My
documentary was about the culture of longboarding. This isn’t the most ordinary topic for a
documentary. Most of the other
documentaries are about current issues like the education system or the
Israeli-Pakistani conflict. For these
groups their documentary was a way for them to further explore their issue and to
express their opinions. I’m glad I chose
this topic because although our documentary isn’t particularly educational and
doesn’t address a current problem, it was very fun to make. Having the freedom to chose our own topics is
very important because a documentary, or project of any kind for that matter,
won’t turn out well if the creators are only lukewarm about the topic.
If
I could have done the documentary over again I would have gotten better
interviews. I think the only way to do
this is to just interview way more people than you think you’ll need. Many people have the same generic answers and
don’t generate much insight on the topic.
Also as you get more information you’re about to ask better questions and
receive better answers.
I
liked watching the documentary about the recovery of the football player, it
was really well done and inspirational, but I’m not sure that it helped us make
our documentaries. It was mostly comprised
of reenactments, which we don’t have the resources to do. We should watch more simple documentaries and
good student documentaries. It would
also greatly benefit our documentary making process if we were able to spend
more time working on the project rather than talking about it. I understand that you need proof that we are
working and all the members of the group are contributing, but I think it would
be more effective to write a blog post about our documentary every few weeks
instead taking a half hour to talk about filling out a half sheet of paper.
I
learned more about filming and editing action sport videos without any fancy
aports cameras or equipment. I don’t
longboard but I do enjoy watching ski and snowboard videos. Once I started to pay attention to more than
just the tricks, it became clear which ones were more professional. I think more about how they were filmed, the
lighting, and how it’s set to music. Our
introduction is a combination of b-roll and our footage. The first shot is behind someone longboarding
out of a tunnel, which gives it a natural fade in. The next few shot are of longboarders and each
shot changes with the beat of the music.
I now understand more about how action videos are made, and have the
basic skills to create one.
