YAYYYYY *confetti*

 REFLECTION TIMME 

I have a love-hate relationship with this part. 

Initially, we wanted this documentary to represent the small groups within the arts and answer or touch on the question of whether the arts are truly important to us as a society. Being a person who does creative arts, I always felt like this passion or profession was looked down upon as it's not typically a stable source of income. Many people have either given up their passion or still go at it with very little support. I know that for some of my friends choosing to pursue arts it was hard to convince their parents or their parents were just never on board. But we really wanted to show with this documentary that the arts do have an impact on people and society either as an inspiration or just letting humans be little silly humans. That art is important and that it's not always superficial. Although the arts are subjective to each person they have an impact on everyone in one way or another.  

We really wanted this piece to resonate with our audience because sometimes it's hard to see how important any of the arts are to ourselves and the people around us. We used people around the ages of our target audience to help further the idea that this documentary is for them, we also used a few of the main arts that people take a lot of interest in to pull our audience in. I would've loved to do a part on like an artist who draws or paints but we didn't have the time so maybe that could be something we add in the future. As I mentioned before, I asked a question that I felt would help us kind of gauge where we wanted to be: "What's our target audience?" We all agreed that it was around 15-16 to about 18-19 and I think that really helped us be where we are. I feel we really started to develop ideas catered to individuals our age. I feel that my group hit our target audience but also used a lot of techniques to keep them engaged. We kept each piece relatively short and with each part having its own style it mixed up the feel and energy of each part. However, while receiving critiques we were informed that at points it got a bit boring probably due to its length. 

At the beginning of our documentary we felt it would be good to have a quote that says “Every artist was once first an amateur” besides the fact that I spelled amateur wrong we wanted to include it to further push the idea that the arts are important and if you feel inspired to do something you can do it as well. I'd like to think that we had a very specific style and techniques that we used throughout this documentary. One that's very obvious was the light leak that we used a lot and that was used to keep this kind of artsy cinematic feel to it. One that was a little less obvious was the style of editing we used. Each part was sequenced almost identically starting with who the person is and their passion field then getting into why they do what they do and delving deeper into that. Each part had its own feel to it but also represented who they are. Santi had a lot of cooler tones and was edited slower. Then Monica's part was more pink, softer and energetic with light editing. Miguel's part was very energetic, very bright (in some parts) and fast paced editing. 

    Looking back and having received all our critiques we 100% plan to redo parts of our documentary. For my portion of editing I created an arguably very long intro sequence for Santi but I LOVED how it turned out because I feel like it really captures who he is through that small part. It shows his work and his personality through film and how he is as a person, but through critique I learned that the average viewer wouldn’t know where that part is going initially so you're just very confused until like after the first half. And then it doesn't help that each portion's introductions were all extremely different from one another but we all liked that aspect about it because it shows one, a difference between our subjects but also how they express themselves. 

  To be quite honest I don't think our documentary challenges many conventions. I would say the general style of how it's done having 3 separate parts instead of intermingling them throughout the entire documentary. I mean each part is fairly conformant. Well not conformant but like it nothing too out of the ordinary. I feel the arts are a very open community, you can do almost anything from acting to music to videography and photography or do all of them. We would want to bring awareness to the arts being important in society. But it's just not seen as a “true career” path in many people's eyes. If anything that could be our “challenging conventions” because all these people would want to pursue the arts as a career and because its not seen as a true or stable career then these people are like going against the grain to pursue their passion. 

    All in all we plan to make changes to better our documentary, I'm extremely proud of what my group did. If I hadn't gotten critiques I probably would have sent it off already to get awards ( I wouldn't have been that silly). But I'm super confident about this piece and love showing it to people. My FAVORITE part about it is the music we use in the background. It kinda gives a heroic vibe to it but also inspirational. But also I loved our window editing. How we used Nat sounds and let our individual pieces breathe and let people feel it. I loved this project. 

the end.....or is it....

 post-production is I think where we struggled the most.

We each had edited our own versions and communications were very thin with Male so we could not properly communicate our ideas with each other 

proofs in the pudding 

If you say anything about my grammarly I will be very upset. shush. 

Anyway,  Ava and I had planned to work on the doc the weekend following us having filmed Miguel's part so that was like Saturday or Sunday and the whole thing was due Monday. What we struggled with the most was the intro sequence of our documentary. we wanted to do something that showed there were 3 parts to this story but we couldn't figure out how we wanted to execute it. 
each of us had planned out differently how the sequence was going to go but because Ava and I were together most of the time to discuss it we were the most like.. we had a similar idea I guess I should say. 

eventually after many hours of back and forth with male lol we came to a conclusion. or a compromise I  suppose. 

The day came for Ava and me to sit down and do our final edit of the documentary and since Ava's part was last filmed she was still editing her piece. At this point, in time I found it a little silly because we filmed Wednesday and it was now Sunday and not a lot had been done in effort but I'm also like a bit of a freak so who knows. 

During this time we took to edit, we decided to finally put in effort to think up our doc name. We wanted something abstract but powerful. We (as in me and Ava) spent like over an hour finding names. I came across the MOMA website on different art names when I saw "Binder" which was like a material that holds the pigment in paintings together and I went "BAZINGA" not literally but that was my brain. I thought it perfectly encapsulated our meaning if I changed the words around some. 

With that in mind, I thought up "Binder, The arts that hold us together" Great right? wrong. We forgot to realize that no one thinks of the word binder like that they think of the 3-prong binder. Yeah, geniuses we are (we figured it'd be like that but we didn't think we'd have to explain it as much as we ended up having to). Anyways, Skip forward a bit it's the day we have to submit (the literal next day) and the doc isn't finished. HAH! Avas part wasn't done still and the pressure was really starting to crack as the hours went by. I finally got the project file around 11:10 ish and I had to speedrun to get the rest of it finished and make sure everything ran smoothly. Mind you, making sure a 12-minute piece ran smoothly includes a LOT of watch-throughs but we did not have the time, Male also wanted to color it really quick so the moral of the story we submitted late.  

Although we had some bumps I feel like we made a really good documentary I loved the overall song we used I think it was such a cool song and it really helped our piece have some feeling. All 3 parts came together in the end and I'm really proud of our documentary. 

Binder

Do I know what I'm doing?

 In short words, maybe. 

The day we solidified our plans I texted Santi immediately 

We only had one silly little problem with this documentary, and it was that Male was leaving for Venezuela that upcoming Wednesday so that would leave us a little uncoordinated. We all had a few different ideas on how we would put this doc together and very limited communication. but that's later on. 

On Monday we filmed Monica Part male and I drove all the way to Doral to film since that's where she lived but we were fighting with the sun since it was after school and the sun sets super early now. we got there and everything was set up almost perfectly to film she had so many cool places to get b roll and perfectly set outside her room is an area she says she sits in all the time to play music and we spent like 20 minutes filming out there with the sunset in the back. LUCKILY it didn't rain while we were out there since it was raining alllllll week and the week before. it did start drizzling but we were basically done by then. 

I liked to pride myself on my b-roll, I always get at least 200 shots and I filmed the majority of the b-roll of course with the help of my team members. But I LOVED filming Monica's b-roll there was so much to work with. 

We filmed Santi on Tuesday, the next day #nobreaks.

We wanted to get all of the interviews done by the end of the week so that we knew what we were working with and each had enough time to edit over the break. oh, right thanksgiving break was the next week lol. 

We got to Santi's house and it was POURING. You can even hear the rain in the interview if you listen hard enough. We sat around for a bit trying to figure out where to get the interview from and we ended up with funny enough almost the same shot from Santis Doc. But the really funny thing is, is that Santi framed his own shot and even gave us lenses to use to improve our quality, I loved that he did this because it really brought out the film kid in him and it was so funny to see. 

His doc 

Our doc 

The last part we had to film was Miguel's part which went through LOOOOOOPS. we originally planned to film on Wednesday and Friday but then something happened and we had to push it off. 

We ended up filming during Thanksgiving break using our own equipment and some equipment from BECON. I wouldn't say this filming went super smooth. We had so many technical errors and the place we had to film at ended up being super dark and it had mirrors everywhere, it just looked super monotonous.

We plan to redo this part haha.. 

Ideas? Anyone?

 So my group had literally no idea what to do for our doc.  All we knew was that we wanted it to be super stylized. 

We had a documentary that we had looked up to which we actually used parts of in our documentary. It was "The incongruent congruent outlook of two teenage boys" Remember that internship I did over the summer, well one of the 10 people I worked with at that internship made this doc. my friend Santi lol and we all loved the look and feel of it. But we also wanted him in our doc. 

If you wanna watch it in full. 

We had a few ideas circling around, I know Male (there's an accent on the e it's not male like a man) wanted to do our doc on her brother which I won't go into much detail about considering it is not my story to tell, and I wanted to do something on being a mixed/ biracial kid and how it affects us. But we didn't want to settle down with a story until we delved into all aspects of it. Then I asked a question, which I felt would help us kind of gauge where we wanted to be "What's our target audience" We all agreed that it was around 15-16 to about 18-19 and I think that really helped us be where we are. 

After sitting in silence for about 5 minutes just thinking I randomly spewed an idea where I had no idea where it was going but it sounded cool leaving my mouth. Still thinking about Incongruent I wanted to do something with the arts so that we can have it super stylized. I remember both Ava and Male being extremely confused about what I was saying but the more we all talked about it the more it started to come together. 

We decided to do a documentary on why the arts are so important in society. We would have 3 key people to focus on in 3 separate sections and they all come together at the end. Film, Music, and theatre. 

Each of us did our own part of the documentary.

I did part 1 which I decided to interview Santi about film. Although our outline was poopy it still helped me I feel.  

Male did part 2, Music and she interviewed her friend Monica Torres.

Ava Did part 3, theatre, and interviewed our friend Miguel Cabrera 

Researchhhhhhh.........Yayyyyyyyyy..........

So, obviously, we couldn't go into this next chapter of art until we did some research, our advisor dedicated two weeks or so to teaching us the ins and outs of documentaries showing us "The American Promise", "Exit Through The Gift Shop" and had us research a multitude of other types of documentaries most of them she provided. But those two were the documentaries that impacted me the most. 

The American Promise was about "Filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson follow their son and his best friend through the U.S. educational system. Though both boys start out at the prestigious Dalton School, circumstances later force one into a public high school." I couldn't word it how I wanted to without spoiling it all. This one impacted me the most because it's something that I went through as a child going into my adolescence and it struck chords in me.

Exit Through The Gift Shop was just overall extremely entertaining and I love the style they used. Also, it was so unique how they pointed the direction of the film it just always left you questioning. Exit Through the Gift Shop is about "The infamous, shadowy British graffiti street artist Banksy has literally left his mark on cities throughout the world. He comes in contact with Thierry Guetta, a Los Angeles-based Frenchman who videotapes various underground art escapades" Yep I did it again don't judge me.

Those two documentaries are where I really got my inspiration, I wanted to make something hard-hitting where you feel but also a little silly :p

However, there was one docuseries that our advisor shared with us from Netflix that was EXTREMELY stylized and I LOVED every second of it. I knew from then I wanted my documentary to be heavily stylized. The docuseries was called Abstract and it followed several famous artists, designers, and creators in their art processes and how they came to be in their field. 

As we go on I'll explain how these were very prominent in my group's documentary process. Although, I'm sure it'll be very clear LOL. 

PLAY THAT ONE EMINEM SONG !!

 

I'm referring to "without me" if you're a novice, CAUSE I'M BACK! It's been like what, 8-9 months? Could've had a whole baby. 

The last few months have been so crazy. Won a few state awards, and did a summer internship (it was PAID!!!!) So all in all summer was great. 

I'm a senior now which is so freaking weird, it's like when your 13 you want to be 17 but being that age doesn't feel real. none of this feels real. 

Anyway, I'm a growing gal moral of the story. 

BUT I MADE A WHOLE DOCUMENTARY and I gotta spill on that. it was such a fun process and it was so cool. 

Alright, let me stop yapping and get to the point.