Hey Y’all, Max here.
This project is about the last project we finished up in Maker 9 ( and the last project this year ).
This project saw us making documentaries. This was a lengthy project, that expanded off of the last Maker project, Vibrant Video. During Vibrant Video, we learned a lot of filming and effect skills, but while making a documentary we had to not just expand upon what we learned previously, we also had to learn new skills, like making music in GarageBand, editing audio, and most importantly, getting our own footage.
The first thing we did was generate ideas for what the subject or topic of our documentaries should be. I eventually decided to make my topic something along the lines of “How does music affect our emotions?” I chose this topic because I wanted to make my topic something about music, but I couldn’t decide between a biography of an artist, or to make it about a genre of music. The next thing I did after deciding on my topic was to make a treatment, and then a screenplay. The treatment is a few lines about what the documentary is about, and the screenplay is effectively the script.
Every Maker class we would watch a documentary, and then get to work either writing the screenplay, or editing our documentaries. The documentaries we were shown were usually short, and showed a variety of filming angles or techniques, or showed how different aspects like audio and music played a role in a documentary. They were usually quite interesting, and were especially helpful when we started getting footage.
Getting the footage was probably the most difficult part of this project, only because the locations I needed to go to weren’t local, and I often had to have everything planned out in detail, making it stressful to get everything I needed. I did 75% of my filming downtown in one day with my close friend Sepaus Daniali. However, the most important parts of my documentary were my interviews, one with my father, and one with my good friend Alfred Hebson. I chose to interview my dad because he has lived a long time, and listens to older music, and I chose to interview Alfie because he is a proficient musician and understands music theory and related concepts. I filmed both interviews in the Louie Manor, and both interviews went well. I was able to get both subjects opinions on the questions I was asking, and was able to compare their answers.
Editing my documentary was a whole different story. It took way longer than I expected and didn’t go quite as smoothly as the footage-gathering. Eventually, I did slice it together decently enough, but it took a lot of effort to make it as good as it is.
The whole process of making this documentary wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be, but it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. I found a lot of small issues in different parts of this project. I guess that’s how most projects are in PLP, I just don’t really notice them. I felt a lot of relief seeing my documentary displayed at the spring exhibition ( blog post on that coming soon ).
The driving question for this project is: “How can I engage and entertain an audience using my video and storytelling skills?” I believe that movies and films are so successful because of exactly this. It doesn’t matter if every shot is art if there’s no message behind it, and there’s no point in having a strong message if the film looks terrible from a technical perspective. Basically, without a balance of these two, the film will not be good, at least in my opinion.
Overall, for a final project this year, it wasn’t bad. I didn’t especially like every aspect of this project, but I did enjoy the creative freedom we were allowed when making this production. For my final ranking, I would give it a 7/10.