Documentary Part One

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    Lately in our AICE Media A Level course, we have started to learn about documentaries and their conventions. Since we are starting to develop our own documentaries in the class later on, we have started to learn what a documentaries purpose is and how to properly make a documentary. 

Learning Process

    In class we learned that there are several different types of documentaries ranging from historical to mockumentary but the one I was most interested in was biographical as for my own documentary I wanted to focus on a specific group of people. Some conventions we learned were the use of handheld camera which created a lot of realism within the documentary, it makes the audience feel as if they are in the moment with the subject which I thought was very important to the type of doc I wanted to develop. I also wanted to include a narrative type of format as well as some type of archived footage or cool b-roll shots to make the documentary visually pleasing but to do that I had to try and have selective editing within the documentary to make my audience understand my story better. 

    When learning about Direct and Indirect interviews I knew that I would rely heavily on indirect interviews as I believed it was the most effected way to create the documentary engaging and very real.  I also believe music would help convey the feeling I wanted in certain parts of the doc.

Watch Party!

    To continue our learning of documentaries, we watched several documentaries in class to understand the conventions of them better. One of the documentaries that really influenced what I wanted to create was American Promise (2014). 

    As this was the first documentary we watched in class, it impacted me the most as it made realize that something can be seen as very superficial at first but as they go on through life, they start to understand the major issues kids face in America at such a young age. While watching this documentary I understood the impact between direct and indirect interviews within a documentary because at the beginning of the doc, many direct interviews were used since the kids didn't really know how to formulate a proper answer as they would later in the film because they learned to gain a certain maturity that would affect the way their lives are demonstrated. 

    This documentary also illustrated how important the use of music can convey certain emotions but also how the use of silence can covey certain types of emotions depending on situation they are in. For example, when Shean left school, many kids were sad to see him go and the music under it conveyed the emotion of a bittersweet ending within the doc but when Sheans bothers passes away or when Idris starts to question if things were better if he were white, things get really quiet which can motivate certain types of emotions of anger or distress or sadness but it's really up to the viewer to feel the way they are interpreting the situation. 

Another Documentary we were assigned to watch in class were the Op- Docs of the New York Times, I watched several but one of the docs that was most interesting to me was "A Robus Heart" directed by Martin Benchimol. Within the doc even though it was just a couple shots, he had very affective, colorful, and beautiful b-roll shots which made it really important for me to get those types of shot within my doc. Another important element that I found really important for my doc was the questions that I'm asking and to make sure to make my interviewee comfortable enough to answer my questions the way I want them to be answered. Within the doc there was a lot of emotion from the interviews voice which made me want to give them a hug or cry for them which motivated me to make sure that during the process of my doc I asked the most important questions to get that raw beautiful emotion that would really connect with the audience. 

Another important element I learned from this doc is the way I wanted to frame my interviewee. I learned that since I have taken TV classes in the class, I wanted the traditional Left/Right third type of documentary where they have lead room to speak. Part of the reason why this documentary was entertaining but a little difficult to watch that that everything was in the middle, while it was beautifully shot it's not my preferable way of shooting interviews so for this I wanted to stick to the traditional type of framing within my doc.