Baby Steps (Documentary Version)

After seeing the 450 point weight of the documentary project assigned in my media A level course, my initial instinct was to *calmly* panic. Like I assume most other stressed and overwhelmed high school students would, I instantly doubted my ability to complete the task on time and well done to my best efforts. However, when the planning process began, I felt my anxieties slowly ease. 

Along with my teammates, Lauren, Abby, and Riley, the first step we encountered was to brainstorm an idea for our op-doc, a hurdle Lauren quickly resolved with her proposal to create a piece covering her step dad's lifelong baseball career, the injury which led to its end, and how he turned his path around after recovery, deciding to become a police officer. The ultimate goal of the documentary became to demonstrate the fundamental power and meaning behind redirection in life through the depiction of a personal story which illustrated the idea. Below is a picture of our original documentary outline for the extract covering Joey (Lauren's step dad). 

Similarly to most initial plans, our idea did not realize itself the way we imagined. Upon meeting with us, TStok suggested we formulate a documentary covering two subjects rather than merely Joey, stating that by depicting two stories our theme and purpose would be further emphasized and translated to audiences (*light bulb above my head turns on*). Immediately, I ruminated who our second subject could be: my mom, a former set-designer turned small business owner upon immigrating to the United States. Soon enough, we outlined the newest version of the op-doc and were prepared to move on, commencing research on documentary techniques. The following image is the official outline for our documentary covering both subjects:

Almost instantly, Lauren, Abby, Riley, and I began brainstorming possible b-roll we could incorporate for each subject. For Joey, it was very apparent we would rely heavily on archived footage to represent his baseball career, a topic I chose to research through my viewing of op-docs. For Fernanda (my mom), on the other hand, we would need to think outside of the box. Considering she gravely lacked any form of b-roll from her time as a set designer, I chose to research alternative methods on how to depict her former career by taking notes and inspiration from the episodic documentary Abstract: The Art of Design.

On my last blog post, I detailed the technical aspects I highlighted from the plethora of documentaries we viewed in class, including American Promise, Abstract: The Art of Design, and the New York Times opinion documentaries The Price of Certainty and No Guns for Christmas, many elements of which I employed as inspiration for our project. Regarding how to correctly incorporate archived footage, I relied heavily on The Price of Certainty and No Guns for Christmas, both of which surround their main themes around the use of the technical aspect. For instance, in the poor quality screenshot below, a snip-it from The Price of Certainty may be seen.

In this image, it is clear the filmmakers utilized some sort of editing filter/technique which incorporated a visual element to the footage (the lines running along the screen), a decision I feel excellently highlights to audiences that the b-roll presented is archived footage. Drawing from this, I suggested to my teammates that we do the same, stating that we should include a facet into our editing which illustrates that the b-roll we demonstrate, primarily for Joey, is archived footage, an idea that became a major part of our project later on. My initial recommendation was a picture frame design for the images of the subjects, such as the one below (a mere thought considering we had yet to begin production and make final decisions). 

Concerning Fernanda's b-roll, I knew we would require creativity. For this step, I turned to Abstract: The Art of Design for inspiration. As stated on my last blog post, the episode of Abstract following Ruth E. Carter relied heavily on staged b-roll to depict her past career endeavors, stories which the filmmakers likely lacked raw footage of. Upon reflecting on this technique, I suggested to my teammates that we capture Fernanda in the same light, staging her past life in order to fully exemplify her story given the scarcity in organic b-roll from that time. Together, we concluded that a good course of action would be to film Fernanda pretending to work on her past set-design projects, an idea that greatly eased the rest of our planning journey. 

Our last major research obstacle was discovering a way to accentuate the similarities between both Joey and Fernanda's stories, despite their journeys being incredibly contrasting. For this, I drew from American Promise's use of both direct and indirect interviews, a topic also discussed on my last blog post. Although Lauren, Abby, Riley, and I had all agreed we would conduct indirect interviews, out of merely personal preferences, we soon realized this would not successfully translate our op-doc's message. Mirroring the stylistic technique demonstrated in American Promise, we concluded that including, at minimum, two direct style questions would be essential in illustrating that the subjects were asked the same forms of questions, thus highlighting the similarities between both stories and further emphasizing the theme relating to redirection.

Of course, this choice on our behalf was not nearly as heartwarming as the reasoning behind the technique in American Promise, which employed the element due to the child subjects' inability to properly restate questions in their responses. Seriously, I think about how adorable Idris and Seun were at least once a day.

Just look at them!😊😊😊

Following this research decision, we were then able to complete the last obstacle in our planning journey: outlining interview questions. Lauren, Abby, Riley, and I, based off our outline, discussed the format of our questioning, attempting to shape Joey's and Fernanda's as similarly as we could, and the phrasing we would employ in order to elicit thorough and revealing responses from our subjects. Below are the list of questions we finalized, with the direct style questions highlighted.

After this final, major planning and research conclusion on how we as a group would approach the production process of our documentary, we were prepared to commence filming.