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.
