there are a lot more background voiceovers of facts and commentating on what is happening in the world with plastics today. This is the use of non-diegetic sound and shows that while the film was taking place they didn’t really expect to see what they saw with so much plastic damage in the world and they wanted to have a proper script to address the problems in full detail. There are a few times in the dissecting scene when she adds comments like “ew” or “look at that” and just cringes at the smell and sight but others don’t actually say much.
The response that the creators are trying to get from the audience is to clean up their ecological footprint and hope that they will be aware of what they are doing every time they use something made of plastic.
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