Super Ahead…

Filming  

    I know that we just started projects this week, but I have already started filming! As my last blog post said, the tech rehearsals for the show I need to film happen this week and next week. That means I only have 8 days to get most of the footage I need. I went today to the film, and it was so much fun. It brings back memories of the beginning of the year when we did the documentary project. The reason why I loved doing it so much is that I genuinely love theater and the whole process of it. I'm so glad I could dive deep into it when doing the first documentary. It meant so much to me to interview my director; what she said was so emotionally moving, especially coming out of her mouth, since she has been such a big part of my life since I was 8 years old. It was so rewarding to film today because I got to focus more on the backstage part of the theater process. Even though I have teched multiple shows and have worked as a stage manager for many years, filming today made me realize that I've never truly understood the scope of what goes into putting up a production, and how hard it can be. 

    Today I was able to focus on filming how the set worked for the show. This show has a lot of technical aspects to it, specifically relating to how it "falls apart" without actually breaking the set. It was so interesting to see how all the different buttons worked, and how the set has elements to make it seem like it was breaking apart, but in reality, was actually fine. I was able to get so much footage today, which I am so glad about!! It was such a fun experience. 

Differences

    One thing that I definitely wanted to do differently than the last documentary, was to get more close-ups. I was really focused this time on filming the details, whether that be of the actual set or the people that were teching the show.  Also, I tried to get a variety of angles. In my last doc, I mainly used long shots, which was pretty boring. This time I tried to also take shots from high angles so it would be a good difference between the shots, to make it more interesting. 

    In the past few months, I have been even closer to my director and technical director. This meant that now it is much easier for me to talk to them about shots that I want to get. The reason why I couldn't get closeups before, was because I didn't have the courage to ask whether I could take shots that close to the actors. However, this time, I have much more confidence in asking, which is helping me get the shots that I really want! Also, honestly, since I don't really know many of the people in the show, it's much less embarrassing to film them! They actually think it's pretty cool that I'm making a documentary!!

    Also, one thing that I wanted to improve, was having more footage overall. Even though I had a lot of footage last time, I realized that I didn't have that much for the people that were actually being interviewed. This time I tried to focus on the candidates that I have chosen to be interviewed so that I would have enough B-roll for when they were specifically talking.

    

In the process

[me posing with the set!]

[me filming the set maker!]

[the play that goes WRONG! Two actors as they fall from the set :0]

Exciting News!

    As I was filming, I told the person that makes our sets, Johnny, that I was making a documentary about the technical aspects of theater. He is super nice, and told me that it was a really good and interesting idea! While I was filming, he was explaining how everything worked, and how he made the sets. It was super interesting to listen to this, especially coming from someone who is so experienced with it. He told me that he graduated in 1979, and has been in the business since then! That takes a lot of dedication! And then... he told me that I could come to his shop to film him making sets!! He also gave me his number, so that I could contact him if I needed to. I really hope I get a chance to go and visit him because getting a variety of B-rolls is very important to me. Plus, it would be a different more personal perspective on the backstage of a theater, which would be so cool to capture. the only downside is that he lives pretty far away :( If I do get the chance to visit him, I really hope that I can interview him too! He is so well-spoken, and knows so much about his craft; he would be the perfect person to interview. 

The most important part: staying organized!

 I'm going to be making a schedule of things that I need to accomplish every week so that I will be on task and not be stressed at the very end!

week 1

- figure out what type of project I want to do

- research topics to focus on

- post blog

week 2

- start filming B-roll at sunrise civics (start of tech week)

- research topics to focus on (the technical aspect of the theater) 

- post blog

week 3

- continue filming B-roll (end of tech week)

- post blog

week 4

- interview both Andreas and Nicole 

- research other documentaries

- research social media for documentaries 

- post blog

 week 5

- start working on the magazine component

- post to social media

- post blog

week 6

- interview the set designer of the theater

- go to his workshop and take more B-roll shots

- post to social media

- post blog

week 7

- start clearing out which B-roll is good to use

- continue working on the magazine component

- post blog

week 8

-  edit interviews and fill in with B-roll

- finish magazine

- post blog

week 9

- finish editing documentary

- write a critical reflection

- film critical reflection

- post blog

week 10

- post critical reflection

- create project reflection

- post blog

The Start of a New Beginning

     I can not believe that we are already starting the portfolio project! It felt like just yesterday that I was doing my first blog for the AS project. So much has happened since then, and I feel like a completely new person. I hope to make my project much better than my last portfolio project. Last year I worked hard on my project, but I didn't really like how it turned out. I realized that I was very bad at making dialogue. Watching my video again made me cringe a little since the dialogue was so poorly written 😓 This time I want to take the opportunity to make a documentary! (this time I do not have to make the fictional story and write my own dialogue for it) 

    One of the best things I have ever created was the first documentary that I made for the A-level class. I still watch it now and admire all the work that I put into it. Not only did I do most of the filming of the B roll and interviews, but I also edited the entire thing. It took too many hours and multiple days, but I created something that I really enjoyed. In the end, I showed the final result to my director, stage managers, and cast, and they all thoroughly enjoyed it. I was so proud of creating something so pleasing to watch, unlike my portfolio project from last year.

    Now you might be saying, "Nethumi! Don't be so hard on yourself!" And you are right, I shouldn't be so hard on my past self. I did try my best, and it was my first time working on such a long-term project. I am proud of myself for actually keeping up with my schedule and having enough time to finish everything by the due date without being stressed. I was also able to do this with the documentary project, and I perfectly timed everything so I would only have to work on it a little bit a day so that I wouldn't be stressed at the end. Even though I did have some uploading problems at the end, it went pretty smoothly! I hope to replicate this for this project

    Even before this year started, I knew that I wanted to create a documentary about theater. Not only was I able to do this one time at the beginning of the year, but I am also now given another chance to make a new better one! This time, taking Ms. Stoklosa's advice, I will be focusing on the technical aspects of theater this time. For the first documentary, I started getting B roll footage early on, because I knew there wouldn't be a lot of normal rehearsals to get footage from. Then a good surprise came when our tech week fell exactly on the same days we started the project, and right after it was due. And now this time, the tech week of another show starts perfectly tomorrow. I will be getting footage from this show early on, but I always think it's better to be prepared early than wait until the last minute. It is the perfect show to make a documentary about teching since it is called "the Play That Goes Wrong," a show mainly about the set around them falling apart. Usually tech weeks only last one week, but since this is such a tech-heavy show, it is going to last two weeks. This is amazing for me because it gives me more chances to go and film them!

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!

CCR!!

 Finally done with my CCR!

Here is the link to it!

Film Opening!!

 Here's my final copy of the opening! Hope you enjoy it!

Click here :D 

LOADS of editing issues

     I've never had so much trouble editing in my life. In past projects, I've never really had an issue with editing software. However, with this project, I had MULTIPLE issues, which were really annoying to deal with. However, after looking at the issue from different perspectives, I was able to fix my issues!

    I didn't really have any issues while editing the concentration footage. All of this footage was easily edited through da vinic, and the only main problem i had was with getting all the footage from my phone to the computer. It was kind of a hassle to wait for all the footage to upload into the google drive, but with a bit of patience, i was able to do it.

    The main issues came with the footage that I had just filmed with Nessa, the person who played the friend in the film. I still have not figured out why, but whenever I tried to upload any of this footage into DaVinci, it would always say "media offline." I tried to figure out how to solve this problem by searching it up online, but I could not figure out how to fix it, even by researching with multiple different websites. In order to work around this problem, I edited this scene on iMovie on my phone and then decided to upload that into DaVinci. However, even with this longer edited scene, it still said the same thing about it being "offline." I was able to work around this issue by just screen recorded the entire thing, and then uploading it into DaVinci. 

    Another issue that I had while editing was figuring out how to do the credits. I had never worked with texts while editing before, so it was a first. However, after watching this youtube video, I was able to easily figure it out. I'm so grateful for youtube!! 

    Even though I had many issues while editing, I was still able to get through it, and make something that I am very proud of! This has been a long journey, but I am glad that I was able to end it by creating something I really enjoy. 

Reviewing Concentration Footage

     There was a lot of footage from the day that I filmed, but there were also a lot of issues too. This is a time-lapse to show both me and my sister hard at work!!

Problems

    Some of the problems that occurred while filming was first: lighting. First, I had to wait until the nighttime in order to start filming, because I did not want to rely on the outside light in order to do the lighting, since I knew that it would change fast, and that would cause problems with continuity. So, in order to avoid this problem, I waited until it was night so that I would only rely on the artificial lighting in my house. 

    However, for some of the shots, the lighting was still bad, since it was in low lit areas. For instance, the lighting for the clip where Ayami was very low lit at first. However, after putting some lamps behind me, I was able to make the lighting a bit better, so that the audience could at least see what was going on. This is how that clip turned out.

    Another problem had to do with shadows. There were a lot of shadows due to the table, chairs, and sometimes even me trying to film. I know that by using the three-point lighting technique, but I, unfortunately, did not have the resources to accomplish this. So instead, I tried my best to not include myself in the shots. For instance, here is a clip that had me like a shadow. However, this is a clip that shows me adjusting and trying my best not to show my shadow in the clip anymore. 

    It was also a struggle to try and keep the camera steady while doing a tracking shot. For instance, in this shot, you can see that I had a hard time keeping the camera level while filming. However, after a few tries, I was able to get it to be more smooth, but it did take a while to try and achieve this. This is the clip that is much smoother. 

    Another issue had to do with my grades. When I first had the idea, I wanted to use the list of grades in my language arts class, since they were consistently Ds and Fs (which is not good in real life, but good for the film). However, by the time spring break came, my teacher randomly put in a bunch of 100% grades, so my pinnacle was full of "green," which I didn't want to show for my film. However, I found a way to work around this by only filming a few of the grades, since there was a list of at least five grades in a row that were bad, so I mainly highlighted that. This is the clip to show how it turned out. 

    One shot that I was not able to film yet was the close-up of the time before 9pm. I wanted to get a shot of the time around 5 or 6pm, but I, unfortunately, forgot that day. So I have to make sure to do to get both of these shots on another day. I think that I will need to make an alarm for me to remember to do this. This is the original 9pm shot, but I will have to replace it so that it will have the correct date on it for both of the times. However, I plan to shoot it exactly like how I shot the original one.  

Additions!

    No, this does not mean addition as in math. These are shots that I am hoping to add to my opening, that were not already included in the storyboard or script. 

   

    The first addition I made was including shots just showing the mess on the table so that the audience can have a closer look at what the environment is usually like for a person that has ADHD. This clip and also this one show this. 

    The second addition I added was showing Ayami doodling on an index card. At first, Ayami was just drawing for fun on the index card because she was bored for a second. But then I decided that it would be good to include it in my film, since doodling, while I'm supposed to be doing work, is something that always happens to me. This is one of the shots that I got of her doing that. 

    

    The last addition I added was an extreme close-up of Ayami looking around. I already knew that I wanted to include Ayami looking around, according to my storyboard. However, while filming, I realized that it was hard to notice Ayami's eyes moving around, so I decided to also d an extreme close-up of just her eyes. This is what the clip looked like. 

    

    

Costume and Set Up

     Today I filmed the second part of my opening! This is the scene where Ayami is having a lot of trouble concentrating while doing her homework. It was easy to find a day to film this because I just needed to find a time that Ayami was free (which is literally any time I want, since she isn't a busy person like me). The spot was also a very easy thing to get ready since I filmed it at my house at the dining room table. I am glad that I was able to film this entire part in one day since the only thing I need to be left for the film is the library part. I have decided that I will not include the one-word quotes at the end, since it does not really fit with a film opening, and is more likely to be at the end of the entire film. I also think that it is a way to direct way of explaining what is happening in the opening. I think even without this entire part, it will hopefully be able to communicate the meaning of the opening, which is basically trying to represent how Asian Americans deal with people invalidating their ADHD. 

Set Up

[Set Up + Ayami looking adorable]

I wanted to make the setup of the table be as accurate as it could be to show a person that has ADHD. In my personal experience with ADHD, I am a very messy person and I do not usually clean up the area that I am working on, because my mind is usually just so focused on so many other things. I tried to put multiple AP books around Ayami, to show that even if someone takes hard classes (like AP classes) this does not mean that they do not also struggle with ADHD. I also tried to make it look more messy and chaotic by putting papers, calculators, and pens everywhere. The more things on the table, the better. 

Costume

[Ayami's costume]

I wanted Ayami to wear blue during this scene, to show her sadness, and how much ADHD has effected her life. I know that with me, my ADHD makes my life hard sometimes, and that can make me really upset and sad with myself, since I feel like I can do better if I just didn't have ADHD.