Critical Reflection

        If someone were to do a study in our school of how many people enjoy electronic music or partake in DJing, my guess is one in 15 people will tell you they’re a DJ. 

        Music is an immensely broad element in our lives and the documentary “Remix” focuses on the alive and everchanging culture of DJing in our neighboring city, Miami. The genre of electronic music has grown immensely in recent years, but we wanted to delve into the past, present, and foreseeable future of this style. Three different subjects highlight the shared experiences they have as DJs, and their differences display an array of perspectives as each DJ is from a different generation.

        When choosing this topic my partner and I realized that in our generation there are so many people who enjoy mixing music, yet they don't know much about the actual history behind it, much less what it takes to achieve certain goals. For that reason, this documentary was created to inform and hopefully inspire young DJs or people who enjoy electronic music. The development of who we wanted our target audience to be was crucial when deciding who the subjects would be. We knew we needed experienced people to speak on the topic, but also included a DJ that would serve as someone our audience could relate to. They would represent the broad culture of Miami DJs, so the combination of Jordan Sanchez, Santiago Duarte, and Alvaro Osuna, all from different backgrounds, with different goals, and different achievements demonstrated the dimensions of the industry. Their agreement and shared experiences showed how all DJs face similar challenges, in hand achieving the purpose of informing aspiring DJs of certain problems they might face. They opened a new layer to DJs that the general public might not take into account, that being the hate that they receive online.

        I believe we were successful in representing the Miami DJ, but if we were to remake this, an interview from a female DJ could implement a new view, diving into the perception of female creators in a commonly male-dominated industry. When receiving critiques from older knowledgeable generations, we were told that there was not enough information on the background of the topic, and that we should have included more on the rise of house music, turntablism, and vinyl DJs. Our research could have been more thorough, that way we would have known to include these important aspects, but I also think if we had gone too in-depth on that it would have drawn away from the main focus which was Miami DJ culture. Definitely, with more time, it would be a sector we should consider including.

        In a critique session we had with our peers in class, one of the comments heard was that it was very fast-paced and hard to absorb all the information when it was changing so rapidly. This was something my partner and I later discussed and while it is a good note, the pacing was purposeful. We engaged in practices that would keep the viewer attentive knowing that Generation Z has been proven to have a shorter attention span. Additionally, electronic/house music is commonly very upbeat and fast-paced so we wanted the pacing to match the energy of the topic.

        A similar documentary that served as a big inspiration for Remix was “Changing Bearings”, a film made for Media Studies A a few years back and had a very successful outcome in film festivals. We especially took inspiration from the stylistic aspects of the film. Since the topic was skateboarding, the producers got a lot of b-roll at skate parks, from unique angles and with unique lenses. They also implemented graphics when speaking about history. Even though in Remix there is less information about the technicality of DJing and more about the cultural aspect of it, the inclusion of additional effects and filters when speaking of the past certainly was an idea we got from Changing Bearings to separate the present look from the past. 

        The b-roll we included was very stylistic, with various close-ups, colors, and of course music; however, when filming the b-roll in Miami we stumbled across one DJ and decided to include a few of her sets as part of the documentary which we were told was confusing for our audience as she was never interviewed. Had we found a few other DJs on the street or at a venue in Miami, the b-roll would have been more cohesive for this section of the documentary, but I totally see where this is coming from. Regardless, my favorite part is the B-roll because, for the most part, it helped maintain a certain look in the film. The purple lights and close-up shots from Alvaro’s DJ set the scene of a party and seeing Jordan Sanchez showing his students certain effects, etc.

        We decided to stray away from a narrator and direct interviews as we wanted the subjects to share their experiences and guide the story with their own voice. This was a risk since we took into account the fact that there is a stigma behind DJs and how they don't normally like to speak a lot, but we somewhat got lucky with Jordan Sanchez because he loved to talk. Unfortunately, he was extremely loud and we didn't check the audio levels during the interview so for a lot of the time it was peaking and while we were able to somewhat fix it in post, it still was not the best audio.

        All in all, I am extremely happy with the outcome. This was certainly a learning experience where we had to adapt to many obstacles. I now know want to do a documentary for the portfolio component of the Aice test, but I'll take all of the curve balls and mistakes into account when creating this one. While I believe wth more time the documentary could have been more thorough, I also think it's about time management and that is something I will for sure be planning better in the future.

REMIX

 Here's the final documentary!

Click Here to Watch REMIX

Post-Production

Its like baking a cake!

        Im not sure if thats a good analogy but editing is like putting togther all of the ingredients, putting it in the oven, and hoping that everything tastes good to the person eating the cake. The biggest difference is that in editing you have "Control -> Z" if any mistake is made. Editing is always my favorite part. I just love piecing together the clips and putting my own style into the film. After the first filming day, I had already begun cutting up the interview with Jordan Sanchez and chooing the best broll clips, but its not easy to really put it together when so many ingredients are missing. We started looking for music and other B-roll/Graphic elements such as archive footage so that we had enough content to work with once we got the other interviews.

        After I got the second interview from my dad, I was able to really start creating the structure of the documentary. The base layer was nearly done so I began making the fun stuff. Graphics, B-roll, adding music. They're almost like the sprinkles and frosting on a cake, its what makes it look pretty. I am most proud of the graphic showing the locations where DJing originated and then the transition into Miami. It took a few hours but i am obsessed with it. That and so many other elements really made the piece so cohesive and energetic like for example the miconceptions graphics with the texts. 

        The only probelm is that I got too far into editing and sort of forgot that there was still an interview missing and a lot of B-roll to place. After getting the footage with Alvaro, it was hard to really put his words anywhere since the structure was so concrete, but i had to rework a lot of the b-roll I had already placed, and moved around a lot of the interview clips from the other two subjects. Luckyly, im the type of person that can sit in front of a screen and edit for hours on end, so I was able to rework it pretty fast and then it was just a matter of perfecting it. After refining little tweaks I started getting feedback from people and fixing their critiques until it was time to submit. 

        I am very happy with how the documentary turned out, and even though it still could use some minor fixes, but I hope to submit the final piece to festivals and film competitions. The following post will have the peice, enjoy!

Production

Think on the spot!

        One thing that video production has taught me is that you have to adapt and overcome any obstacles thrown at you. We ended up having to change one of our subjects which pushed our schedule back by a bit. In total, we had 4 (non-consecutive) filming days, here's how they went.

DAY 1, 11/16:

        Last post I mentioned how we had written a short VO on the history of DJing, well before we got too far in the script, we did the first interview with Jordan Sanchez, a DJ instructor from Wired Sound Academy. This could not have gone better. He gave full and thorough answers, it was almost as if he had read our outline and said exactly what we wanted to include. I didn't even ask about the history of DJing and he started talking about it. For that reason, we felt it would be better to get rid of our voice-over and continue with interview clips of the DJs explaining where it originated from.

DAY 2, 11/19:

        I had set up an interview on this date days prior, but of course, some things just escape from our control, and the DJ we were supposed to interview canceled on us last minute. Nevertheless, we adapted, and as much as I didn't want to originally, my dad is a DJ so it was an efficient way to get that interview. My biggest concern is that my dad has an accent so some of the answers could get lost in translation. This made us go back and rethink whether we wanted to have direct or indirect interviews, and if we should implement VO. it became an option for us and we kept it in mind during the interview, but we also didn't want to give up on our original vision with indirect interviews like in "Abstract" or "Exit Through the Gift Shop" (visit my Pre-PRE Production Blog to hear more about those). Thankfully, the interview went pretty well and we were able to get a lot of content about the topics we highlighted in our outline. 

DAY 3, 11/21:

        This might have been the most spontaneous day. Miami day! In the afternoon we went to Miami but we kind of forgot daylight savings was a thing so it got dark very quickly. This wasn't such a terrible thing because Miami is still a very lively place at night so we were able to get lots of footage. There was a DJ who we spoke to and got footage of too, a choice that could have been executed better if we had known the response from the audience. After some time we felt between the both of us, we had more than enough footage and there was now only one day left of filming.

DAY 4, 11/22:

        The last day of filming was with Alvaro, the young DJ. By this point, I had already started on the line edit and knew what elements we were missing, so the interview was expected to go smoothly. However, Alvaro is our friend so there was a lot of joking around and re-doing answers so it took a bit longer than expected. It was worth it because we got the best answers from him but it certainly wasn't easy. The most important part we wanted from him was B-roll. We basically set up a studio in my garage with colored lights and a DJ set. IT LOOKED AMAZING. It was exactly what I had envisioned for the piece and even though we were dying because of how hot it was in my garage, it was worth it because of how cool the footage turned out. This day was when we actually started seeing the project coming together and our vision coming to life.

        Throughout these days I had begun the editing process (aka my favorite part), but you'll hear more about that in my next post.

Research and Planning

 Our groups are set. Ideas are flowing. What are we going to do.

My partner, Rafa, and I went back and forth with some ideas we had for our documentary. We wanted to pick something that would spark both of our interests which at first seemed impossible. He wanted to do athletic things, I wanted to do artistic things but quickly enough we came to a topic that we both enjoyed: Music. Specifically house and electronic music. 

So our planning began. We wanted to focus on the DJ aspect of the genre, especially in Miami since it is such a hotspot for the style of music. The first thing I thought of for inspiration was "Changing Bearings" a documentary from this class a few years ago. We reviewed it and thought of what aspects of it we would want to incorporate into our doc. The outline was the first thing we tackled. It was important for us to understand what we wanted to convey in the documentary before choosing the subjects and thinking of B-roll. Starting with this was probably the best choice we could have made because it organized our thoughts efficiently, since then, creating an outline is something I've been doing for all of my projects and it works every time. From there we moved on to who our subjects would be and when we would set up interviews.

Ideally, we would have loved to interview FISHER or Diplo but we had to be just a bit more realistic. We decided that in order to get the most perspectives on the topic, it would be good to get an actual DJ, a DJ teacher/instructor, and a young/aspiring DJ. The last subject might seem a bit out of place, but we had in mind that our audience was a younger generation of people who enjoy electronic music, therefore, we thought it would be more engaging to have a DJ that the audience could relate to and possibly be inspired by them. Then it was time to schedule interviews so we called DJ instruction businesses and texted maybe 7 different DJs that Rafa is friends with. Of course, it wasn't easy but we were able to set up interviews and could not wait for those days.

Commercial Break (not really)!! Over the summer I did an internship at a local station where students all over South Florida can check out equipment for free to use on their projects. We wanted the best quality for our documentary so we took a little visit to Shortcuts and got equipment. 

ShortcutsTV

There is a section in our outline which we titled "History of DJing" and at first this was going to be VO explaining various details of years and locations. For this, we did some research on the topic and wrote down a brief transcript of what would be said. Then came the questions, which we struggled a bit with but fixed after revising with our adviser. Of course, B-roll was a big thing I wanted to work on. Like I said in the previous post, I really enjoyed the stylistic and staged B-roll from the Abstract series, so in the planning, we had a lot of ideas. Colored lights, close-ups, low angles, profiles, we had a lot. With everything scheduled and ready to film, it was just a matter of counting down the days until the interview and hoping that nobody would flake.

The Pre-PRE- Production

Wait, what are we even making?

        I’ve always been inclined to documentaries and have been looking forward to this part of the class since sophomore year when my senior friends made some beautiful docs. We began by watching a few different documentaries. Some were long, some short, some took years to make, and some were filmed in a day. We saw a wide range of styles to not only learn from them but also to get some inspiration for our own documentary.

American Promise (2013)

        The first documentary we watched was “American Promise”, a film that took 13 years to produce and followed two kids in the American education system. This was a beautiful, moving piece that tugged on my heartstrings. I was sitting in the back of the classroom completely absorbed in the film, so much so that I shed a couple tears. When we discussed this doc in class, it was evident that after being released in 2013, the film received a lot of criticism. The producers of the documentary were the parents of one of the subjects, therefore, some people might argue that they could have taken out some parts of their parenting that they didn't want others to see. I think the main takeaway from this documentary was the difference between direct and indirect interviews in addition to the reason why each is used. Towards the beginning when the kids are young, direct interviews are implemented as they can't give full complex answers, but as they grow up there are fewer and fewer direct interviews and the subjects can now express feelings and ideas thoroughly. This is something that I certainly took into account when developing our documentary for the class as we would need people who can speak a lot about the topic we would choose thoroughly..

        My favorite documentary we viewed in class was an episode of “Abstract” on the costume designer Ruth Crater. This excerpt was a huge inspiration for what we would later create. I especially liked the stylistic b-roll and staged moments with the subject. As she visited different places and reminisced on her past, a title of the location would pop up, (spoiler alert) something we actually implemented in our documentary. I actually watched the whole season on Netflix and really loved the style of it as well as how cohesive but different all the stories were.

        There was another documentary shown in class but unfortunately, I was absent for it and had to watch it on my own. "Exit Through the Gift Shop" was a very different style from the other two but I really appreciated the use of tons of archive footage for B-roll. The fast-paced editing of this documentary fits the topic very well. Without giving too much away, this type of documentary can't simply be made due to a lot of elements in the story but it was a very fun watch for me

        Additionally, we watched some New York Times Op-Docs. I know I already said that Abstract was my favorite documentary but I think the Op-Doc lesson itself was the best. We were assigned to watch two short op docs and answer a few questions about them. I watched about 8 on my own and felt more inspired than ever. Not to mention the fact that I had just come back from the All American High School Film Festival where I watched incredible documentaries. By absorbing such a large variety of content, I realized that there is no format or right way to make a documentary, it is simply "a slice of life". Now with a roster of ideas for this project, I was ready to begin the pre-production.