A wonderland of inspiration

As outlined in our schedule, this week, Lauren and I will be dedicating our time to planning and researching for the production of our portfolio documentary project, which we expect to officially commence next week. Prior to doing so, however, Lauren and I concluded that conducting research in an attempt to gain greater familiarity with the narrative structures and technical elements of episodic documentaries would be essential.

On one of my previous blog posts, I described the inspiration Lauren and I drew from the Netflix series Abstract: The art of design, an episodic documentary accompanying different jobs in art through the lens of professionals in each of its episodes. For example, my personal favorite episode follows costume designer Ruth E. Carter in her career background and creative processes. Abstract's structure is the main source of inspiration for mine and Lauren's upcoming extract; our idea to follow different media creation process, all in different modes, is perfectly reassured and substantially supported by the Netflix series. By modeling our own sequence after the innovative ideas and production choices made in Abstract, I believe Lauren and I will be able to construct a truly wonderful project. For now, as I have only seen a couple, I will continue my research journey by viewing more episodes of the piece in order to gain even greater familiarity with the transition between and structure within each.

On the other hand, regarding individual episode structures, I turned to YouTube for guidance. Below is a short yet meaningful video I encountered explaining the importance of a story structure within documentaries as well as film in general.

Although explaining seemingly obvious principles, I believe this source does a wonderful job of dictating the importance of a clear and coherent sequence, a principle not always obvious in documentary filmmaking, as well as how to achieve such a goal. For instance, while working on our previous documentary project, Shifting Success, Lauren and I struggled greatly in deciding how to format the stories of our subjects Joey and Fernanda, concerned that their journeys would not be intelligible to audiences regardless of the fact that the obvious answer would be to organize a beginning, a middle, and an end for both individuals. However, due to Knoblock's words, a major concern of mine has been eased and I now feel increasingly confident that our story will naturally develop its own chronological and coherent sequence, with a beginning, middle, and end followed organically and smoothly in the absence of overthinking and confusion.

Another great concern of mine surrounded the encompassing of so many different subjects and their roles in the processes of the media projects. While in Abstract each episode follows one primary professional, with merely a few collaborators commentating on smaller aspects of the job, the media texts Lauren and I plan on following each require a large group of producers, all of relatively equal importance. Consequently, we felt confusion on how to introduce all the subjects while also avoiding overwhelming viewers with information. However, amidst attempting to decipher this issue, I recalled another Netflix episodic documentary I recently viewed which did a wonderful job of introducing a multitude of separate subjects in a coherent and distinct manner: American Nightmare. 

American Nightmare discusses the kidnapping and sexual assault case of primary subject Denise Huskins and her journey to being believed. However, as the 3 episode documentary progresses, different subjects are introduced based off sequential order of how they came into contact with the case, including both police officers and other victims, all of which were highlighted as distinctly crucial and important in their contribution to the mystery solving. Drawing from this narrative structure, I believe that commencing each of our episodes with the "main" production director, such as the Editor in Chief for the yearbook episode, while introducing the other jobs and subjects as the media text production process chronologically reaches their role. This way, we may avoid introducing too many subjects in the beginning of an episode and confusing viewers on where or when they come into play. 

Now, after conducting this research (which I had a lot of fun doing, considering I mainly watched interesting videos/pieces) I feel confident that Lauren and I are prepared to both film and edit our documentary extract effectively.