Documentary Critical Reflection

     Our documentary asked the question of why people continue to pursue theater, even with all the negative stigma and stereotypes surrounding it. It explores the reasons why people love theater. It also explains some of the common stigmas and stereotypes, as well as delving into what theater lovers think of these things. 

    One of the productions that I researched was exit through the gift shop. This documentary followed street artists and a person that had been documenting these artists. In the end, it actually turned out to be about the person that had been the documentarian, and how he somewhat became a successful street artist too. I wanted to do a similar thing, go with the flow of the piece, and see where it would take me. One way that I did challenge the conventions though is by not really changing my original plans. It was overall very similar to what I had already planned out, but some things were unexpected. For instance, I went with the flow when my director started talking more about herself and her life in the theater. Even though I didn't have questions planned based on the things she was saying, I stayed on my toes and was able to really listen to her, and ask more questions to gain more information from her. 

    Our piece is very engaging with the audience. The audience of this piece is people that enjoy theater, mainly teenagers that are not sure if they want to pursue theater seriously or not in the future. Not only does it have very engaging content to look at, it is also interesting to listen to also. The video quality is nice to look at, and it keeps the audience engaged because it is impressive to see all the nice colors of the production of theater. Also, multiple camera techniques are used in order to keep the audience more engaged. Frequently, the camera pans or zooms so that it is not just a still shot. There are also some close-ups, which can be very engaging to the audience since they get a closer look, and therefore closer feel of what's going on in the documentary. Also, it is engaging with the audio too, because there were no unnecessary pauses, which could have bored the audience. Also, since the video was put on top of the audio, it made it more engaging than just looking at the interviewee talking to the camera. The actual content is also very engaging since it is not really a topic that is discussed every day since only a specific group of people actually like theater. however, it is still a very interesting topic to discuss, because it explains to the public why people love theater so much, and put so much energy into it. It really gives insights into what it's like to do in theater and love it so much. 

    This documentary also represents a variety of social groups and issues. First, it has a wide representation of different interviewees, which were specifically chosen to represent a wide range of people. There is a god variety of different ages, such as a very young girl that is just starting theater, a few teenagers, and also a director that is an adult. There is also a representation of the males in theater since one of the teenagers is a male. Not only is there a variety of ages and gender, but there is also a variety of different opinions on whether or not they want to pursue theater or not. Our documentary also represents issues in society, because of their negative view of theater. they are so well known, that even the theater kids know about all the negative stereotypes and stigmas revolving around the theater. 

Documentary Stressing

     This has got to be one of my favorite projects that I have ever done. I did it about a topic that I enjoyed, which made the whole process much more enjoyable. I have wanted to do a documentary about theater since last year when I first discovered that we would be making a documentary in A level. At first, I wanted to do it as my portfolio project, but then I decided that it would be perfect to do it for the actual documentary project instead. I knew that I wanted my main project to be about theater, but I didn't know what exactly to focus on. 

B-roll Filming

    I started filming B-roll once started learning about the documentary, before it was even assigned to us. I did this because I knew that I would not get many opportunities to film rehearsal footage for the little kids since it only occurs once a week. During this time I didn't know my focus topic, I was just getting as much footage as I could. In the beginning, I was planning on working by myself. But then I decided to ask Sachate and Grace to work with me, and I proposed my idea to them since they also did theater with me. When we started to talk, we were able to choose to focus on the topic of "Why people continue to pursue theater even with all the negative stigma and stereotypes surrounding it"

[eggs and omelets in the musical!]

    From then on, whenever we had rehearsals, all of us would try our best to record as much B-roll footage as we could. We first filmed at our rehearsals and got multiple angles of both the dances, scenes, and also the instruction from our director and choreographer. Then, two weeks before the project was due, we also had our tech week before the show. The timing of the documentary project came perfectly because we were able to film so much beautiful footage of the show, with all the lights and costumes. It looked like we were filming the actual show! We also got so much footage of the dressing rooms and were able to show the behind-the-scenes of putting on a show. This also allowed us to capture footage of how theater kids interact with one another. 

[just some fun pics from tech week!]

Interviews

    During tech week during one of the rehearsals, I was able to find time to film Keira. We wanted to do the interview outside, but all the places in the theater were either too loud or the lighting was too dark. That is why I  had to resort to outside to film her interview outside. After reviewing this footage, I realized that the wind in the background was distracting, but I didn't have enough time to reinterview Keira, so I decided to stick to the footage. 

   Our tech week was cut short one day since the Sunrise Civic Center (our theater) was unfortunately closed down for one day because of the hurricane. In order to put that day to good use, I decided to go to Barbra's house and film her interview. To make it even MORE effective, I also asked my director to come over to Barbara's house so I could film her interview too! Both of the interviews came out beautifully, and I loved all the content I was able to get. I am very proud of these two interviews. Although the content in Keira's interview was very good, the sound was not great, and I couldn't even use a tripod to film it. I also felt very rushed doing Keira's interview, since we had to get ready to get on stage soon for our tech rehearsals. However, for Barbara and Robin's interviews, I did not feel rushed at all. I also had everything set up properly this time: a good light and also an actual tripod! 

    The week before thanksgiving break, I tried to get into contact with one more person to interview: the youngest person in the little kids cast. However, there was never a time that she was free at the same time that I was. So I decided to start editing without her since I didn't think that I would be able to get an interview from her. 

[interviewing barbara!]

[interviewing robin!]

Editing

    I edited a little bit every single day from Thursday the 17th until Monday the 21st. I knew that it would take time, so I decided to split it up into multiple days. The original plan was to split up the editing with my group members, but there was an issue with uploading my interview footage into the google drive shared folder. I still haven't figured out what went wrong, but I think that my clips were too long to upload. Instead of stressing about putting the videos on google drive anymore, I offered to edit the entire thing instead. 

    Up until Monday, I was furiously editing for hours a day in order to finish in time. Then on Monday, I realized I had another rehearsal for the little kids show, Beauty and the Beast. I was able to capture more B-roll footage, mainly of the little kids interacting with each other, since I didn't have a lot of that type of footage. I also took this opportunity to take the youngest cast member, Emilia, outside and film her interview. However, when I was looking over the footage in the car, not only was it too dark since it was night but there was a lot of background noise. So I frantically texted her and asked if I could come over to her house and refilm the interview since I didn't want to have the same issue with Keira. I thought that it was really important to get Emilia's interview since she had such a different perspective on theater than all the other teenagers. It was very late, but I was finally able to get her interview the day before the due date of the documentary

[watching the doc so far, after interviewing emilia]

    Once I got home, I edited Emilia's interview in between everyone else's interviews, and it fit perfectly, and really gave a new perspective to the entire thing. Everything had worked out almost perfectly so far, other than the audio in Keira's interview. 

[editing!]

Stressing

    However, my luck came to a downfall on the day that the documentary was due. The second I woke up on the morning of the 22nd, I tried to send the whole video to my computer, by uploading it to google drive, but for some reason, it was not working. I had been editing the entire thing on my iPad on iMovie, but I was having trouble uploading it into google drive since it kept on saying that there was an issue. What I ended up doing was uploading it to YouTube from my iPad, then downloading it from YouTube on my computer. However this made the quality pretty bad, and I was upset over this since it looked so nice on my iPad. However, I chose to deal with it, since I could not find another way to send it to my computer. From my computer, I was able to edit the text for the interviews on DaVinci. Then I was having another issue with rendering it, and uploading it to YouTube again for the final project since it would come out with the lowest quality, and it was very blurry. However, after multiple times of rendering it, I was finally able to make it somewhat not blurry. 

[me stressing because it wasn't working! >:0]

    I then sent it to Grace and Sachate and asked them what they thought of it. One thing that Sachate wanted me to add though, was a red title slide. I didn't really like it that much, since I thought it was cheesy, and I already had another idea of what to do with the title slide. However, I didn't want to argue since the project was due in a couple of hours, so I just decided to add the title slide. Finally, after a full day of uploading, I was finally able to turn in the project for all of us.

    Even though there were some issues, I am still very very proud of what I created in just a couple of weeks!