I think the F-Word episodic documentary series is a strong and compelling example of what can be done with documentary. The first thing that I noted before even watching the documentary is that it is filmed and released in episodes/segments. How would the F-Word be different if they decided to film it as a longer, feature length piece? I think their decision to break their story into shorter segments works well with what they are trying to do: tell a story about their journey of adopting a child from foster care. The animated title sequence also stood out to me. One question that the series provoked was: how do you effectively illustrate/show what is being said? Nicole and Kristan use interactive photos and animations to show their past as they narrate their past int the beginning of the first episode.

This past Friday, I interviewed Jordan Page for the individual interview assignment. I booked our television studio for our interview and set up the studio prior to Jordan’s arrival. I used he black curtain as the background and used a lights and gel pack kit for lighting. I used my friend as a model before Jordan came in so I could have the camera, chairs, and lights ready to go. The interview went off without a hitch until the very end. After Jordan answered the last question, I pressed the record button to stop the camera. A notification popped up and I immediately thought that the camera wasn’t able to record the interview. But it was just a notification telling me that the 14 minute video had been cut into 2 halves. I was relieved. Then, when I went to stop the Tascam recorder, I read that the recording was stopped because there wasn’t enough space on the SD card. I finished editing the piece this weekend and posted a link to the rough cut. I’m proud of what I have so far, but definitely wish I was able to have stronger audio. I still don’t think it takes away from the overall piece.

This weekend, when we went to film our B-Roll for our final documentary, Annie and I made a plan to start at the thrift store. We knew the shop would be closed, but we were able to get cool shots of the sign, posters on the windows and some items through the glass. We got more shots of the different parts of Allentown, including the residential neighborhoods surrounding Turner Street and Downtown Allentown near the Center and Arts Walk. It was there that we were able to catch interesting shots of people using their phones and signs about wifi. You can see all of this, and the juxtaposition we created in our B-Roll Footage.

What I found to be most interesting in doing this activity was the engagement with the people around us. At our fist location, we set up our cameras and mics near the car. When I started filming, I heard someone whistling from a far. I then realized that the man doing construction on top of the building across the street was trying to get our attention. He yelled and signaled that he wanted his picture taken. I recorded him and he waved goodbye. Later on, when we were filming a mural on the side of a building (also can be seen in b-roll footage), a man walked up and asked if we were doing a school project. We told him what we were doing and he engaged in a short conversation with us about Allentown and how going a few minutes in one direction will take you to different parts of the city. At the end of our conversation, we got his email address so we can hopefully send him our final product. These were just two small, but delightful exchanges that were able to happen because of the presence of a camera.

Aidan Trevisan, Josh Kline, Kiera Kehoe

I really enjoyed watching “F-word”. Like someone already mentioned in class it was easier to keep up with when it was broken up into segments. Just like a typical cliffhanger, once the segment was over I wanted to watch the next one. They were short and right to the point. I read the summary beforehand for each episode just to get a glimpse and I found myself looking for each point in the videos.

Additionally, even though this is sort of a serious issue, they made the videos light and fun. I loved the part when the “soon-to-be parents” had to get their home inspected. They brought in some kids in order to child proof the house. The kids did well too, and gave some essential points about things grownups probably don’t think about as much.

There was something, too, that I kept thinking about during the movie. Before I share, I’d like to mention that when I was growing up most families were pretty average. Mom and dad with one or two kids, sometimes three, and there was often a pet who lived with the family. I never really saw much variation from that. Then when I got to my high school, which happened to be liberal, I started to see differences that I had never seen before. I saw different genders, besides the general binaries, different sexual orientations, and many other different identifiers. Mind you, this was in high school when I’d say I was already mature. With that in mind, I want to share, throughout the videos I was thinking about how the baby or child would reaction and adjust to a same sex couple. In fact, I was hoping they would ask the two men who adopted a son. I can’t imagine someone in foster care would typically see a same sex couple adopting their peers so I just curious how they might handle it or what questions they might ask. I also wonder if the parents think about that and worry at all or is that not even considered?

I shot two interviews at the beginning of this week. Unfortunately, my audio levels on one of them were quite off. The sound quality is low because I had the db levels up too high. When shooting interviews, audio is everything. My mistake while I was shooting is extremely frustrating. I noticed that the levels were spiking as I shot my interview, but I couldn’t figure out how to quickly adjust them on the camera. My subject only had a limited amount of time to interview with me, so I felt a tremendous pressure to not interrupt the interview while I fiddled with the sound settings on the camera. Before my interview, I tested the sound by myself, and for whatever reason the levels seemed fine to me. The bad news is this is a tough lesson to learn because I basically wasted an entire interview; but the good news is that I won’t ever make this mistake again. In addition, I was able to fix the levels for my second interview, so I actually don’t think this will effect my final product at all. Since I’ll need to cut my interview down to a couple minutes, it wouldn’t make sense to use two subjects anyway. Overall, I got quite lucky with my interviews I think. It certainly helped that I planned multiple interviews far in advance of our deadline, but in the future, especially for longer projects, shooting useless interview footage is a giant waste of time and resources.

Now I just have to decide how to weave together a coherent and moving story from the many minutes of interview footage that I have of the Public Safety director.

“Night and Fog”  is a gripping documentary about the atrocities of the Holocaust, filling me with anguish and sorrow as I witness hundreds of lives being lost from the concentration camps. The documentary eases the viewer gracefully as pictures of beautiful meadows show up on the screen, but brings the realism of the event as soon as the camera pans onto the wire fence. Seeing a concentration camp 10 years after it was operated,  I still feel tense, as somehow the feeling of pain is imprinted in the area. Buildings that were once stored with prisoners, freezing and fearful of the next day, resided here. Medical centers where the bedridden were given the same kind of ointment for all types of illness, experimented on, then left to die resided here. As the director stated, the buildings looked identical, and what may have looked like the barracks a prisoner was staying in before, could have been the gas chambers. There was no safety for the prisoners nor privacy as the video shows, people of many professions and walks of life were being called as numbers, being separated from family and friends forever.

The director’s calm and affirming voice adds gravity to documentary, as present-time video of the camp was matched with the black-white photos and footage of the camp in full-force. Towards the end, I like how director provided film of SS officers and commanders saying they were not responsible for the horrors that occurred, and then the director stating: “Then who is responsible for it?”, a statement that get rid of the excuse that the officers were only doing what was instructed of them. From beginning to end, the documentary was compelling and has me thinking of how there are still similar atrocities occurring today.

Watching the film “Night and Fog,” was difficult, as is anything on the Holocaust. The footage used in this film was extremely graphic, but I imagine the intention of this filmmaker was to evoke a intense sense of grief from his viewers. I was surprised to see how short this documentary was when I began watching it, however I realized that he only needed a short span of time to tell this story and create the resounding impacts he intended.

In high school and in some of my college courses, we viewed several videos and read primary and secondary texts on the Holocaust, however very few had the same effects as “Night and Fog.” Some of the footage in this film I had never seen before, and it was difficult to get through without turning my head away in horror. The narrator in this film is never shown, which is different from most documentaries. The images and video content were enough to drive the film and tell the story.

The silent shots force the viewer to feel for themselves the heaviness of the grief experienced by so many. In the article “Documenting the Inevitable,” by Sandy Flitterman Lewis, she states that “recognizing that the ‘truth’ of an event always exceeds the documented fact, Renais attempts to locate those other tribunaries of meaning and association (social, personal, ideological, emotional, philosophical, ethical/moral, national/cultural) through a metaphoric play of contrasts and opposition that includes the viewer in the very definition of the meaning itself…” The contrasts of shots and narration versus silence were done purposely to confront the viewer with the feelings associated with an event this traumatic and dehumanization of an entire group of people. “The haunting sense of absence produced by the camera’s relentless track across deserted space is continually put into revision with the finite temporality of the documentary shots, providing the viewer with a space in which to consider the enduring effects of the specific historical movements.”

This documentary definitely had these impacts on me, and left me with an intense emotional response.