Documentary Project Reflection

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.