The first documentary we made together as a class last night was an enjoyable, entertaining, and nightmare of a process all at the same time. Our group started out brainstorming on ideas we wanted to discuss and we all quickly decided that we wanted to cover the topic of the differences in our schools. We all took turns interviewing, being camera man, and of course being interviewed. I feel as if we all got a good beginner understanding of what was to come in this course. It is a lot harder to receive good answers from interview questions than you might think. The best answers that we received while interviewing were ones that we got when straying away from the question asked. Always keep the camera rolling because you don’t know what you are going to get.

When it was time to assemble our video into a finalized product, we all tried to work as fast as we could, coming up with agreements on how we wanted our layout to be so it would not look like it was put together in 40 minutes (which it was). After all of our hard work was finally completed, we ran into a problem which caused all of our work to be deleted. We had to think fast and only had around 10 minutes to edit our film the second time around. Although it wasn’t as good as the first time we edited, I’m proud of my groups ability to think on our toes and get our work done in an efficient manner.

I am excited for what else is to come from the class.

I noticed that Andrea and I both had similar ideas on an artistic process so I chose to post another 5 image story to add some more variety. The previous one is a year old. I liked seeing how she tackled the makeup idea differently.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0-tBgcDsVpycmJKbmdhSDFRd1E

Yesterday’s class assignment really managed to keep my group and I on our toes. It was fun to work with students from other schools and to see how familiar they are with different filmmaking skills. For instance, Regi was a pro with premier, a software that I really hope to learn how to use this year. Filming the interview was basic since we weren’t too creative. I did learn that every single group member needs to be attentive to small details. For example, the rode mic was turned off or set on a wrong setting while we were interviewing Regi about his cat. We had to do a retake which is very annoying for an interview because in reality, we are taking someone’s time and it’s a pain when you have to repeat the same story again. I noticed that Regi told the story very differently when I asked him if we could do a retake. There was less emotion and excitement which is absolutely normal. I would hate to repeat a 5 minute story in front of the camera for a second or third time. It’s odd that none of us noticed that the mic was turned off, we clearly weren’t being attentive till I insisted that we rewatch the videos through the camera in order to make sure all audio is in check! I enjoyed working with Laura because she’s curious and new into the media doc minor so she wanted us to go over concepts such as what is b-roll and why it’s important. Margie was a great partner who managed to keep us calm as she fixed the camera when things went wrong. It’s a good revision and it’s important to teach one another about the process. As soon as each member would finish their interview I insisted that they go through their  galleries and search for photos or videos of their pets. I didn’t like how all the videos were shot vertically. I strongly believe that one should shoot every video horizontally because you never know when it can come in use and vertical videos are personally a total no-no for b-roll or filming in any case. The b-roll added a lot of life to our interview because I feel our minds tend to wander when someone is telling a story for too long. It’s important to give the audience a visual experience of what they’re hearing in order to engage a lot more with the piece. Time management and allocation of tasks was essential as well. We had to mentally create a timeline and a storyboard of how we’d want our final piece to look. As we were filming I imagined the quick cut intro playing in the back of my head so when Regi took the lead with Premier, we could hop right onto it. If we had more time, we would have edited it a lot better and added more structure. For some reason really struggled with adding text in Premier which gives me motivation to watch a video right now and figure out how to do it right.

I enjoyed watching others projects because every group tackled their topic in a unique way. The politics group played a lot with interview angles and b-roll of the main character walking around and working, showing us some for of melancholy and fear of the future. The therapy pet group dramatized hand, feet, and small motions while they spoke about their pets deaths which is funny and sort of traumatizing. Overall, I thought it was a great activity and I really enjoyed working with my group.