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.