Entry 3: 2/8/22
Time for my favorite project so far this year, the documentary project. This blog post could go on for thousands of words but I will try to keep it short and sweet.. key work (try). The documentary project extended over a period of two to three weeks during the second quarter I believe. The time frame for this project was so stressful, it was around the time that college applications were due. We had to make a 5-7 minute documentary and I was with Isabella and Luis. I can say that this project is one of the few projects in high school that I am actually really appreciative of and learn SO much out of it.
Let's start with the basics, the research and planning. Isa actually had done research prior for a different assignment so we had a very simple outline done on the first day. The topic of our documentary is that if fashion is nonbinary. To open our eyes more to the topic and see different ways to film b-roll, we found several other documentaries about fashion, clothing and gender. We also needed to figure out where we were going to film and who were going to be our interviewees. This part was tricky since we were DMing people we found on Instagram who would seem interested in the documentary. Everyone, to our luck, ended up saying yes and was really excited to be a part of it. For location scouting, we were really going for an outdoor look so we chose a park that is near to use.
When my group went filming, we had a dynamic set. Since we had so many props and items around the park that we needed in the shot, T was in charge of that and also hyping up and encouraging our interviewees to be themselves. They were being filmed by people they never met before so we really wanted them to feel comfortable. I also was in charge of conducting the interviews and that was one of my favorite parts. At the same time, Isa and Luis were filming with two different cameras. We would walk around the park and set out props up in different fields and tree areas. I had so many little seeds stuck to my shoes after. Speaking of equipment, we actually rented equipment at this place called Shortcuts from BeconTV. We were given different lens and ronins that helped us a lot with filming. We had carts full of equipment and props to carry around while we were recording.
Right after we would film b-roll, we would go to either Luis or my house to conduct the interview. This part was exhilarating since I really enjoy doing interviews and Isa and I had written questions prior. We got amazing answers from all our interviewees and we had to start thinking of how we were going to structure the documentary itself.
Once we were done filming completely, we now needed to think of several things for editing. The overall structure, the fonts we were going to use, which interview clips we needed to include, title graphic, and lower thirds. This was all a hassle to choose. For the font we wanted a simple one but it had to stand out, look different. You can not see it through the images the but title font is actually animated and we fell in love with it. One of our group members had originally produced a title graphic but we all agreed later that it did not fit the piece and needed to be changed. Although, all this graphics and fonts were difficult, the choosing of how we were going to put our documentary all together was hard. Isa made a Google Docs to keep everything organized and it helped us in the long run. I also forgot to mention, but choosing the name was a task we needed to complete. It took my group forever to think of one until we asked our interviewees. Florence actually said counter conformity and we went with it. Other than that, we spent hours and hours editing making everything perfect to us. In the end, I was extremely proud of the end product.
Not quite the end of this story though. After we finishing editing and wrapping it all up together, we actually published it on our social media platforms and submitted to film festivals. We have not gotten anything on the film festivals yet since those are later in the year, but the response we got for publishing the documentary was insane. We posted it on 1/2/2022 on Isa's Instagram platform and throughout the days before it, we were promoting it like crazy. We had friends and people we did not know signing up to be reminded of when the documentary would post. As I check now, we have almost 1,500 views and 200 comments. When we first posted it, we were receiving several comments hourly about how much they appreciated the documentary and how it brought to light a serious topic. One of my favorite comments though had to be people from older generations agreeing on how important the topic is despite the stigmas they grew up with. I was also followed by several film festivals from around the globe asking my group to submit our piece. Maybe they were a scam, maybe they weren't, but it made my group and I feel extremely proud of our work.
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