A Not So Short Reflection on My Documentary

           This post is a reflection on the documentary making process.  We will have ours finished and exported by Thursday, so expect to see it on my blog next week!  If you click on the documentary project label that I put with this post, you can see all the other posts I have done on it.

            My group filmed a documentary about the closed lunch policy at Blair.  Blair has always had a closed-campus, meaning students are not allowed to leave campus during the school day.  Recently the school engaged the support of the restaurants near Blair to enforce this policy.  Now the restaurants will not serve Blair students during the school day.

            We interviewed the principal and the head security guard at Blair, as well as students.  Unfortunately, we did not have the opportunity to interview many of the managers of the restaurants in the nearby Woodmoor shopping center.  We did interview an employee at Santucci’s Italian Deli, however he did not want to go on camera; and we did not have time to interview employees at the other stores.  Our documentary would be stronger and more complete if we had been able to include the stores’ perspectives.

            From making this documentary I learned how much pre-production planning really needs to be done.  Before making the documentary I did not have any idea about what to expect.  We knew what our topic was and who we wanted to interview, but we had no idea about what direction to go in.  While we were planning what to ask in our interviews we did not consider how the questions would play into our documentary.  While we were editing, we still had no clear idea of what we were doing.  I think that we would have had a much easier time had we dedicated ourselves to more planning.

            I also learned the importance of selecting a topic, as well as group members.  I was not particularly interested in the topic of closed lunch and I feel as if the topic was a challenging one for first time documentary makers to take on.  In relation to group members, I learned that sometimes it is not necessarily easy to work with your friends.  While in the end we did complete our documentary, at times we got distracted.  Not only that, but the work load was not evenly distributed.  It would have been more advantageous to me to choose a group that would have worked well together to complete the project.  If I were to do this project again, I would have chosen a topic that more so captured my interest.

            Aside from our lack of planning, general confusion, and various computer malfunctions throughout the project, we only really had one major problem.  We planned to test the enforcement of Blair’s closed lunch policy and film it for our documentary.  We had approval from our principal and our parents.  The plan was to go to one of the local restaurants for lunch, filming ourselves through the process of leaving campus and either being served food or denied service.  Our teacher was going to accompany us.  Unfortunately, the assistant principal did not allow us to do this.  We instead filmed ourselves pretending to leave campus.  It would have been more interesting had we actually been able to test the policy.

            All in all, I think our teacher did a good job of helping to guide us through this project.  There are, however, a few things that could be done differently next year.  In pre-production it may be helpful to have each group submit a script of what they anticipate their documentary to look like and then submit a revised or updated script during the production phase.  Also, during the production phase it may be helpful to establish stricter checkpoint deadlines for the students, for example, music by X date and a rough cut by Y date, and to be more readily available after school if the students need to borrow a camera.  I liked that there was time for research in class and that checkpoints were given to us with the research (three note cards by Monday, for example).  During the production phase, I appreciated the feedback we received on our documentary, including the advice on things like what shots to keep or not keep and where we should put different pieces of b-roll.  I also appreciate that we are allowed to continue working on our documentaries on our own time for an extra week.  It is really helpful to make up for time lost because of technical difficulties and such.

            All things considered, I think this project was a good experience.  It taught me the importance of planning and making sure everyone is dedicated to the project.  Even though the topic of our documentary was not my first choice, I still enjoyed learning about something in my school and hearing different people’s opinions.

Challenges of Making a Documentary

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on how we are making a documentary for our media class.

Well, at first I thought this would be really easy - an interview with our principal on she choose for our school to have a closed lunch, what some students think, and some interviews with the stores that agreed not to sell food to students during school hours.  Throw in some B-Roll (secondary footage) of kids eating lunch and the Woodmoor area (the place near our school with all of the restaurants), and, wa-la! we would have an A+ op-doc.

Unfortunately, this is not the case (as you've probably already figured out).  We were on a roll when we got our interview with the principal talking about the policy and her decision (and she agreed to a really good idea we had which I'll come back to later) and the head security guard who came up with the idea of not having businesses sell to students during the school day.  We even got some really good interviews with students.  Things started going downhill for us when our idea (which I mentioned before) didn't work out.  Our idea was to try to leave campus and see if the security guards stopped us and then continue on to Woodmoor to see if the businesses really didn't serve us food.  Our principle said that our idea was great, as long as our teacher came with us (which he agreed to) and we had parental permission (which we did).  On the day we planned to execute our plan, we found out that our vice principal had said no to the idea.  Not only were we disappointed because we wouldn't be going out for lunch, but that was going to be a major part of our documentary.  Then, later that day when we tried to interview the business owners and managers after school, they wouldn't agree to go on camera and we were not allowed to film in the stores.  I get that they want to keep their privacy but those were all going to be important parts of our video.

We are currently making a new plan for our video (we did write down the interviews with the managers) so we can just do voice overs of those but our documentary won't be all that we hoped it to be (I hope this isn't a regular occurrence in film/documentary making).  I think we'll be able to pull it all together and still have a great documentary though!

I think we're going to be done sometime in February so I'll be sure to post it on my blog then!

This is the Woodmoor shopping center near our school.  They have a Starbucks, Chipotle, Subway, a delicious deli, a bakery, and a bunch of other restaurants.

Image Source:  Woodmoor Shopping Center

Good Hair

I recently watched the documentary Good Hair to review for my media class.  I really enjoyed it and I wrote up a review on it, so please, read on.


When the daughter of the popular African American comedian Chris Rock asks him why she does not have “good hair,” he decides to go on a mission.  What exactly is “good hair” in the African American community?  Why is it so important for black women to have it?  What extremes will people go to to get “good hair”?  These questions are answered throughout Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair.  This hilarious and well-made interactive documentary shows viewers a whole new side of hair.  Once the documentary begins, the viewer quickly realizes that Rock is not just examining black women’s hair styles, but issues of race, beauty, and self-image.  Black women want straight and flowing hair, or “white” hair.  He examines the different hair styles of black women, the costs and the talents needed to make them, and the forces behind the pressure to have “good hair.”  Rock looks at this issue with a wry sense of humor, making difficult topics funny and easy to discuss.
 

The movie’s main character is Chris Rock, himself.  He interviews African American celebrities, community leaders like Maya Angelou and Al Sharpton, and various women in beauty salons and men in barber shops, asking them about black women’s hair styles.  The celebrities say that the media pressures them and other women into having straighter, more flowing and more “beautiful” hair.  A group of students say that they feel the natural “nappy” hair would be unacceptable and out of place in a professional office.  The women in beauty salons say it is just something that everyone does and everyone should do.  Interestingly, black men in the barber shops do not seem to care about the women’s hair, but are confused by the price and commitment it requires.

The movie’s plot follows the methods of the black hair care industry and various ways in which African Americans style their hair to try to make it conform with what they see in magazines.

Rock first looks at chemical relaxer, which makes hair temporarily straight.  Going to a science lab, Rock learns that relaxer is made of an extremely poisonous chemical, sodium hydroxide, which can be blinding and burn the scalp.  Despite the pain it causes, women endure it.

Rock then looks at weaves, a method of sewing other people’s hair into pre-existing hair.  The entire process can take up to six hours and cost upward of $1,000.  Hair weaves are typically made from Indian hair.  The hair is shaved off the heads of Indian women in a religious ceremony called Tensure.  There is even a hair black market.

Interspersed through the movie, Rock follows an event called the Bronner Brothers’ annual hair competition in Atlanta, Georgia.  This trade show has hundreds of vendors selling various African American hair care products and features four competitors who each have 15 minutes to do a performance in which they style hair in a unique way.  This shows the money side of the industry.  The movie contends that there are only one or two black owned black hair care companies.  The others are owned by Koreans and Chinese.

The footage was shot on interview sets, in beauty salons, at the competition in Atlanta, and in India, where Rock goes to learn about the source of weaves.  The shots focus on both the people’s faces, as well as their hair, or what they are doing to someone else’s hair.  This helps to give perspective to the viewer and makes the viewer care more about what is happening.

Because of the filming locations, there are usually a lot of people in the shots at once.  This makes the movie very loud and energetic.  The diegetic sounds on busy streets and at the hair competition is very prominent.  The tone of the documentary is also very dynamic.  Rock has an upbeat personality and is always cracking jokes.  The music is always very lively and the film is shot under high-key lighting, making the atmosphere seem light and positive.

There are both strengths and weaknesses in Good Hair, mostly strengths though.  Rock tries hard, and succeeds, at making the documentary funny and engaging.  He also helps the viewer think about serious issues of race and beauty in a light way that one may.  The weaknesses are that sometimes the number of people on the set and the filming location make it difficult to hear what the people are saying – whether it have been because of the excessive background noise, people talking at the same time, or people talking too loudly or too quietly.  Another weakness I found is Rocks treatment of some of the issues is cursory. 

The ideas of conformity and what it means to be beautiful are displayed well in this film.  It allows the viewer to see the lengths some people will go to to fit in or be perceived in a certain way.  This movie is definitely worth seeing.  Its lively and light tone helps Rock get across a serious message about beauty.

Here is the trailer to Good Hair

 

 Good Hair, PG-13, 96 minutes, Chris Rock, 2009

Documentary Project

Our newest media assignment is to make a documentary.  We were given an option of four different types of documentaries to make:

1. A profile documentary - a documentary on an interesting person in our community. (NOTE: The video I connected the link to has some really graphic scenes of Chad Jones's leg.)
2. The C-SPAN competition documentary - make a documentary answering the question what should Obama do in 2013.
3. An indiegogo documentary - a documentary to raise funds for our change project.
4. An Op-doc - (this is what my group is doing.) a documentary showing your opinion on an issue.

Like I just said, my group is making an op-doc.  Ours is going to be about open and closed-lunches.  Our school has a closed-campus lunch and recently announced that they have made an agreement with local restaurants where the restaurants will not sell food to students during the day.  Obviously students should follow the rules to stay safe but the restaurants are also businesses that need to make money.

We plan on showing benefits and consequences to open and closed-lunches and even testing the policy by going to one of the restaurants and seeing what happens (we will have school approval, of course!)

I think this is going to be a difficult and long project (it goes through January) but I think that ours will turn out really well.