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.
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.
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