Doc Talk - Critical Reflection Edition

 The opinion documentary Shifting Success focuses on showcasing the question of redirection and whether it can have a positive outcome despite the struggles. The two subjects Fernanda Zalfa and Giuseppe Norrito tell inspiring stories that question redirection and the impact it had on their lives. Although it may alter their original life plan it can result in successes they never imagined. 

Shifting Success begins with an introduction to the two subjects and their original career path. Beginning at this point allowed us to showcase their redirection later on in the piece. The two subjects are introduced, but not related in any way so their stories are intertwined throughout detailing Fernanda’s shift from set designer to small business owner and Giuseppe's from baseball player to police officer. During its creation, my group which consisted of myself, Maria Arruda, Riley Orovitz, and Abigail Chaiet decided to follow common documentary conventions rather than challenge them. Since we had struggled with the idea already we thought it made more sense to cover things we knew would work. This would allow us to follow Fernanda and Giuseppe in a much more navigable light. The conventions we felt were necessary to incorporate were staged b-roll, archival footage/photography, and music. Now that we are done with production it is clear that these choices enhanced our documentary and helped further our purpose. 

The documentary covered two real-life subjects and their stories placing it in the biographical category of the documentary genre. The employment of b-roll was necessary as in the past we mostly had photos and the addition of a video component would add to the documentary and make them feel even more real. Inspiration for the staged b-roll in Shifting Success came from the Netflix docu-series Abstract. One specific episode in particular helped us decide it would benefit our documentary and it was titled The Art of Design. Focusing on a costume designer named Ruth E. Carter they wanted to showcase her past life and used herself in a stage to represent her high school self. It allowed the audience to see a representation of her past life without the sole use of photographs. They also filmed her creating outfits for characters which were planned but furthered the audience's understanding of her job. For Giuseppe and Fernanda’s past, we knew that photos wouldn’t be sufficient, especially in Fernanda’s case. Giuseppe's past was heavily documented through photos while Fernanda’s severely lacked.  It was clear that for Fernanda’s past job at Globo, would need to be represented by staged b-roll and Giuseppe's through archived photos. 

While staged b-roll was an important aspect of our documentary archival footage and photos would be integral to showcasing their past. As a group, we combined our knowledge of documentaries from research done in class and incorporated it into our production. I watched an op doc from The New York Times and thoroughly enjoyed their use of archived footage and decided it would also work well in our documentary. The op doc titled Almost Famous highlights the story of a woman who made a scientific discovery. Since they are covering the topic over 50 years later they had to rely on photographs and old videos to tell their story. In our documentary, we decided to add the photos with a border to make it more interesting which in hindsight took away from them, but at the time felt necessary. This is because we didn’t want the b-roll to feel repetitive especially since a lot of it would look similar. The use of archived footage and photos definitely furthered our purpose and displayed both the subject's stories well and the places that lacked we made up for with the planned b-roll mentioned earlier. 

Music was another convention we felt was important as it would help us signal a turn in the documentary. We didn’t have any specific inspiration on how we wanted to incorporate it, we kind of just went with our gut and I think in the end it worked out well. It supported the points we thought were important without taking away from the scene. I felt our use of the conventions created a documentary with a meaningful purpose. Since it was a lot to tackle in a short time we had to prioritize what we felt was necessary to include and through the use of these conventions, it made it clear. 

During the creation of our documentary, we knew that our target audience was not going to look like the subjects on the screen. The purpose of the documentary was to show a younger audience change in a positive light. Our target audience is young adults ranging from seventeen to twenty-four. We felt this range was fitting as it included students facing redirection for the first time through college decisions and those leaving college to enter the workforce. Both of these daunting tasks create stress that is mostly unnecessary as in the end, it will all work out. Shifting Success was created to show that with great fear comes great change. Our subjects came from completely different backgrounds allowing a wide variety of audiences to relate to it. While this wasn’t the original plan it most definitely enhanced our documentary when it comes to the target audience. In its completed form it shows different paths that both end with success, leaving both Fernanda and Giuseppe with happy lives. The hope is people find comfort in knowing that change is normal and doesn’t always end badly. As a person with a severe fear of change creating this piece felt cathartic for me. I slowly realized while I was trying to push a message how much I needed to hear it myself. 

In the end, Shifting Success shows two adults who have grown comfortable with the change in their lives and how it has altered the original plan they had. This project not only allowed Maria and I to tell our parent’s stories but share a message that resonates with our entire group. From learning the ins and outs of creating a documentary to stressing over its quality I felt that while it might not be the best production ever it encompassed the purpose we wanted to get across. 

Thank you for coming along on this journey I'll see you soon…;)  

                

Doc Talk #3 - Post Production

 After we had completed the interviews we knew we needed to get started on editing immediately. We had been warned that it would take a while and we were definitely worried about the looming deadline. We began editing on Wednesday without even having finished filming. Since the introduction had nothing to do with the ending we knew we could start without having any issues. I'm not going to cover the editing by days like I did for the production blog, rather I will be doing it by the sections of the documentary.

Intro 

The introduction was the hardest part for us to accomplish. We had so many ideas but in reality, no way to execute them. We aren't the most advanced editors and we knew that going in, but we still dreamed big. The real issue was finding a way to introduce both of our subjects in the beginning without confusing the audience. I had an idea to put them on a split screen and then swipe from side to side as they told their stories which me and Maria both agreed on so I started working on that. I spent a good hour figuring it out and then adding to the documentary only to realize it made the documentary unwatchable. We reverted back to the original plan of showing them separately since it got the point across. While it may not be the most visually interesting it got the job done. 

This was our attempt at having them both on the same screen:

                                                  And this is what we ended up going with: 

First section of story 

Once again we needed to find a way to show the connection between the stories while getting them across smoothly. We decided to intertwine them while trying our best to show their progression side by side. After testing out different layouts we realized that allowing them to tell a small part of their story and then switching over was going to work best since it would be able to stick before they were introduced to another story. This took us forever. We spent two days spending videos back and forth and contemplating if we should just restart altogether. Writing about it now it seems like a smooth process where trial and error helped us find a quick solution, but at some points, we wanted to throw a person out of the documentary. Along with that, their stories were quite long, and trying to cut them down without cutting out important parts was quite complex. 

Our other issue to tackle was b-roll. Since this part was taking place in the past we had basically all pictures which could become boring quickly, so I pulled out Canva to create a more interesting way to incorporate the photos. 

While it still didn't make it the most interesting part of the documentary it helped us add the pictures we really wanted the audience to see. I felt it was important to include these things as they helped give the subjects depth. Since it was all in the past it was kind of complicated to make it seem real without videos from the past, so animated the photos helped with that. 

Redirection

This was arguably the most important part of the documentary. We needed to display their change in career paths without confusing the audience. Since Joey and Fernanda had different reasons for the change we needed to tell that part of the story and then shift into their new careers. While I do think we could have enhanced this section with better editing we did what we could and used a fade to black edit to signal the end. Another thing we thought would help signal change was music. The issue was we didn't want it to sound corny or boring. Its purpose was to add to the story not distract or interrupt so I did what any real researcher would do. I scrolled through YouTube and listened to the preview section of each YouTube video until I found a sound I liked. We found one that worked well and we added it at the portion which signals the beginning of the end. 

New Life 

After the fade to black, we shifted to a direct question. We felt using a direct question was necessary as it helped get the story's shift across. For Joey, he switched to his police uniform since that was his new career path and Fernanda introduced her Husband whom she started her new career. We paired this with b-roll that included family because despite the redirection they ended up in a place they were content with. It felt necessary as it furthered the point that life doesn't end because one door closed. As a finishing touch on the section, we added happy music to the background. It helps signal the good vibes we are trying to give off towards the end. ,

Overall after all the challenges of editing and figuring out how to make it flow well. I think it came out as close to how we imagined it. I hope you enjoy it. 

                                                               Link to doc: Shifting Success

  

Doc Talk #2 - Production

 This documentary was definitely a daunting task. Even with all the planning and scheduling was hard to actually execute. My stepdad works odd hours as a police officer and since the only week we had to film was Thanksgiving I had lots of family plans making my slots to film very small. I decided that I had to follow my plan and try my best to get the interviews done. I'll be going through the days as they were shown in the filming schedule.

Tuesday, Nov. 21st

After he arrived home from a haircut I sat him down and began asking questions. After a couple tries he became more comfortable and the interviews started to flow. It also helped that he was excited about being in the documentary. He wanted the outcome to be good so he put in the effort which made my job just slightly easier. These questions consisted of ones about his life before becoming a police officer. This section was meant to show the path of life our subject was meant to go on. This was also going to be shown in Fernanda's interviews. They both had career paths they had chosen to go into and love which is what is meant to be shown in the first section of interviews. These also served as an introduction to our subjects. For Joey, it would introduce him as a kid who had become a pro baseball player, and Fernanda as a young student balancing her dream job and being a student. We needed to capture this through our interviews which was why our questions were so important.

Here you can see a clip from Joey's first set of interviews.

Next, I had to interview Riley's mom who is a nurse. We decided we wanted her input on Joey's injury as that was the event that led to his redirection. We scheduled our time for 12:30 and I headed over with two simple questions. We didn't want her interview to take away from the story, more like add to it and show why it could be life-altering. She explained both of his injuries and that was pretty much it. I didn't really love the composition of this interview but thought that it was better than having nothing.

After interviewing Riley's mom I went to Joey's parent's house to pick up old photos and interview his mom. She was enthusiastic about the project and excited to help. Since Joey had played baseball since he was a kid I had quite a lot of footage to sift through so I began that while she prepared for the interview. Once again it was only one question and that was done purposely. We knew that too much back and forth might cause problems so asking her a simple question would give us just the right amount of material.

The last thing I did on this day was film b-roll of Joey as a police officer. He works odd hours and is off on weekends so I took advantage of the break and went to film the first day I could. I obviously can't film him actually working because it would be violating people's right to privacy, but I decided shots of him doing basic things were enough to get the point across.

Wednesday, November 22nd
This was the second day of production and all I really had to do was film Joey's present interviews and get b-roll around my house. For this set of interviews, Joey felt like he should be in his police uniform. While it was my project to direct I felt that it only made sense to allow him to do what he felt most comfortable in as well as it helping establish his new life. I really had to pry information out of him since it was late and he was tired, but in the end, I think they came out well. I also tried my best to situate him in the same setup at the past interviews, but of course, couldn't get it exactly. 

We also filmed some family b-roll between this day and the 24th. We wanted to have to for the present section of the documentary as it would serve as a contrast from his past life as a baseball player. 

Once again sorry if the videos are bad quality I'm not sure how to make it better. :(

See you soon to talk about post-production!

Doc talk #1

 I hope you're enjoying these titles because I love making them. When thinking about my own project I turned to documentaries I had watched in the past. I also thought about what type of documentary I would want to create. After creating groups we thought about stories we could tell that were accessible. We landed on a story on redirection focusing on my stepdad Joey and my group member's mom Fernanda. The goal was to tell their stories from the start to now, so while I didn't love abstract I watched more episodes to see how they told their stories. Their use of a planned b-roll and interviews with people who knew the main subjects were aspects we wanted to reflect in our documentary. We created an outline to follow when we decided to film our project. 

Our largest struggle when it came to actually creating the documentary was that we couldn't find a documentary that combined two stories while trying to get on point across. While we had our entire project planned out we thought it would be confusing once executed, so we started researching how to tell a story through a documentary. I started googling pretty straightforward questions that had been addressed in class, but I felt I needed more clarity on the situation before we created a project we weren't proud of. 

Unscripted storytelling: Finding the story in documentary

This article may seem like a dumbed-down definition of a documentary, but it helped calm me down in terms of creating it. It made it seem like something that we could actually tackle. 

10 Powerful Documentary Visual Storytelling Techniques

This is another article I used. Once again a dumbed-down version of how to create a documentary, but it helped provide a checklist of things we needed to be able to tell our story. 

Next, we created a set of questions and a b-roll list for both Joey and Fernanda. This would help us run our interviews smoothly as well as help us plan times to get our b-roll. The interview list is not long as we had a time limit of 10 minutes along with the fact that we were going to ask follow-up questions that would piggyback off what the interviewees were saying. This was once again another set of lists to help us have a smooth documentary-making process. 

Lastly, I created a schedule to follow and to help us complete our production log. This allowed me to see what needed to get done and how much time we had until the project was due. This log only shows the week of production/post-production. 

I'll be back with another blog post soon, but for now I hope you've enjoyed these past two blogs. Also sorry if the pictures are blurry I'm nor sure how to fix it. See you soon. 

  

Let's talk doc

 I love documentaries so when I found out we were doing a whole lesson and project on them I was ecstatic. It feels like I've watched every documentary on the face of the planet, so being introduced to new ones that I might not have watched otherwise was quite exciting. Getting a different perspective on a genre I love so much would help me gain a deeper understanding of the choices put into creating a documentary. We watched three documentaries in class and all of them were different but shared the same purpose of telling a story. We watched American Promise, Exit through the Gift Shop, an episode of Abstract, and some New York Times Op-Docs. They each introduced me to a different style of documentary and it made me think about how I would create a documentary if I was given the chance. 

American Promise  was my favorite from the list and introduced me to a type of documentary I'd never seen before. Normally, documentaries that follow a years-long story use the main subject in the present and ask them questions about their past, but in American Promise they interviewed the subjects as the years progressed, giving their real opinion rather than their memory. This style of documentary obviously takes a lot of planning and organization which wouldn't be possible for me to execute in the present, but it is a serious consideration for future plans. So much of the documentary was well thought out and it showed me how much hard work and dedication was put into the project. My favorite part of the documentary was the shift from direct interviews to indirect interviews. Not only did it show the boys growing up and their understanding expanding with that, but it helped the viewer connect with them better. As they grew older they didn't need direct interviews which symbolized a large part of the documentary's purpose, which was to show them growing up.

Exit through the Gift Shop was the second documentary we watched and funnily enough my second favorite. While its topic didn't really interest me I grew to love it as we continued watching. Since half of the documentary was filmed without any real intention of creating a film it was interesting to see an organic perspective that wasn't really trying to get much out of the subjects. It was for pure enjoyment and in the end, it created a story that many would become intrigued by. This documentary differed from the first one as it wasn't planned, so the years of following street artists didn't come from a well-planned idea, but rather a man on a mission to climb the ranks of street art. While many of my friends hated the documentary I think it showed an important message which is that it doesn't take a grand idea to create something special. The creator had an interest and essentially ran with it. I'm not sure if I would ever create a documentary in this format or ever end up in a situation where I have the resources too, but it shows a contrast from the normal of intricate planning. 

Abstract was probably my least favorite and I wish it wasn't. I've grown up a creative person, so when I heard we were covering abstract I was excited because it covered fields I'm interested in going into, but something in its execution didn't intrigue me as much as the others. I watched two episodes and felt like they lacked depth and became repetitive. I think the major problem I had with it was its use of present-day filming. I didn't watch the whole series, but in the episode I did watch they used the subject in her present form to represent in her in different stages of her life. This made it confusing and I think could've been better represented by hiring an actor or using high school photos. Abstract showed me what I didn't enjoy in documentaries and while I love the genre a documentary focusing on a specific job's ins and outs may not be for me. 

Lastly, we watched two New York Times Op-Docs. I love these. I loved them before we watched them in class and I actually chose two I had previously watched to analyze. Storytelling is my favorite aspect of documentaries and I love that Op-Docs focus on that in short periods. They tell a story in mostly under 10 minutes but get their purpose across so clearly. This doesn't diminish my love for long-form documentaries, but it served as a great help when we had to create our own documentary. Since we were meant to stay under ten minutes having a large portfolio of inspiration was crucial as we had to find a story that could fit in a short amount of time and get its point across. The Op-Doc I took the most inspiration from was I Changed Astronomy Forever. He Won the Nobel Prize for It. | 'Almost Famous'. They told an intricate story from a while back but were still able to have a good amount of B-roll tell and story in 16 minutes. 

Overall, I loved researching documentaries and I continued out of class which we'll talk about in the next blog. See you there!

I'm back

I know you missed me...jk. Anyways onto a new year with new things and this year is gonna be a lot better. No need to look at the past the future is now!