Critical Reflection on Documentary Project

     The goal of my documentary Kids Helping KIDs was to explain what the organization is, what it does, and to show the real impact that a community can have. I think that I succeeded in accomplishing this goal by creating an informative and engaging piece. However, there is always room for improvement. 

    When it came to research, I didn't feel like my topic needed any facts or background because I wanted to focus on what we do as an organization and how we help, and I wanted it to focus on emotional impacts at the end. Therefore, watching different types of documentaries served as my research of the different techniques and conventions that are used in documentaries. Of all the documentaries I viewed I feel like Abstract and Exit Through the Gift Shop served as my major inspirations because of the way the b-roll was integrated and also to inspire me to include archived footage into my documentary. I like the way that Abstract showed its b-roll for context to what was being shown, and I took that as inspiration for my own documentary. I also really liked the branded introduction seen in Abstract, which served to engage people right from the start. This directly inspired my intro with the montage and title in it.

    

    The target audience for this documentary people looking to help in their community or want to specifically help foster kids. To keep my audience engaged, I included a lot of b-roll in my documentary, since it kept it visually interesting and appealing instead of just staring at a person talking all the time. It allowed for people watching it to have a visual representation of what is being described. Additionally, throughout the whole documentary, the direct interviews progresses the story, and I believe that cutting between interviews and intertwining them with each other also aided with the engagement of the audience because it wasn't the same person talking the same time and it added more. However, I do think that they interviews could have been framed a lot better and it would have been more engaging if they looked better visually with maybe a zoom or even a change in setting. However, the cutting between the interviewees also helped with the pacing of the documentary to make it more engaging and more easy to understand the information that was given. 

    We chose the structure of this to go from introducing the organization, to deep diving into the Thanksgiving Food Drive, to a more heartfelt conclusion, showing the emotional impacts that the people involved have. This allowed for the audience to get informed in an engaging and easily to follow structure. 

    Kids Helping KIDs is a documentary that represent two main groups: teenager and adults that are willing to help the community, and the foster kids who receive the help. One way that I chose to represent the teenagers and the adults is by incorporating them as interviewees in the documentary, as well as in the b-roll footage, showing their interactions with the kids. The documentary is all about the indirect way that we help these kids, such as raising money through drives. In this documentary, we represent the kids in the foster homes, that have been abused and neglected. This documentary highlight one of the many ways that someone may help contribute to the cause and the ways that teenagers and adults can help.

Overall, I'm extremely proud of what we were able to achieve with this documentary! Here's the link to watch it: Kids Helping KIDs

thelongjourneyofeditingthisdocumentary

This was the longest video I've ever created. Now, I love editing, don't get me wrong, but I was so annoyed at this video at the end because I ran into a lot of issues. I also underestimated the amountttt of time it takes to edit a longer video like this one. So much that the weekend leading up to the due date I edited 24/7 (not literally). 

The way I edited this, which idk if it was a good idea anymore) is that I would just dump all the footage I had gathered each day into Premiere Pro, and from there I would organize it into sections so I could start editing section by section, since I didn't have all the footage from the beginning at the time. This created a whole mess and made my timeline be over an hour long at one point. However, I stuck through it and started editing the montage at the beginning, and then the intro, and so on and so on, which made it feel like it was slowly coming together. 

Something that I noticed while editing was that the interviewees talked very slow at parts and hesitated a lot. It took me a long time to cut it down and even speed some interviews up, and I couldn't get them all fixed because the cuts were sounding choppy but I think I did a pretty decent job at mending the interviews.

About halfway through editing the intro, I was exhausted and I was realizing that it was taking way too long editing the interviews and the b-roll in at the same time since I still didn't know exactly what my interview flow would be. Therefore, I decided to completely forget about the b-roll (for now) and focus on just editing the interviews together to achieve a good flow of information. This allowed me to organize the editing process in a much more effective way, and then adding the b-roll in was much easier because I would just listen to the interviews and figure out what shots would look best in each part. 

Towards the end of my editing jounrey, I was being super nit-picky about everything to the point that I had to stop myself and just accept it how it was because if not, I would probably still be sitting down editing more and more. 

Overall though, I am truly proud of what we managed to create! We had a KHK party for the adults involved and the VP asked me if she could show the video as a surprise and she had me introduce it and had all the people watch it. I saw people get super emotional, with some even crying, and it made me really proud, not only of what I made, but also of how much impact we really make and how passionate everyone is. 

FILMING

The filming process for this documentary was definitely chaotic and all over the place with some problems that we faced, but it worked out at the end! We had so many things going due to the Thanksgiving Food Drive being one of our biggest events of the year, so I had to be in so many places all at once to be able to capture all the footage I needed. 

For the intro of our documentary, I had to gather a lot of archived footage that I had taken before in past events since it talks about all the things that Kids Helping KID (KHK) does. Now this was really hard, because since I am the social media manager, I have access to an album that has videos and pictures of everythingggggg for the past few years. So there was a lot of digging that I had to do to find the adequate footage. Looking back through all the footage we've gathered as part of this organization made me really emotional and proud of what this organization achieves. Anyways, I would gather this footage a little bit day by day until I was happy with what I ended up with. 

Now, for the actual filming intended for this documentary, we started with the interview with the volunteer, who is the coordinator for the tutoring chapter of KHK. Setting up this interview was a little hard since I had no tripod available to use at this time, so I had to make a makeshift stabilizer. It took a while to get it right, which explains why I hadn't realized that he needed more light on his face. My classmates pointed that out to me, but now I know to be careful with that for next time! Apart from that, the filming went really smooth and with almost no interruptions. 

The other main interview, with one of the Vice President, also went really well. Setting up for this one was much easier because we got one of my friends to lend us his tripod and we had overall better lighting. Conducting this interview was one of my favorite parts because it warmed my heart seeing how passionate she was about everything we do, and she did a really good job explaining everything. However, I do believe that the framing for that particular interview could have been a lot better if I zoomed in on her and placed her on the right third, as many of my classmates suggested. 

Filming the b-roll is where it got a little more chaotic. The house where all the bags and all the loose items would get dropped off is really close to mine, so I would go a lot to film us organizing everything, and taking videos of all the bags we've collected. We went to Publix to get the footage of all the items being added to the cart, and since I was also donating, I took advantage and decided to film the process of buying them. So far so good. Then, that Sunday rolled up. The Sunday in which the big assembling event was going to be, where I needed to get a lot of footage. Unfortunately, a medical emergency came up and I was not able to do anything that day. I was supposed to film the bags being put into the truck, and also help film the actual assembly line at the St Paul Church. Thankfully, my partner and the volunteer we interviewed were able to gather all footage necessary! I was still sad I couldn't attend because not only did I really want to be there to help capture the footage and the last interviews, but I also wanted to be there to help with the assembly because it's the closing event for the drive. But life happens and everything came out really good!

Planning our Documentary

When this project got introduced, I immediately knew what I wanted my documentary to focus on. I am part of an organization that helps foster kids in South Florida called Kids In Distress. In Kids In Distress, there is a part that is student run and student led, called Kids Helping KID (KHK), and I am the social media coordinator for it. I am really passionate about helping these kids and I knew that I wanted to make my documentary on this. 

The only problem with this topic was some legal issues surrounding the kids, since they can't be photographed or interviewed without permission. I contacted the Vice President, which I have constant contact with, and she gave me the green light to make it, as long as no kids were interviewed or showed their names for safety. 

Once we got permission, me and my partner started working on the outline to organize the flow of the video so that the delivery of information is clear and it maintains engagement.

At first, our outline included an intro to what the organization does, an intro to activities, and a deeper dive into our tutoring services for the kids, and our annual Thanksgiving Food Drive, and then a heartfelt conclusion. However, when scheduling interviews and times to go to get b-roll for the tutoring sessions, we got told that we were not allowed to film there because the campus had an official photographer and videographer and no one else was allowed to record. NO ONE PANICKED. Im kidding, I did panic a little but we figured it out! We just had to tweak the stuff around a little, which ended up serving us better at the end! I don’t know how we would’ve fit the deep dive into the tutoring AND the Thanksgiving Food Drive, so I’m really happy things turned out the way they did. 

As for scheduling the rest of our interviews, it was really easy to convince the VP to help us with the interview because of her deep passion for what we do. However, finding volunteers to interview was harder, which is why we ended up relying mainly on one volunteer. For the questions, me and my partner had a clear idea of what information we needed, so I created the questions for the volunteers and she created the questions for the adults. 

After that, we were set and ready to start bringing our idea to life! 

Here's a picture of our final outline that we used!

Learning about documentaries!

We are so back!! I'm so incredibly excited to be back for another year of my favorite projects!

Currently, in class, we have been learning about documentaries and doing a lot of research on these to prepare us for our very first big project of the year. 

The first documentary we watched was an episodic documentary on Netflix called Abstract. The series is organized with each episode being on a specific creative field with a specific subject, and since they're all about different things, there is no need to watch them in order. In class, we watched the costume design episode with Ruth E. Carter, which was incredibly interesting because she showed the process of her work. I didn't know she did the costuming for the Black Panther movies and I was really impressed. 

After watching this one, we had to go back home and watch one of our choice. I choose the one that focused on stage design that followed Es Devlin. This was really interesting for me because of my love for concerts and it was really cool seeing the behind the scenes of how the stages operate and are created. I hadn't thought about how much work goes into designing them to make the visually appealing to the public. These two episodes gave me a lot amazing and useful examples of b-roll, which I really needed when making my own documentary, as well as a good example of how to create a consistent brand for a documentary.  

After watching these, we transitioned into watching a full length documentary: American Promise. Even though this documentary is older than the last two I mentioned, I truly loved and enjoyed this documentary. It made me realize how much time and work is put into making documentaries. I never got bored while watching this documentary because it used techniques to maintain the audience engaged at all times, which made it a goal for me when planning my own documentary. I found it amazing that this documentary was 13 years in the making to follow the life of Idris and Seun. 

After, we watched another full documentary, which was a bit more confusing, but I still enjoyed it. The name of the documentary was Exit Through the Gift Shop, and it was a documentary inside a documentary that focused on street art. This documentary used a lot of archived footage and b-roll which really served as inspiration for my own documentary since I also had to use a lot of archived footage. 

Finally, we had to choose two short op-docs to watch, and since I knew these were going to be more like the one that I had to create, I made sure to take into account all the techniques to implement them into mine. For one of the op docs, the sound was very minimal, mostly focusing on her voice and the soft background music to emphasize her words, which is something that inspired the sound production for my documentary.

After watching all these documentaries, I had so much information and techniques to work with and I was ready to start planning for mine!