In Reflection

Going into the product of our documentary, I was able to view and become inspired by many different types of documentaries that all provided different examples of techniques that can be used within a documentary. I found this incredibly helpful when my group and I started working on our own documentary. As seen primarily in Exit Through the Gift Shop, my group and I wanted to use indirect interviews as we felt that this would be the most seamless way to connect all of the information that was being shared. Furthermore, we felt, similar to Exit Through the Gift Shop, that because our interviewees were going to be adults, that they would be able to effectively restate the question within their answer.

The second most important technique that we knew we had to incorporate within our documentary was the use of a voiceover to communicate the information that wouldn’t be gathered through the interviews. This consisted of research and data that we gathered on the topic in order to introduce our topic of book bans to those who are viewing the documentary, especially those who may not be particularly familiar with the topic that is being discussed. This voiceover contributed to the nature of the documentary as a commentary or opinion piece as we discuss a widely controversial topic. Through the discussion of such a controversial topic, we hoped to bring in an audience of individuals who were open to taking in the information and willing to understand how book bans may be impacting different people and societal groups.

Our intended audience is anyone who is interested in learning about book bans and examining what the impacts of this may be on their own education and life. We hope that this documentary may aid in getting the information out to more people, especially students who may not even realize what is going on and how the banning of certain books may have an immense impact on what they are able to learn and how they are able to learn it. It was important to us that we were able to share how these bans have been impacting teacher’s. Teaching is one of the most difficult jobs to have and the increased banning has required teachers begin rethinking aspects of their curriculum to abide by the ever changing restrictions that are being placed on books and teachable topics. 

I believe that this perspective coming from teachers may have a bigger impact on the possibility that changes may be made in order to decrease the books being banned and what this is beginning to do to the teacher's curriculum. Having teachers as subjects is also effective at getting our student audience members to listen to the information as it is coming from those who they are used to listening and learning from. Within the presentation of our idea, we tried to incorporate elements that would interest us and engage us in a topic that may not be the most interesting, but it ultimately very important to know about. I think the ability to connect important topics to people, such as book bans, and have different voices be heard through my work is my ultimate goal and I feel like I was able to accomplish that pretty well within this documentary. 

 I feel as though many of the policies that are enforced within schools, especially in Florida where I get my education, are done without the input of those whom it will impact. This is why I felt that it was very important to incorporate the voices of teachers who may not be listened to very often when in conversations about policies that directly affect them and their ability to carry out their task of educating the youth. I think through this I was able to accomplish the aspect of my brand that works to give a voice to those who may not have one in various fields. However, I do believe that there are many ways that I would have been able to make the documentary align even more with the brand that I am hoping to create. 

Part of what we discussed during the planning of our documentary was whether or not we should incorporate the aspects of race and equality within our discussion of what topics are being censored. We ultimately determined that in order to keep our within the allotted time, that beginning this heavy conversation would not be compatible and we would not be able to flesh out the entirety of our ideas without going well over the time that we were given. However, I felt that if we had been able to accomplish having this conversation it would have aligned the documentary more with my brand and what I hope to achieve through my work. We gave a lot of thought to this and it remains a topic that I find very interesting, but we felt that it would not fit exactly what we were trying to say within this piece. 

That being said, within this documentary it was still important to us to show what groups were being primarily targeted and what topics may be at risk for review. While we knew we could not have an entire discussion on what groups were being censorship, in giving examples of books such as the Bluest Eye we were able to introduce that topics such as race, sexuality, etc. may be in jeopardy or already under attack as a result of the books that are being ban and removed from public schools, libraries, etc. As I said before, I still feel that we may have been able to have been able to do more where representation is concerned if we had expanded more on these specific groups, but doing so would have felt rushed. 

I am ultimately very proud of what we were able to accomplish with the use of classic documentary techniques and the discussion of important topics. While I felt that some aspects could have been better, I believe that this was a very good start in our documentary journey.

Making a Documentary: Post-Production

 During the post-production, I was in charge of ensuring that our final outline matched our completed documentary. I found that we mostly maintained the same structure that we had plan from the beginning with a few minor changes that were made to reflect our changes in interviews, etc. I was able to closely watch through the documentary and catch any last minute details that we needed to fix as I went through and ensure that we were able to accomplish what we sent out to do. 

Finally, I was able to conclude my production log and ensure that I had documented everything that I had done since the beginning of the project accurately and descriptively. During this time I was also to really look back on the experience and think about what we did well and what we could have done better throughout the project making process. I also began thinking about if I would like to make a documentary for my final project as I enjoyed this process very much. 

Making a Documentary: Production

 During our class time, my group wanted to dedicate this time to gathering b-roll around school that would connect with our topic. There were some key spots that we knew we had to hit such as the boxes of old textbooks that sit behind the auditorium. I thought this would be perfect, because I had helped my teacher get the new textbooks prepared for this year and these new additions likely mean that those within the boxes are going to be thrown out to make room for the new. I think that this perfectly depicts our topic and I believe that this added a lot to the documentary.

Being able to gather this b-roll together was essential to the production of our documentary. Dana and Morgan were able to get an interview from Mrs. Herring and Morgan was able to get an interview from Mr. Berna. These two interviews were the focus of our documentary. However, in order to work around some of the issue within the interviews like the lack of rephrasing the question within the answer, we used our voiceover to provide so context as to what the question was asking when necessary. 

While originally, I was supposed to be the one to record the voiceover, I felt that it would turn out better if I had my mom record the voiceover that we wrote the script for. After determining the length that the voiceover would have to be in order to fit between the interviews, I was able to make some last minute edits to the script and had my mom record it for me. I felt that she would have a better voice for the job than I would. Additionally, we needed some last minute b-roll for specific aspects of the documentary and my group was each able to contribute what they could to making the direct connection between the visuals and what was being said. For example, we needed b-roll that directly showed the book 1984 and I was able to film this in order to add to the documentary. 

Making a Documentary: Planning and Research

 As my group began to brainstorm what exactly we wanted the topic to be, we took a different approach of working backwards to determine what kind of interviews and interviewees we would be able to get in the time that we had as two members would be going on trips during the Thanksgiving break and would not have much time to film and edit. We were able to pin down that we wanted to interview teachers as we felt that this would be the most simply and would give us well though out answers.

Having decided whom we would be interviewing, we starting thinking of possible topics that are facing teachers today and would yield good answers. We originally decided on the topic of teacher salaries; however, we determined that this topic may be too personal and may not yield the best answers that we were looking for in order to create our 7 minute documentary. We also decided against this topic as we could not think of any engaging b-roll that would connect with what we were going to be talking about. 

All and all, we ended up on the topic of book bans. Knowing what exactly we were going to be discussing we began brainstorming the perspectives that we may want to have throughout our documentary. We knew that it would be necessary to have the point of view of an english teacher so we compiled a list of possible teachers, including some that, while not english teachers, would provide interesting insight into the topic we wanted to discuss.

This list gave us an idea of what we were going to be working around so that we could begin creating our questions for the interviews that we would filming later on. Additionally, we found it necessary to create an outline that would allow us to understand the structure of what we would be creating. This outline was very helpful especially when we got our footage as it gave us an idea of what we originally wanted our documentary to look like and it held us accountable to getting the necessary materials to accomplish it.

The final piece to the puzzle was writing up the script for the voiceover that we wanted to have in order to connect all of the parts of our documentary. We wanted to include the different elements of our research into the voiceover so that we were able to introduce the topic in a way that made it easily understandable for those who may not be familiar. This also worked to introduce the different interview topics that were to come. 

Making a Documentary: Research

 Beginning the documentary unit, we were introduced to many different styles of documentaries in order to derive inspiration from. I found that I was able to see many different techniques from each documentary that I wanted to incorporate within my own documentary.

The very first documentary that we watched was American Promise. This story follows two boys as they grow from 5 years old to 18 years old. I felt that this documentary was one of my favorites as I found the topic to be very engaging. I felt that the topic was able to say a lot about society, and in specific black youth, which I found to interest me greatly. 

Upon finishing this documentary, I knew that I wanted to create a documentary that says something about society and is possible a more controversial topic. As I have been navigating my way through senior year, I have found that I enjoy politics and was hoping to incorporate this within my work as well. This documentary served as an example of presenting a serious topic that is facing society which I found to be very helpful as my group chose a topic that is slightly controversial, but is facing our society today as well. 

 After concluding our viewing of American Promise, we viewed an entirely different style of documentary in the form of Exit Through the Gift Shop. This documentary follows a photographer, turned graffiti artist as he goes on his journey to becoming the subject of the documentary he began creating. I found the switch in subject to be very intriguing as the beginning of the story, it is very clear that the concluding subject began as the documentary maker.  

From this documentary I was incredibly inspired by the use of interviews and how they were used to add to the progression of the story that was presented. I felt that the interviews worked seamlessly with the b-roll and the other content that was added within this documentary, and I hope that as my group worked through our own project we would be able to accomplish something similar. 

Lastly, we viewed two episodes from the episodic documentary Abstract. I enjoyed both the episodes that I watched in preparation for the creation of my own documentary and I felt that while this was focused on art it gave me a lot of ideas of what I wanted to do within my own documentary. 

Specifically, the use of stage b-roll in order to create a visual representation of the information that is being shared was something that I knew my group would have to incorporate within our own documentary as our topic is hard to gather actual b-roll for. I really enjoyed how all the b-roll within the episode on costume design linked directly to what the subject was talking about as she was talking about it. 

I found this aspect of the research process to be incredibly helpful in the creation of my own documentary as I was able to use the different technique that I saw used in these, within my own. 
  

New year, Same blog

 I have officially made it to my final year of High School. While I am scared for the future, I hope to make this last year the very best one. On that note, I was able to set up my schedule in order to fill my course load with classes that I felt I would enjoy; thus I ended up taking Media Studies A level. I'm excited to continue to produce my creations and hope to share the process via this blog.

Stay Tuned!