Critical Reflection

        Censoring ideas and information has always been seen as unjust in our country; however, many schools are beginning to implement these restrictions into their curriculum and school systems. In this documentary, two language arts high school teachers describe their thoughts on book bans and how they have changed their way of teaching. While book bans can help omit harmful or dangerous ideologies from students, they can also majorly affect high schools' abilities to inform and teach their students because they censor the reality of the real world and falsely represent certain social groups.

        Documentaries are usually nonfiction pieces focused on a specific subject that presents information about the real world through people, objects, facts, or situations. To present these factors, documentaries have certain conventions that are commonly seen. To understand the conventions of this genre, I watched several documentaries to not only learn more about the genre but also get some insight into how to create one myself. Exit Through the Gift Shop is a documentary that follows the main subject (Thierry) through his process and evolution from a videographer and documenter on street art to being a street artist himself. I think this documentary made me love spontaneous B-roll. Several scenes in this piece show random crowds or buildings, and I merged that with my book-banning topic in order to add clips with buildings to not only add context but also variety.

        Abstract: The Art of Design also offered me various perspectives on the conventions of documentaries. This piece taught me the vitality of B-roll and using it to establish context. This made me embrace the art of B-roll and interviews. I think out of the documentaries I watched to learn about the genre, Abstract gave me the most insight as it connected the most to my topic and used similar techniques that I was planning on using. Therefore,  felt more comfortable embracing several documentary conventions such as indirect interviews, voice-overs, B-roll and parallel cutting, and a shorter time but still with full content. At the same time, our documentary challenged one certain convention: the movement of our shots. Instead of using hand-held shots, all of our movement came from pans and tilts or movement from the subjects or environments being shown through the clips. Our documentary also learned how to use the interviewees and our voice-over to express the same (biased) idea to proclaim our side on the topic. 

        In order to fully convey our purpose, my group and I had to hone in on who we were creating this documentary for and to whom we wanted to show our thoughts on book banning to. Our target audience for this piece is parents and conservative groups completely or mainly in favor of book bans. Although our whole documentary goes against what our target audience believes in, our B-roll, interviews, and voice-over should be interactive enough to convey our side of the idea. The length of the film also creates a more appetizing and appealing aspect to the viewers, because many people wouldn't consider watching something they don't enjoy for more than ten minutes. On the other hand, the somber tone that adds to the seriousness of the topic can definitely be unengaging for some audiences; however, these techniques also allow viewers to understand the significance of the impact of book banning on high school students. 

        Voice-overs are perfect mechanisms to use when needing more information as the production team can easily manipulate the script into including any necessary details. The voice-over for my documentary contributes to the gravity of book banning and includes a sense of professionalism through the classy-sounding voice. As I mentioned before, the various still shots used leading to a lack of camera movement could be a minor mistake as it could easily disengage the viewership; however, the variety and switching between the interviewees and voice-overs create enough change within the documentary to keep viewers attentive for the duration of the feature.

        In order to fully display our ideas and arguments, our documentary touches on how book bans are limiting the knowledge and perception of students towards the real world. Some of the books mentioned or shown in our piece represent the LGBTQ+ community and other minority groups that are often discriminated against. Our voice-over explains how vital the availability of all (or almost all) content is for students to learn the full reality of the world and what it consists of. Therefore, we use our facts and professional standpoints to go up against the ideas of our controversial target audience to persuade them (or at least inform them) about the danger censorship can pose. One of our interviewees, Ms. Herring, offered the example of the book Fahrenheit 451 which is a book about banned books. This book was once banned due to its controversial topics which spoke about the importance of silencing and censorship of certain contents. How funny that a book talking about the negative effects of book bans gets banned at some point in history.

        In my opinion, our documentary was partially successful in representing these minority groups. Although we did have certain sections of the voice-over (and B-roll to match) that talked about these social groups, the film mainly used these groups as an example or idea rather than focusing on it; however, the main social issue we talked about (which was our whole topic), I believe was perfectly represented. The documentary not only talked about the reality of book bans - what they are and why they happen - but also ventured through the deep mistake of book banning and its influence on younger generations (Sources: Extra Information) In fact, Ms. Herring (our first interviewee), talked about her opinion on the future of the world if book banning continues to happen increasingly.

        Although book banning can have the benefit of shielding students from controversial topics, the censoring and restrictions can lead high school students to believe in a fake perfect world. Leaving younger generations vulnerable to the real world by falsely representing it through only 'appropriate' books can yield and prevent the growth and development of the whole world. My documentary adequately establishes and supports this message by using various genre conventions and techniques and taking advantage of the professional standpoint offered by the interviewees.

-Dana

Word count: 1043

Documentary Post-Production

Post-production is one of the most important parts of any project. Post-production can either dramatically improve or ruin your overall piece. I love editing and going to the finishing piece of the puzzle because most of the time all you have to do is put everything together and add the finishing touches. If you can't already tell by this introduction and the title of the blog, this post will be about the post-production stage of my documentary and the process of it.

Transferring Files:

        Normally, for every other project, I could email myself the clips and then access it from my computer to download it and then add it to Adobe; however, this time I decided to plug in a USB cable and transfer the files from my phone, to my computer.

        I think the quality of the shots were much better by doing this because I could see a noticeable difference between this projects' quality and my past projects. After adding them to a separate folder on my laptop and renaming all the files to make it easier to access and see which clip is clip, I inputted them into Adobe Premiere Pro. 

Start of Editing:

The first thing I started editing was the first interview we filmed, the one with Ms. Herring. This was because my group and I wanted to edit as soon and fast as possible, so I started editing the second I got any sort of clips to edit (which in this case was the 1st interview). Doing this helped me be more organized when it came to edit the voice over and Mr. Berna's interview. Doing this editing also helped me realize if my group and I needed to film any more B-roll throughout the week before Thanksgiving Break.

Starting to edit Ms. Herring's interview, I began by editing the sound meaning cutting out any times when the interviewee was stuttering, mumbling over words, or mentioning any information that went off track or info we didn't really need for our topic. At this point, I started adding B-roll to the app to continue the editing process; however, to make it more organized, I color-coded the clips on Adobe. 

Color Code:

Blue: Ms. Herring Interview

Brown: B-roll

Green: Background Music and Voice Over

Light pink/purple: Person/Interviewee Introduction (Name Card)

Hot Pink + Orange: Rainbow colored in order or Mr. Berna's interview 

     -The rainbow colors helped me remember the order or Mr. Berna's interview when I was moving everything around.

        Anyway, sorry for the little interruption but I thought that putting in a little guide would make it easier to understand what I'm talking about. Moving on, it isn't shown in the picture as this snap shot was taken after I took them out (for the final product), but before editing Mr. Berna's interview, I left in (in a different color) the questions asked for Ms. Herring. That way I could use them to help guide me on where to put Mr. Berna's interviews depending if the questions matched up with one another. I still made them a separate clip, so when time came to wrap everything up, the questions were very easily removed from the final product. Doing this definitely helped me organize the whole project and editing process much better and made everything flow smoother.

        After this, I added the voice over and I started editing that. At this point I was basically done with the rest of the editing, so I had designated spots for the two sections of the VO to go: the introduction to the topic, and the introduction to an example - 1984. Since I already had spots for them, I just had to edit them a little bit so they flowed smoother and I could take out awkward pauses or long breaths in the mean time as well. This was when the piece really started to come together in my opinion.

        I think that adding this VO was like the cherry on top. I loved the voice of the person speaking the VO and I think it fit perfectly with our topic and theme. I also think that the voice over added a lot of necessary context that felt very empty and we didn't have beforehand. The VO also helped split up the documentary as it was a very boring and simple piece to look at before. And not that the voice over made it so much better, but it did add a variety of sounds, voices, and obviously context that was a lot of the time later mentioned by one of the interviewees. 

Background Music:

        At this point in the editing process, I also made sure I had background music (or that the one or multiple options I picked worked). This led to a while of trial and error. Some were too fun, some were to distracting, others were too sad or motivational.

        I ended up finding one that I thought was serious enough to match the realistic and serious topic I was trying to represent while not being too somber or too distracting. I think the background music I picked was also not too subtle but blended into the background since most of it was the same 2 notes over and over again (in a good way ... I think).

Finishing Touches:

        The very last touches I added to this documentary project were the slight movements. One large thing I realized while reviewing the project to see if it needed anything else, was the constant stillness of many shots. Although some shots did have natural movements, like the interviews and the long high-angle shots of people walking in campus, most shots were very still because of the tripod we used. So, I decided to go back in, and add some movements, Like I briefly mentioned in the last blog posting, for many bookshelf's, I used pans or tilts to show the variety and the large amount of books offered. For some other shots I did zooming in or zooming out depending on the context of the shot. 

        (I know I said lastly a second ago but...) Last but not least, I reviewed everything and checked in with my group members to see if they would like me to change anything. I changed a couple of shots and mainly the movement in them according to what my group members desired, but overall, everything was very nice and we officially concluded this piece as being done.

So that is how I made my first ever documentary! Thank you so much for reading!

Project Link Click Here

-Dana

Documentary Production

This post and the next blog post are focused on the overall production of the documentary, so I decided to split them up into production and post-production so the posts are more in order and easier to understand. Therefore, in this blog post, I will be focusing on our production process of the documentary and how it affected our overall project.

        On Wednesday November 8, my group and I decided to film some B-roll. At the beginning, we wanted to film an interview that day, but we thought taking some more time to focus on fixing and remaking our interview questions would be better and would improve our interview footage and answers. So, like I talked about in the last blog post, since we had already planned out a lot of the B-roll we wanted to film, we believed that using a whole class worth of time to film B-roll, would make the overall production be better and more coordinated. This did end up helping my group and I get more connected as we all knew what most of the B-roll we had looked like so we could help make other footage or sounds fit.

        Before filming that day however, we filmed a couple of B-roll shots on the day we did our main research during class. What we did was film the screen of a computer scrolling through important book banning articles or a list of popular and important books that are banned or have been banned in the past. These shots not only gave us a variety of B-roll for our piece, but it also added more context and information to show how many books have been banned. This gives the viewer an idea of how much book bans are really impacting the world and how apparent they really are.

        Going back to November 8th, we filmed a most of our B-roll that day, so we decided to start with the most obvious place: the library. This was were we filmed most of our B-roll because it was the place with the most books and therefore gave the best chance to get a variety of shots. In the library we filmed a lot of shots focused on books in a bookshelf. For example, vertical bookshelves and panning through a horizontal bookshelf.

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        Apart from the library, we also filmed a lot outside the ceramics room. The ceramics section of the school is in a long hallway with a lot of storage closets and rooms. Something that hallway also has is a big bin of textbooks and old books that are no longer being used.

        

        Obviously, no banned books would be in the pile as that would be against the law to have one in school (and would also completely go against our whole topic about banned books); however, the books did looked old and unused, so we took that and decided to make it feel like banned books that have been thrown out even if they weren't.

        This area was also where we filmed the very first shot of the documentary: the opening of the book. This was an idea we came up with while we were already out filming. We had thought of this because we didn't really know how to start the documentary. One of my group members suggested that if we do a shot opening a book it could be like were diving into the topic of books and the essence of them. We also all had the idea to film closing the book as well and that could be how we ended the documentary; however, it ended up not really fitting anywhere during post-production, so we left it out. This was because we decided to include a quote about books and literature that we found inside of one of the textbooks. 

        The excluding of B-roll ended up happening a lot too because we filmed a lot of B-roll that never ended up fitting on top of any VO or interview, so we ended up leaving them out; however, this showed us that filming more B-roll than necessary is always helpful in case you need more. Even though we had a lot of B-roll left over, we still ended up being short during post-production. This was because even though we had extra, the extra we had didn't fit the areas we needed B-roll for. I actually had to film some B-roll in New York at my cousins house because we didn't have enough, but it ended up going fine because they have a small library that I could film in.

        Before all of this though, we filmed the interviews. On Monday, we filmed our first interview with Ms. Herring. This interview went very well. Not only because she gave very good answers, but also because nothing went wrong and she understood everything very clearly and gave specific examples we could further build the VO around it. The only thing about this interview is that because she was the first interviewee, we forgot to ask her to restate the questions, so we had to shape the VO to almost ask the question before her interview. For example, Ms. Herring began talking about a book we read in class (1984), but she forgot to say the name of the book until about 30 seconds after answering the question, so we had to fit the voiceover to talk about the book 1984 right before her interview and her talking so it sounded like she was talking about the same book. 

        The second interview with Mr. Berna went much more smoothly because we already went through some things that we wanted to improve, so we easily made it flow easier. The only thing about his interview is that there were a couple of people taking a test in his class during the interview, so there were page flipping sounds in the background. Even though most of them were cut out, a lot of them weren't and ended up staying in the background.

Overall though, the interviews were very very good and were perfect for fitting the voiceover. 

        The voice over was also recorded around this time. Before this though, we had to alter the script a little bit to fit what the interviewees were talking about so everything would flow smoother. After we finished editing the script, one of my group members mom recorded the VO since she actually works for speaking over commercials, so we basically had a professional talking in our documentary. The VO was filmed in a padded room so the sound wasn't echoing at all. 

        This same group member had a copy of the book 1984, so I also asked her to film a couple of clips with the book so we could use it for B-roll on top of the voice over or the interviews. 

        Even though this was is basically research, we also looked for some background music that could fit behind the documentary during post-production.

        Overall though, our production stage and schedule had to be edited and changed a lot but it ended up all coming together and working perfectly with each other.

-Dana

Documentary Research

Researching for a project before starting it is a vital role in every piece you make. Proper research can not only help you gather more necessary information but can also offer newer perspectives and ideas. This documentary will be on my researching process for my actual documentary piece (after we learned about documentaries in general: in the last posting).

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        Before anything else, my group and I had to come up with our idea or at least a series of ideas so we had a guideline as to what to focus on. We narrowed it down to a topic a little controversial relating to schools, so we could film the interviews during our class time. After researching a little more, we were in between two topics: how book banning's affect school and its curriculum, and student's attendance and how it can be influenced by external factors. 

        My group and I brainstormed each idea a little bit and then came to the conclusion that the attendance idea would be harder to portray adequately and filming B-roll for lack of attendance would be fairly difficult as well. So, we decided to stick to the book banning plan.

        Prior to researching anything, we wanted to have an idea and a plan as to what the idea is and how we would complete the project. This also included thinking of potential interviewee teachers. I thought my language arts teacher Ms. Herring was perfect for the role as she teaches several different classes and they all use books to convey the purpose and meaning of the lesson she's attempting to teach (I will talk more about a specific example later). 

        My group and I also decided to interview a government teacher, but that idea went down a hole after we all decided a less political approach would be better. Finally though, we found another language arts teacher willing to be an interviewee, and that officially solved our problem. Anyway, onto our research and planning.

        During this researching stage, we went through a lot of planning and building of our project in order to be prepared for filming. We first began researching overall information about our topic. One of the main topics we researched was the overall effect of book bans. Our plan for the documentary was not only to express to the viewer the idea of book banning but to explain how it has affected schools and teachers. Therefore, in this topic we talked about mainly the negatives but also the positives that book banning consist of. 

        While researching that aspect of our project, we also decided that having a voice-over would be extremely beneficial for us as it could help fill context and add extra information that the interviewees did not touch on or explain enough about. So, this researching section also included finding fitting information for the VO so we could write a script. I wont go into the making of the script in this blog because it was just a basic voice over on some background of book banning in order to give the documentary more context.

By this time we had also started writing our complete outline so we had a guideline as to where our piece would or should head next.

        Some other main topics we focused on researching were how book banning has increased, specific examples of book bans, and why books are being banned. As we were researching some specific books that were being banned or were banned at one point, I came across a book I had just read in my own language arts class (1984 by George Orwell) and I thought it was perfect. My group and I decided to use this book to our advantage and create a couple of interview questions surrounding the topic of this specific book.

Talking about interview questions, around this time was when we began creating them as we had planned to film the interviews the following week. Creating the interview questions were fairly easy to begin but hard to finalize. This was because thinking of the questions we wanted to ask was an easy task but figuring out how to state them was on the harder side.

        In order to combat this problem, we decided to just type out the best questions we could that hit every topic we wanted information from the interviewees on and then go from there. A couple of days later, it was my groups turn to partake in a personal progress check chat with my teacher. At this time, she helped us understand how to make all our questions more open ended and reach for deeper answers and meanings instead of a simple yes or no question we might have had before. 

Once we finished the interview questions, we knew we were ready to film them and so we made sure to set up interview times with each of the interviewees to make sure we were all on the same page. 

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        Lastly, I did my own research (specifically cause I was the one doing most of the post-production), and I took it into my own hands to learn more about the filming of documentaries. I went back and rewatched the same Abstract episode on Netflix (the costume design one) because I was really fascinated with the way that episodic documentary was shot and I thought it matched the vibe I wanted to go for as well. Now that it was my second time watching the episode, I focused less on the content and instead more on how the shots, angles, and methods of filming impacted the context and the meaning it was trying to portray.

        I think rewatching this episode helped me realize and decide more on the type of B-roll necessary. That way, when I got to class the following day, my group and I could make a short list of locations and specific shots we wanted to film as B-roll to include in the final process. After doing this, we headed out that day and filmed a lot of footage all over the school (mainly in the library) in order to make sure we had enough for when we started editing and the post-production stage. However, we were only able to decipher what to film and how much to film because of our B-roll planning document were, like I said before, we planned many specific shots we knew we wanted to include.

-Dana

Documentary Pre-Research

In this documentary, I will be talking about the overall research on documentaries I did to learn more about this style of filmmaking. This research also helped me create my own piece, but we'll talk about that in a separate blog.

        To start the topic of documentaries in my class, my teacher gave us basic notes on the simple aspects of documentaries we should be paying attention to when watching one. This not only included a description on what the purpose of a documentary is and how they try to show their message, but also specific conventions and techniques present in all documentaries. This included mainly production techniques but also included some post-production ones.

Examples on what we talked about:

-VO's and non-diegetic sounds

-Selective editing

-Interviews to progress the story

-Archived footage

-Lighting techniques 

(and many more)

        What I really liked about this lesson was how many new things I learned about a new genre and style of media for me. For example, I learned about what B-roll is, the importance of it in a documentary, and the process of collecting it while filming. I also learned about the type of interviews: direct, meaning you can hear and/or see the interviewer, and indirect, meaning you cannot hear nor see the interviewer. The different interview styles are also used for different styles and aspects they're trying to convey.

        After this quick little lesson on the simple technical aspects of documentaries, as a class, we watched two full documentaries: American Promise and Exit Through The Giftshop. 

I've got to be honest, I was never really interested in documentaries until watching these two. 

        American Promise was a documentary shot over 13 years on the two main subjects (Idris and Seun) on their life. The documentary started off by following the two young boys on their journey through 'The Dalton School' which is a high level school partnered with Ivy League schools. Closer to the end, the piece turned more into following what each of the boys were doing even after they grew apart and Seun left The Dalton School. 

        This documentary not only (in my opinion) was a great first choice to show the class, but also helped me ease into the new documentary mindset being implemented onto us. I think the main thing this documentary taught me was the growth and change a documentary should endure depending on everything within it. 

        For example, the main difference between the distinct types of interviews. At the beginning of the piece, when the boys were young, more direct interviews were being utilized as they couldn't yet understand how to properly restate and answer the questions adequately on their own. As for later in the documentary, almost no direct interviews were used (meaning only indirect) since the indirect interviews made the piece flow smoother together and offered more of a sideline standpoint instead of the idea that the boys were living differently for the camera. Indirect interviews were also used because they showed the growth and development of the abilities of both Idris and Seun as they grew up.

      Exit Through The Giftshop was the second documentary we watched and it did not disappoint. I loved this piece so much. I think the completely different vibe and purpose of this documentary compared to American Promise made it so much more meaningful. Like American Promise, this film consists of many indirect interviews that make the piece flow better; however, the small number of direct interviews also play a part in adding context in difficult to understand situations.

      This piece was also very unique due to the main focus of it. Although it was a documentary made by Banksy, most of it focuses on Thierry and his journey, especially since he began making the documentary on his own before handing it to Banksy. Banksy also made himself an anonymous subject with voice modifications and not showing his face. These aspects gave him a sense of no identity which adds to his rebellious and controversial art persona. 

        One big thing I learned from this piece is the importance of B-roll. B-roll plays such an important part in this documentary and without it, the film could never be the same. B-roll is used constantly throughout the piece to show examples, situations, past works, other graffiti, landscapes, and so much more. Most of the B-roll paired with a VO or a non-diegetic voice in the background that relates to the clips being shown (that also adds onto the overall storyline). The B-roll not only adds context in many situations but also allowed the viewers to see graffiti just like any other kind of art.

Whether they share many visual characteristics or not, both of these documentaries shared their deeper meaning of the piece: showing the evolution of the piece and its creation as it manipulates itself around the main subject/s changing and growing with the world around them.

        One more very important type of documentary we went over before beginning our own research for our own project were Episodic Documentaries As a class, we watched one names Abstract which was on the different types of art and design and how they are incorporated in so many important yet distinct jobs. The one we watched in class was on costume design. By this point I learned the importance of B-roll, but this documentary helped me fully understand everything I needed to know about it. Even though we vaguely went over the term before watching any documentaries, this episode of Abstract explained and showed me what Staged B-roll really was. 

        Much of this piece consisted of the main subject talking about her well-known past works such as Black Panther. Another big aspect was talking ab9ut her past and her beginning in this line of work.

        For both of those examples, getting or finding B-roll filmed during the actual timing being talked about would be either impossible or nearly impossible; therefore, this piece utilized a lot of staged B-r0ll in order to fill the gaps between the years.

        On our own time we also watched some Op-Docs which are very short documentaries about something. In my opinion, the only important lesson these taught me (at least from the ones I watched), is to just have fun with what you create. Not only make it fun to create, but also fun to watch. Whether the topic, the B-roll, the trials, etc., something has to be catching the audiences eye or ear and make them want to see the solution or final claim of your documentary,

Overall, I believe that these three (specific ones, not including Op-Docs) documentaries were what mainly helped me through my introduction and understanding of documentaries as a whole. They each reached different categories but many had deeper conjoined meanings within. 

        -Dana

8 Months Still Strong (kind of)

 Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog. It's been about 8 months since I've last touched this website and I'm feeling rusty. Hopefully I'll get back into the feel soon enough. I remember the rush of energy I would get when making my blogs last year and being able to document all of my processes, so I'm glad I can get back into it and continue creating blogs until the end of this year. 

I hope for my projects this year (and my blogs) to be EVEN BETTER than last year. But anyways, thank you for sticking by and reading my blog and I'm hoping for a great year full of blogs!

           -Dana