Critical Reflection

When researching for this project, my main inspiration for the interview style was a piece I watched in class called 'American Promise'. The interview style of the interviews was different for both the children involved in the piece and the adults. The piece used mainly a direct interviews style when interviewing the kids and indirect when interviewing the adults. Seeing this, my group and I preferred the direct interview style and so it is illustrated in our documentary. 

Main subjects of 'American Promise'
in an interview

 However, looking back on our documentary, I realize that an indirect interview style would have suited the piece better. An indirect interview would've allowed the piece to flow more and would've created the feeling that the interviewee's were truly 'speaking from the heart' and not being prompted by the interview questions. Furthermore, seeing as the as we interviewed 2 subjects for this documentary it seemed as the the documentary was split into 2 different parts. Although this wouldn't have been a bad thing if done intentionally, this was not the goal. In hind sight, this issue could've been fixed in post-production by including clips of both the subjects interviews throughout the entirety of the piece. This would've also helped in making the documentary as whole flow better.

The goal of our documentary, "Lineage" was to exemplify what intergenerational activities mean in the context of theatrical productions. We strived to represent the south Florida theatre community by interviewing 2 extremely active members of Inside Out Theatre Company, an extremely prevalent community theatre company that has been active in south Florida since 1998. 

The 2 members we chose were Lito Becerra(54) and Brandon Jerry(18), these two have been working with Inside Out Theatre in varies different productions and even met during Inside Out Theatres Production of 'The Hunch Back Of Notre Dame" about a year ago when they worked along side each other playing Clopin and Quasimodo. 

When deciding who we wanted to interview we made to sure pick people who were in vastly different stages of life but still shared one common interest, there commitment and passion for theatre. Our goal was to represent the whole of the theatre community in south Florida, and given that south Florida has one of the largest hubs for the International Thespian Society, we knew that Becerra and Jerry were an excellent representation.

 Looking back, I wish we would've been able to get at least one more perspective from someone a little younger, perhaps someone in the early years of high school or middle school. This would've helped to in having a more accurate representation of the intergenerational theatre community in south Florida. However, when we talked to the owner of Inside Out Theatre Company she explained as this would be hard for us to do as they would be minors and since we were working in her rehearsal space that would make her legally responsible for them and their safety so, we opted against it for her and the child's sake

 

Moreover, our target audience was of course those interested theatre as well as anyone interested, but unsure, of participating in a multi-generational production rather than age specific one. With this in mind, and also realizing that this audience would likely have a wide age-range we made sure to create a piece that was geared towards all age ranges. This was difficult as, being teenagers, we all were looking at the project from the lens of a teenager. This forced us to take a step back many times to try to look at the piece from an outside lens, not only from the lens of a viewer but from the lens of someone at a much different stage of life than us. 

Through this, we were able to create a piece that was engaging to the full range of our audience.

Furthermore, we engaged with our audience by creating a sense of community within our documentary. We did this by including footage of rehearsals and productions that exemplify intergenerational activities a long with structuring our interview questions in a way that would guide the interviewees to talk about the community that such activities have built for them. 

In conclusion, despite its flaws, and the hiccups we faced a long the road 'Lineage' successfully achieved its purpose in bringing generations together and exemplifying what one can learn from intergenerational activities.

Documentary Project #4 production/post-production

 Hiii! So for this project we did have some trouble being able to shoot any b-roll ourselves of any rehearsal processes or productions as our schedules just didn't match up (as I explained in my last blog). Because of this we had to talk to the owner of the Theatre Company we were working with, Robin Braun, in order to get some archived footage of any rehearsals and past productions and luckily she was able to provide us with lots of footage. 

The 'bottle dancers' from a production of
 Fiddler on the Roof

During post-production, we found that it would be very difficult for us to try to edit the documentary the documentary all together as we were in a bit of a time crunch especially since one of our group members would be out of the country the days leading up to when the project had to be complete.

 So, one of our group member, David, volunteered to be the main editor. This was also the most convenient way to go about it as he was the one who provided the camera so he wouldn't have to worry about exporting all the footage to someone else for them to edit. Funny enough, he was the one that would be out the country but he took the initiative to edit while on the plane. Despite this, he still kept us updated throughout the editing process ensure that the project turned out how we had all envisioned it.

Overall, despite some bumps in the road, the documentary worked out as it was indented to and we were able to follow through with the purpose of the documentary which is reflected in the final result.

Documentary Project #3 production

 Hiii! When it came time to film we had initially planned to film for 2 days out the week in order to get ample footage, unfortunately, we only ended up having one day of filming as the rest of my group was not available later that week to film and I caught an upper respiratory infection and the flu so yay me! 

Anyway... 

The day we filmed we arrived at the rehearsal studio at 5 pm. We talked to the director of the the Theatre Company and she gave us a designated room for us to be able to set up and film our interviews in. We decided to film in a space in which the camera had a view of the window in the room to make the shot look a little prettier however, the sun set pretty early so there wasn't much to see. Because it was getting dark so quickly the camera quality started to become a bit grainy but after adjusting the focus of the camera and changing the position of the lights we were using the camera quality cleared up quite a bit, although it still wasn't 100% perfect. 

Lito Berrcera in the interview room

As we set up and discussed how we would go about filming, our first subject Lito, arrived at around 5:30. We decided that along with our pre-planned interview questions we our interviewer, Audrey, would ask additional questions as we saw fit. 

Working with Lito was honestly such a positive experience. He came in with so much professionalism and kindness. He gave extensive responses for each question which was great for us as it gave us so much footage to work with. 

When it came time to interview Brandon we ran into a problem which was that out camera had ran out of storage. I, as cinematographer, hadn't noticed that the camera had stopped recording until about half way through the interview. However, after deleting some footage from a past project we were able to get back on track although we did have to ask the subject to restate his answers for a few of the questions. 

Overall, despite some hiccups, everything went according to plan although in hindsight, I should've gotten a few more angles of the interviews for each of the subjects. 

Documentary Project #2 Planning

 Heyyyyy! So onto the actual planning of my documentary. My friend Audrey, who was a part of my team for this project, and I were in a musical called Fiddler on The Roof. I honestly think this experience is what inspired us the most. During this production we worked with people ages 76 to 2 years old and we realized that the intergenerational aspect of the production is what made it feel like a real community. 

Because of this experience, we decided to base our documentary off the concept of intergenerational activities/productions, getting different perspectives from people of different generations who were in this production and have participated in intergenerational productions in the past. More specifically, the goal was to get an inside look at the subjects personal experiences with these productions, and what the experience has taught them. 

We began by coming up with specific questions to ask each of them, during this process we decided it'd be best to give each of them a different set of questions to elicit varied responses and planning the different shots and angles we wanted to get. We also decided it would be best to get b-roll directly from the show. 

Planning Sheet

Doc. Outline

We decided to contact Lito Becerra (54) and Brandon Jerry (18) both of whom have previously been a part of multiple intergenerational productions. Luckily, arranging a time and place to meet up was easy as we all had decently clear schedules. Now all that was left to do was film. 

Lito and Brandon pictured in the center

First A level blog! (yay)- Documentary Project #1Research

 Beginning our documentary lesson all I knew was that a documentary was a way to tell about a subjects life, or a short period of time, or maybe a project. I soon learned that although this might be true, there are so many different types of documentaries and conventions, it's hard to sum it all up in one go. 

For this project, we began our research by watching documentaries both in class and at home. We began by watching an episode of Abstract that focused on costume design with Ruth E. Carter. This piece was extremely interesting to me as it gave an inside look on her process for creating famous costume pieces for films such as Do The Right Thing and Black Panther, which I have always admired the costuming for. 

 Another documentary we watched in class was called "American Promise". The documentary followed 2 young boy attending one of the most prestigious schools in the nation over the course of 13 years. Watching this documentary, it was hard to focus less on the content and more on the technique but I did notice a few things along the way. For example, for the majority of the piece, a hand-held camera is used which pulls the viewer into the their world as we follow their life stories. Another technique I noted was the fact that for the majority of the piece, the parents/adults are interviewed using an indirect interview technique while the boys (Idris and Seun) are interviewed using a direct interview technique. 

The next documentary I researched was an episodic documentary named 'Abstract', I specifically watched an episode about digital product design as it was something that immediately peaked my interest when scrolling through Netflix. I noticed a few key conventions and techniques about episodic documentaries. For example, they all start with the same theme song and opening, although the content is different to be able to develop different ideas based on the episode, they all start relatively the same. I also noticed that the b-roll included was a representation of a concept. For example, there were many clips of someone using a computer or a mouse moving across a computer screen, developing the idea of 'digital'. 

Screenshot of episode (min 17)

 Above, you can see this idea being developed through the multitude of digital devices and representations of modern technology and social media  that appear before the viewer. 

Using this research I found that for my own project I want to combine a mix of the two. I wanted it to look professional while also bringing the viewer as close to the subject as possible. This is where my brain storming began.

CCRs and film opening

 CCR questions 1 and 2: 

 

CCR questions 3 and 4: 

 

Film Opening: 

Reflection Post

 Hi! Wow, I can't believe this is my last post before turning in my project. Honestly, it feels like since week 5, time just flew by. This project taught me a lot about myself. I learned about my creative strengths and weaknesses. Such as that I excel in things like story telling and the creative aspects of the production process and that my weaknesses lie in the technological/ post-production area. I also learned that a project like this takes time and effort, and procrastination is simply not an option. 

Despite the challenges we faced, my group and I were able to create a film opening we are proud of. My group and I were able to work so great together as we all had different strengths that we were able to contribute to the project and were all willing to give our 110% to make our film opening. For example, after Elke finished editing, when we tried to export to OneDrive and Google Drive the file it somehow got corrupted (I'm still not 100% sure what that means) and really depleted the video quality of the film. Luckily, Isa, one of my group members, was able to figure out how to tweak and crop certain things to make it look better. 

Overall, despite the tedious parts, this project was so much fun to put together. I think part of the reason was because my group and I were all very open minded to each others ideas and were able expand off of each other instead of wanting things to only be a certain way, in simpler terms, none of us were selfish about the project.

This project, although it did keep me up many late nights, has given me so much hope and excitement for future projects. Anyway, bye Cambridge people!

CCR Post Production

CCR Questions 1 and 2

 Hi! The most difficult part (for me anyway) of the CCR has come... editing. Because I knew editing is not my strong suit I wanted to make sure I used an editing app that was both simple in terms of use and efficient so, I decided to use Premiere Rush. It was recommended to me by on of my classmates so I thought I would try it out and it did noy disappoint. I honestly really liked the fact that the app was on my phone because it made it easily accessible to me and would be easier for me to use rather than a computer tool. 

The app itself was pretty simple and I was able to figure out the works of it pretty much right away. There were some limitations in using this app such as I realized I wouldn't be able to insert an image into cut but luckily I was able to work around that. 

Overall, editing the whole things took me about 4 days which honestly isn't bad at all. I think what took so long was the fact that I kept starting editing late at night so I was never able to get very far. The first 3 days I found myself making process in 30 second intervals each night till tonight when I was able to finish the whole rest of the project. 

CCR Questions 3 and 4 

My CCR presentation is going well! I already have all the information so it's really just matter of putting everything into the presentation. I think making a Canva presentation has honestly been the best for me because it is a generally simple platform and format which gives me room to add in all the details I need to create an engaging presentation. 

My strategy when creating this presentation is to only have basic, key points written on the slides and allow the auditory aspect of the presentation to elaborate on each of the points. I am honestly so happy with how it's turning out, I picked the cutest font and it literally screams me! 

I think I'll hopefully have it done by tomorrow! <3

CCR production (questions 1 and 2)

 Hi! So I'm gonna be honest filming my CCR was a lot harder than I thought it would be (kind of insane coming from someone who has now filmed about 4 projects previous to this one.) I think it was mainly because for the first time, I was in charge of everything. I had to be in it as well as work the camera, lighting, and more. It was definitely nice to have all the creative freedom because if I didn't like something I could just change without having to get approval from other people (shoutout to Isa and Elke, love you guys.) 

Before beginning to film I had thought to buy little microphones in order to enhance the audio quality of my CCR and also to just make it look a little fancier. Little did I know that $15 mini microphones off of Amazon where not going to do that. In hind sight, I should've known better regardless, below is a video of young, naïve, Monday me when I first got the mics in the mail. 

I think the most difficult part was figuring a good background to use. Initially, I thought I would use a blanket to cover up my closet and that way I would have a plain background as I don't really have any plain walls in my house that I could film in front of and still have good lighting. After nearly falling off a chair (a few too many times) I finally got the blanket up...only to realize it wasn't wide enough...and when I tried to flip it, it wasn't long enough either. Anyway, I decided to just use my closet as a background, not the best but it'll do. 

Another problem I had which was not really in my control, but frustrating nevertheless, was the fact that as soon as I was about to start filming, construction workers started drilling on my roof. They really could not have had any worse timing. Luckily, I was still able to film despite having to stop multiple times due to their incessant drilling, stomping, and yelling. I honestly think they knew I was trying to film and were plotting against me. 

Overall, I think filming went well! Despite the challenges I faced I was able to have fun and let loose a little bit. I realized while filming that I was able to stop referencing back to my script so much and start genuinely talking about my project which I felt elevated the video.

Now comes the actual hard part (for me anyway,) editing. 

CCR Question 4

 Hi! So as we know by my last blog I will be answering questions 3 and 4 on a Canva voice over presentation. Once again I do not have a complete script for this. Instead, below is an outline of the information I will include in my answer to question 4 regarding technology. 

Like question 3 I will break up the question into a few.

1. Soft Ware: When editing my group and I used Adobe Premier Pro. Personally, I wasn't super involved in the editing since Elke took care of most of it but I was able to learn the basics and how to navigate Adobe Premier Pro from her. We also used Adobe fonts to find fonts to use for our title and credits! Canva was a big part of our project. Elke and I used it to create mood boards for each of the characters (as well as using Pinterest to find photos,) Isa used it create our production logo (and Procreate to animate it) and, of course this presentation. 

   

   Using Adobe Fonts

   
   
2. Hard Ware: hardware wise we used Isa's iPhone 15 to film. We picked whoever had the newest phone to film as it would likely have the highest quality camera. For filming we were also planning on using mini microphones that our teacher was going to lend to us but we ended up not using them. However, I did get some of my own to use for my other CCR.
3. Online: Blogger was clearly the main online resource I used. It was you update on my project but also keeping myself organized within this long process. We also used other online resource such as Premium Beat which we used get out royalty-free music for our film opening. 
   
   

Overall, the technology part of this project was definitely the most challenging part for me. I feel I excelled in the more creative or artistic portion of this project. Nevertheless, I learned a lot about how I can use technology to enhance my creativity so that all the ideas I have in my head can become reality. 

CCR question 3

 Hi blog! I have finally decided what my second CCR video/presentation is going to be and I'm so excited because I was so stressed out about finding another idea for my CCR but I've decided to do a Canva voice over presentation! I'll use at least 4 slides to answer each question. My goal for this is to break these questions down into parts to be able to clearly answer in my own creative way. I feel like using a presentation is a real good way to incorporate visuals into this project. 

I'm not sure if I will create a script for this since it will be cut up into small sections. But here is a basic outline of how I will answer question 3. 

• Planning Process: Building characters and script.

1. Building Characters: Started by researching coming of age films/tv shows. Specifically characters within these films. This was to figure out what we wanted and didn't want from our character (i.e. motivations, style, attitude, etc.)  For example, for our lead character, Jordyn, we were greatly inspired style wise by Kat from 10 Things I Hate About You. This is reflected in our choice of costume for the lead. As you can see, her costume leads more towards a "grunge" type of aesthetic, similar to that of Kats. Attitude and motivation wise we were inspired by Lorelai Gilmore from Gilmore Girls. This is because if character is very family and friend oriented which we are traits we wanted Jordyn to have. For her best friend, we allowed the actress to have a lot of creative freedom when playing this character but also to take inspiration from the character Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls.  

   

   Inspiration for Jordyn

   

   Result

   
   
   
2. Script: The script was honestly a lot of fun to create because we got to play around with the line delivery and met up after school (got some food) and work on it. Their were honestly quite a few drafts of this script as we would often times find ourselves writing in random notes that weren't relevant to the script. Their were definitely some parts within the script that we wanted to change later on and never ended up getting around to so they stayed as is. For example, we wanted to make Jordyn's little monologue at the beginning of the script much longer than it ended up being. Honestly, it ended up working out since our film opening is exactly 2 minutes. 

• Production Process: filming locations, problems

1. Filming Locations: For filming we obviously had to film at school and we needed to find somewhere else to film that we could decorate to look like Jordyn's room. At first we had in mind to decorate Elke's (cinematographer and editor) older sister's room but then we realized we had a friend who already had her room decorated exactly like how we envisioned Jordyn's room to look like, so we decided to film there as well. Filming at school, was probably easiest out of the 2 locations as we had lots of space to play with and were even able to a few of our friends to help as background characters. Filming in our friend, Lauren's, room was a little more of a challenge since we had a few things working against such as spacing and time. For example, there was a huge mirror in the back of Lauren's room so we had to find an angle in which you couldn't see the cinematographer. Originally, we wanted to have the lead character be sitting at a desk and her best friend on the bed behind her when the camera first meets Jordyn. This turned out to be quite an awkward so we decided to film to have both Jordyn and Amelia start out on the bed. 

   

   Filming at school.

   
   
2. Challenges: During the production process we definitely ran into a few challenges. For instance, I was originally supposed to play the part of Jordyn however, the day before filming I got super sick and completely lost my voice. We ended up having to find a friend who was available to film last minutes. All was good until we started putting together clips of what we had filmed so far at school and realized their were a lot of continuity errors as a lot of shots were filmed out of order so the background characters seemed to appear and reappear. This meant we had to refilm everything, but our new lead wasn't available and we had to get filming done soon so once again I was put in to play her. 

• What I learned: Because of this I learned that it is ok to have to change things up and learn how to go with the flow and find a way to keep moving regardless of any challenges. I also learned for future projects to make sure background characters do not move in between shots so that there are no continuity errors.

Group Meeting Summary notes

 Hello! So this week was my first actual group meeting as I was absent for the first one and it honestly went super well. I was able to connect with my peers and share our thoughts and feelings on this project as well as help each other out on our CCR's. This is what we mainly discussed during our meeting. We did this by going around and sharing each of our ideas with one another as well as giving each other notes on how to improve or make our CCR's more creative and personalized to ourselves.

 For example, one of the member's of my group, Isa C. , did not know what to do for her second CCR video so, we decided to collectively brain storm ideas on what she could do. We asked her questions about what she likes to do on her free trial and what hobbies or clubs she's in. From there, we found that she is mock trial (a club at our school) and we suggested that she could make her CCR in a court trial type of style where she, being the producer, is the witness and is asked questions while up on the stand. We obviously did not have time to work out all the little details considering we only had one class period and many people in our group but it definitely gave her a starting point and something to bounce off of and possibly create something really cool! 

One idea I thought was really cool was from another group member, Sophia H. , who said she was going to do a "breaking news" type of video for her CCR and that she chose this idea because it is incorporated in her film opening. I thought this was a really interesting way to tie in what she learned while working on her film opening to her CCR. This also showed how much time and effort she invested into this project as she told us about how she would  go about doing this. I could be wrong but I do believe a green screen was mentioned. I will definitely check out her project once it is done. 

Overall, I think this group meeting went really well! I was honestly nervous at first to have to talk about my project and to talk to people I had really never talked before but we honestly ended up having a great a time. We shared lots of laughs but in the end everyone was able to get the help they needed which is truly what the point of the group meetings are all about.

As you can see we are very professional.

CCR question #2

 Hi! So I've decided I'm definitely doing the "What's In My Bag" sort of video for one of  my CCR's when answering questions one and two, which I will try to film sometime this week! 

 

For the item that I will pull out of my purse to prompt question 2 I was thinking of designing a movie ticket. I feel as though this is a good way to represent the premise of question 2 which is all about audience engagement and distribution. 

Movie Ticket example

The script for answering this question would be the following: 

Mariana: [pull out movie ticket from purse] Aww! So this a movie ticket from the first public viewing of the film which I obviously wanted to go see and I kept the ticket as memorabilia. It was so exciting to see how many people showed up for to watch "18 before 18" in theatres. Luckily for us, we where never too worried about the audience engagement of our film because we crafted the film in a way which our audience (being mainly teens) could find something to relate to within the film. I think something that also really attracted a lot of audiences is the fact that the main character Jordyn, who I play, breaks the fourth wall pretty consistently throughout this film. I think that really brought up audience engagement as it is something that typically isn't done in films. I've really only seen this done a couple of times while I was researching the in's and out's of breaking the fourth wall for this part. I think this also helped draw in a lot of audiences because of the fact that it gives the viewer another look at the the characters thoughts and feelings in a way that can't be seen in regular films. Many audiences even said that these parts of the film, when Jordyn breaks the fourth wall, felt like talking to a best friend on the phone which warmed my heart so much because truly that was the goal in doing this! When my team and I discussed distribution we agreed it should first be released locally as a tribute to well... us! Growing up in south Florida we thought it would just feel right to release the film initially to local film festivals such as the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF) and the Miami Film Festival and then later on release to other platforms such as small-independent movie theatres such as O Cinema, located in south Florida, which strives to support independent films and diversifying their film screenings and events.