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.