Critical Reflection :)

   My documentary project is titled "Cracked Under Pressure” and was directed by Mariana Sanin and I. Our topic, and main idea, was about the negative effects of the American School system on modern day teens. We had two main subjects, Alejandra and Peyton, and their relatives: one’s sister and one’s father. The first subject, Alejandra, moved here from another country and had to adapt to this new system, and Peyton has to do schoolwork on top of busy extracurricular activities. They both struggle at balancing school with other hardships, and they explain their experiences in the documentary.

      As previously stated, we wanted to represent the negative effects of schooling in the U.S. has on students. Mariana and I know that this is an issue we just had to cover. These effects, like stressing out to the point of burn-out and mental health issues, is something that felt close to home in a school of nearly 5,000 diverse students. We have seen people struggle and we wanted to bring awareness as well as explain what is so negative about the way U.S. schools deal with academic pressure. We felt that getting two perspectives on this certain situation pulls in the representation theory as well. You have this girl who is an immigrant, who has been exposed to schooling unlike the one most of us here are used to. She represents Hispanic immigrants, or any immigrants for that matter, whose parents moved here to the U.S. to give their children a better life. She represents the children who feel at a disadvantage because of the language barrier. Peyton, on the other hand, represents all the student athletes out there who barely time have to do homework. They need to rely on and be good at time management, if not they fail. Both girls are extremely different, but the pressures of doing well in school on top of everything is a priority. As it is in American society. It’s become a problem so big that a lot of mental health issues originate from being in school across the nation. Yes, there are some benefits, but in this documentary, we are displaying just the negative effects. By doing this, we as directors also represent bias and companies controlling the media because we controlled and made the documentary as exactly what we wanted people to know. We were not only able to get different representation of different people, but also of a representation of bias and social ideas on schooling.

     The documentary engages with audiences by capturing that human aspect. Our target audience would be middle class teenagers that would have access to this documentary and would be able to relate to things being said in it. Specifically in the 13-18 age group. Instead of using direct interviews, we used indirect ones with lengthy answers that way you could feel the subjects are talking from the depths of their hearts directly to you, an audience member.  Projects usually do better when they feel genuine, because who wants to watch something where they are being lied to right? So why not do the same for our documentary when it concerns our target audience. I also think that the b-roll we used and the use of two subjects instead of one engaged the audience further. It made the piece less monotone and kept people on their toes. It made sure not only one person’s opinion and experiences were shown, but to show the validity of what they are saying. If it applies to two completely different people without ever having met each other, it must be true to some extent. It’s like science after all.

     Of course, we couldn’t start doing a documentary without knowing what one entails and should look like. In class we watched different types of documentaries such as Exit Through the Gift Shop, American Promise, and Abstract. Each one taught me something different about the elements a documentary should have, how narrative works, hoe bias works and how exactly to get an emotional response out of someone. I wanted to take it a step further from just class time and research techniques on my own. I researched what makes the documentaries so personal, apart from what they say, and almost everything led to b-roll. Specifically hand-held shots, so that is what we did. Almost all the b-roll I took of Alejandra doing everyday tasks isn’t steady, it’s all handheld. It is also one among the many common conventions we used. We also used archive footage for b-roll, because even though we could film some on our own, the subjects also talked about things in the past and we wanted the audience to be able to see what they are talking about. For example, Peyton talked about her past experiences and we used pcitires found on her Instagram to show people what she was referring to and to not make the audience disconnect with the story so quickly. Basically, to keep them engaged.

     The genre of this documentary, as researched, would be considered one of six. In this case it would be an expository. This documentary was heavily researched into finding data for the statistics in the beginning and end and finding people that would help us represent what we wanted. It was also made to educate people that teens are struggling in school and the extent academic pressure really goes in these types of schools.

PRODUCT

 Here's the link to the finished documentary. I personally have a hard time watching back my own stuff because I always think there is something to improve. However, when in class, we all critiqued each others'  and I loved hearing feedback from people other than my partner. It gave us a new perspective as to how we could improve. They told us they loved the structure, they did see a couple of jump cuts, and that we were missing the lower thirds. Like those were the main three points discussed. I agree, reluctantly, I watched it and noticed the rough cuts, and let me tell you they were a bit jarring. I'm not the biggest fan of the structure, I would have loved to have the three subjects and have them weave in and out of each other's statements. But to be honest, this works too. Especially given the circumstances. AND YES. I did notice the lower thirds were missing, but there was no time to resubmit. 

Anyways, I hope you enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DL_GL2JXIj78xQxcYEddoOZw3eLsRGjJ/view?usp=sharing

PRODUCTION

 Production Time!

First and foremost, Mariana and I had very conflicting schedules so we each had to do our interviews by ourselves on separate days. I did the girl from another country and her sister, and Mariana was going to do the other two subjects and their relatives. I had to go to my subject's home on two separate days because her sister had university classes to attend so my days looked like this:

    Day 1

• Go to their house after school.
• Set up interview shot
• Get some b-roll in her room
• Get b-roll her doing everyday things
• Go to a different location (Starbucks) and get more b-roll there

     Day 2

• Go to her house after school
• Get the interview with her sister
• Get b-roll of them together
• 
  

Quick break where I met the subject's dog:

The equipment I used was a T7i, a tripod, a ring light, audio box, lav, and the b-roll was filmed with her phone for two reasons: the camera battery died, and I realized her phone had cinematic mode and I fell in love with it. 

                               

(Here's a shot from her phone)

Post-production:

Not only did we both have extracurriculars, halfway through the time allotted to do this documentary, my family and I left for Spain and a couple days later Mariana had to leave for Colombia. I guess you could say this project went international! I edited on the plane, in the place we were staying, on the train between cities. Everywhere you could think of, I edited. We would text each other to see if each other's parts were done, and to see any changes we were thinking of making. Originally, we were going to have VO but changed it last second because A) we didn't have enough time and b) We felt it didn't make much sense anyway, when our subjects gave good answers. We also decided to only have the two main subjects because the interview with the third one did not go too great. He did not Mariana ended up editing both our parts together and we submitted on time :). 

(Here's our drive!)

Now...Our Own Research

 So, then it came time to create our own documentaries. I paired up with my friend Mariana because we were both passionate about these types of things. 

This is us: (with two other people but I don't have a picture of just us)

After thinking and turning and thinking and turning, we ended up coming up with something else we were passionate about: The negative effects of academic pressure in the U.S. Let's be real, we've all looked like this doing schoolwork or studying for a test before: 

We began our research for this project by looking up statistics that could help us justify the negative aspect of the situation. Then came the hard part: Finding people that were willing to go on camera and talk about it. We knew we wanted to capture different perspectives but how could we do that if they were all students? If they all went to our school? Welp, we came to realize by talking out options that everyone has a different life and extracurriculars. We could just get 3 different students that are really different. We ended up choosing a girl who moved here from another country and had to adapt to the new school system, a girl who is captain of the basketball team, and a guy who works after school. 

Ok. Great. But now they'll probably just complain about their life. How do we make them not sound whiny? Well, we bring in even more perspectives. We ask relatives of the main three subjects to be in it as well that way we get a kind of outside perspective of the school system other than the people still in it. 

We then created the interview questions to fit the newly created outline of the doc. We wanted to make sure we didn't leave up anything to chance.

                                                                    

Documentary Research

 Ok ok,

I know that y'all missed me but let's get real: I have a portfolio project due at the end of the school year. One of the four options I have is to make a documentary so, naturally, we learned about documentaries in class. Collectively we watched American Promise, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Abstract docuseries, and a couple of op docs form the New York Times. Each one taught me something different about the process and general techniques used in documentaries.

American Promise

This documentary taught me the patience you have to have in documentaries. One would assume that in at most a year, you are done. You are free! ...but no. You got to do the planning, find the subjects, get the footage, do the interviews, get outside perspective from other lesser subjects, get footage again, edit a bit, wait until the opportune time to get another interview, get even more footage, edit again, scrap an idea, work with an idea, adapt... It's a lot. For example, in this doc, the directors decided to make it where the doc follows the life of two boys as they progress through Dalton school in 13 years. What they didn't predict was that one of them would be kicked out and they had to adapt to it. Basically, what I'm saying is that docs are hard, but most should be in the pre-planning. I something changes, you've got to adapt. 

Exit Through the Gift Shop

This documentary taught me the power of narrative in a piece. That the directors are always going to be a little biased and it will definitely show in their work. The beginning portion was started and created by Thierry Guetta and it shows him as almost the "hero" of the story on how he is always interested in the art and filming people who do it. Then when Bansky shows up, everything starts leaning towards his successes and starts putting Guetta in a more negative, foolish light. Especially in the point in time where Banksy takes over the editing.  Even though the footage is still filmed by Guetta, you can see the shift in narrative. The power of structure and bias is very apparent in this piece.

Abstract docuseries
 

This docuseries, not going to lie, informed me that docuseries exist. I always thought that they were these lengthy films that would allegedly bore people all the time. However, these shorter docs allow more people to tell their story while keeping people engaged and allowed to watch at their own pace. It also taught me that, spoiler, they can be interesting. The episode I watched on my own was closely related to something I wanted to do in the future, so I was engaged for the full 41 minutes. It also tied into my emotions pulling me in further. It was by far my favorite of the documentaries. I was taught that a connection, with the audience, is all it takes and that in every piece made there should be a thing that pulls them towards the screen (if that made sense). 

Op docs form the New York Times

The last docs that I was exposed to in class were the op docs. This specific type of documentary taught me that anyone, even me, can create a documentary and it actually still be good. You don't have to be Steven Spielberg to create a good piece. Everyone from all over the world can send their docs to the New York Times. I guess you could say it kind of boosts confidence to create. 

Heyyy

I'm back!

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That's it, stay tuned for more :)