Documentary Critical Reflection

    In my documentary, Mic Check, I strived to highlight the work of people who work backstage in a theatrical production, who are also known as, “Techies.” “Techies” run the sound, lights, costumes, makeup, set, props, curtains, and many other aspects that a live show can’t function without. I wanted to show what they really do, highlight how important their role is in a production, what their work means to them, and the actors who work with them.

    Before starting this project, I knew very little about creating a documentary so, I had to conduct research. I watched various documentaries such as American Promise, Abstract: The Art of Design, and Saturday Night, all of which played a big role in how I utilized different techniques in my documentary. American Promise showed me how I wanted to convey my interviews. Although a lot of this piece is shown through footage of what is going on in the lives of the subjects, they also heavily rely on interviews to get perspective on their situations which was a technique I was inspired by and utilized in my documentary. Abstract: The Art of Design showed me how to use archival footage to tell a story. In this piece, footage and designs of the artist's past work highlight what they’ve done and how their work differs from one another, all coming together to create great designs. This is what I aimed to convey in my documentary. Archival footage was used in my documentary to show a before and after of what a performance looked like with and without technical elements. This was done to highlight the significance of theatrical technical work and how it enhances a performance. I think it served its purpose well. Saturday Night showed me how I wanted to utilize b-roll in my documentary. Throughout that piece, the actors and writers are always shown working and what it takes to do their jobs. That’s what I wanted to convey in my documentary. There are several shots of “Techies” working like, Sam and his soundboard or Isabel at her light board. I think this was well conveyed in my project and highlighted its purpose significantly. My documentary followed basic documentary conventions and techniques, like the ones mentioned previously as well as, non-diegetic sounds with music and voiceovers, and a narrative structure. Research was vital in creating this documentary. Without it, my documentary wouldn’t have been as structured or complete.

    While I was creating this project I also had to keep in mind who it was being created for, my target audience. The target audience for this documentary is teens and young adults who are either active in the musical theater community or have an interest in it. Keeping this audience in mind, I had to think of ways to distribute it and get audiences to engage with it. It is first posted on this blog, where people can watch and comment on it and truly see the process that went into creating it. Although it is not currently published anywhere else, I have future plans to submit it for scholarships and festivals. This will allow more people to see it, which will share the work of “Techies” with more people and educate them about a new topic, especially those outside of the target audience.  I also plan to use it as an advertisement for a private theatre company whose members are featured in the documentary. This would show the documentary to the target audience and not only encourage more people to watch it but also encourage others to do something they love. By distributing my documentary to more places and getting more audience engagement, it spreads the message and purpose of the documentary to more people.

    As mentioned previously, this documentary represents “Techies,” the people who work backstage in a theatrical production. It shows the hard work they do, in both high school and private theater companies. “Techies” are represented through the work they do and the experiences they share. Throughout my documentary, the subjects constantly share what they do, their experiences, and what their job means to them. One of the most impactful moments in the documentary is Andrea talking about the kids she works with and how theater is one of, if not, their only safe space which really exposes the impact and importance it has on people’s lives. The documentary also gives an actor’s perspective of a “Techie’s” work, highlighting their importance, and how heavily they affect the show and its outcome. Overall, the production was successful in representing its subjects and highlighting a topic that is unknown to most people, because of all the techniques I used and the way I conveyed its message through those techniques.

    Not everything can go perfectly, however, and looking back there are some changes I would make to the documentary as a whole. One of the first things that can be improved is the beginning. It started too abruptly with a pan across the auditorium and an immediate voiceover. Starting with a fade in would’ve eased the audience into the story and created a smoother beginning. Voiceovers should have also been used periodically throughout the documentary, especially in the conclusion. Also, some of our b-roll placement is illogical. By fixing both of these aspects I can create a more cohesive piece. Another actor should’ve also been added to show more perspective and insight into the job and how it affects others. All of these issues can be resolved easily with some quick filming and editing. They would enhance the piece, making it better than it already is. 

    I am extremely proud of this project and what I created. Despite the small issues, the final result was something amazing. This project taught me a lot about the production process that comes with making a documentary, but more than that, I was able to evolve as a filmmaker. I have learned so many lessons about myself and the filmmaking process that will stick with me throughout future projects. 

Documentary Production (Continued)

    It was crunch time. When we got back to school from break we started working as soon as possible. The first thing we did was film our interviews with Sam and Isabel. Sam went first. We set up the microphone, which was having a few problems at the start, but after a few tries of connecting and turning it off, we got it to work. We asked him the set of questions that we curated and he gave really good and insightful answers. Isabel was next and it went about the same way, although with fewer microphone issues. She also gave good answers and a good perspective as to what it's like being a "Techie." After the interviews were complete, they helped us get b-roll. We recorded Sam's microphone set up, the headsets that lined the back wall, the spotlight shining on the stage, Sam working on his soundboard, and Isabel working on her lightboard. I had to leave early, unfortunately, but Ale and Ace got other great shots of around the auditorium and of the various technical aspects that surround the auditorium like the lights above the stage. 

This is a clip from Sam’s interview

This is a clip from Isabel’s interview

    The next step was editing. Ace was in charge and did most of the editing. That is something that Ale and I wish we did more of. Because of the time constraints, only having a couple of days to edit, it wasn't easy for all of us to help in the editing process and our schedules clashed so we were unable to meet up any day after school to edit together. There was a lot to edit and I wish we could’ve approached that process in a more collaborative way. However, Ale and I communicated with him and kept asking if there was anything he needed for us to do or if there was anything he needed insight on but he insisted that he was ok. When he finished putting it together, we got on a Facetime call and he showed it to us. We were so happy with the result! There were a few little things we changed that enhanced the piece but it was great and we were really proud of it. My friend Natalia, who was in the piece, was with me and she watched it and gave us feedback which helped us improve our final product. Once it was finished, we submitted it along with our production log and outline and it was finally done!

I am so proud of us and what we created. It was a rollercoaster of a journey but it was all worth it. We created something we love and that we hope to perfect and submit to future scholarships and festivals. This project has taught me a lot and put me through the wringer, but the experience will allow me to grow not only in this class and as a filmmaker but as a person. Our final documentary is linked here.

Documentary Production

    In the last post, I said that disaster struck, and it had. Basically, the worst possible thing that could've happened, happened. Let me explain. We were set to begin filming on Thursday in the auditorium and we were going to record Sam and Isabel's interviews as well as the majority of our b-roll. Our issue began when the weather became really bad. It was pouring rain for two days straight and the floods in parts of our area meant the busses couldn't run, so school was canceled on Thursday. We couldn't film on Friday because a middle school theatre festival was taking place all day and the next week was Thanksgiving break. The documentary was due the Monday we returned. We were texting back and forth, trying to come up with ideas. We were thinking of getting Sam's interview but he's doing sound for the theatre festival in the auditorium and he was going away for a break the next day and Isabel wasn't available. The only people we could record were Andrea and Natalia. Once we evaluated our options for this project, we thought of having to switch our topic entirely. We didn't want to but we didn't have much of a choice. We thought of doing the immigrant story and we would use two different subjects, Ale's mom and stepmom, to tell two different stories. We ultimately decided however to not do anything until we talked to Mrs. Stoklosa on Friday and just wait it out until then. 

Our group text messages about school being canceled and what our options are.

    When we got to class on Friday, we immediately went to our teacher and explained our entire situation. She gave us two options. We could change our topic, start from scratch, and it would be due on the same day or, we could keep our topic and she'd give us a week's extension. After some deliberation, albeit not much, we decided to keep our topic and take the week extension. With that, we restructured and got back to work. We scheduled Andrea's interview for that Saturday and moved Natalia's interview to Sunday. After a very chaotic and stressful few days, we were finally able to begin filming and make more progress on our documentary. 

    We all met up at a park next to our local library to film our interview with Andrea. We used a tripod that I brought and we bought wireless microphones to be able to capture better audio from the interviews. Both pieces of equipment proved to be extremely useful in our filming process. The tripod helped us frame our shots correctly and keep them stable while the microphones picked up audio very well and ensured the only thing that could be heard were the subjects. The filming process for that interview went really smoothly and Andrea provided us with fantastic answers to the questions we were asking her. As we were filming we checked the footage to ensure it all sounded right and that we got all the answers we wanted and we were done pretty quickly. 

The microphone we used to capture audio in the interviews

A clip from Andrea's interview

    The next day, we were all supposed to meet to film Natalia's interview but neither Ale nor Ace had rides so I filmed it by myself. I used the same equipment and asked the questions, and although it took a bit longer to set up, it was worth it. Like Andrea's interview, it went very well. They provided great answers and a great perspective on a "Techies" role to an actor. Once those two main interviews were done, we gathered up all the footage we had, looked it over, and tried to decide what we were going to use, even though it was difficult due to not having any other footage to work off of. We tried to find a day to meet up and edit what we have but due to complications out of our control and as mentioned, a lack of footage, we were unable to. 

A clip from Natalia's interview

    Looking back, we all handled our situation pretty well. We thought over all of our options logically and made the best conclusions we could with what we were given. Although the situation wasn't ideal, we made the best of it. Everything after that went pretty smoothly but I'll go more in-depth about the rest of our process in the next post. We learned a lot of lessons along the way and became stronger in the end because of it. Everything will work out in the end, no matter how hard or difficult it may seem. 

Documentary Research and Planning

    Once the main research for the documentary was complete, the next step was to plan. 

    The first step was to choose a topic. We came up with a few ideas of possible topics. We thought of getting insight into a teacher's life and their job, an immigrant's story of their life in their native country and the shift of leaving home to come to America, and highlighting the musical theatre community and how it affects its members. We thought about these topics for a while and decided we wanted to talk about the theatre community. As we were discussing it and coming up with ideas on how to approach it, Ale remembered that a friend did the same topic for their documentary last year so we had to pick something else, but we still wanted to talk about theatre. As we were discussing other ideas, I thought of the people who work backstage on productions or, "Techies." I came up with talking about their work and how they are underappreciated in the theatre community. Ace and Ale liked the idea and that became our topic. 

    Once we had our idea, we started planning it. We first thought of how we would approach it and who we could ask to participate. Ale and I are enrolled in the theatre class at school and Ale does musical theatre at a private company outside of school, so we had a lot of resources at our disposal. We first asked our friend Sam who runs the sound design at our school and has worked on sound for other theatrical productions outside of school, to be an interviewee and give us access to the tech booth. He said yes to both. We then asked Andrea Chiquito, who runs technical theatre at Inside Out Theatre Company, as well as Isabel Cadena who runs lighting design at our school if they'd be able to sit for an interview and they both said yes. We also wanted a different perspective on technical theatrical work, so I asked my friend Natalia Rendon, who is also in the theatre class with me and Ale and has been doing theatre for over eight years, she was also available to film an interview. Now that we had subjects, we needed to figure out what else would go into our documentary. 

    We needed to think of the archival footage we would use, our b-roll, and an outline. We used a template that Mrs. Stoklosa provided for us, which gave us the space to create a goal and purpose for our documentary which was to highlight the technical side of live theater and the process that is used when putting on a production, which is often overlooked. It also gave us space to list our b-roll shots and how we would devise our roles on the project evenly. The document is linked here. We also created an outline as to how we would structure our documentary, which is linked here. This outline helped us organize our ideas and how our documentary would flow from each point we wanted to make. After the outline, we created the interview questions. We had different questions for different people. We had separate questions for the "Techies," directors, and actors. We wanted to ask the "Techies" what being a "Techie" means, what their job is, what it's like to be in the background of a theatrical production, what makes a production run smoothly, and what you do when it doesn't, and what their role is in the theatre community. It was as we were writing these questions that we received feedback from our teacher that we shouldn't focus on how they're underappreciated so we made the main focus about their work. We asked Andrea, a director, some of the same questions but also different ones such as, what it means to them to oversee an entire theatrical production and what it means to them. The actors, or actor in our case, was asked two completely different questions about how they view the work of "Techies," and how they affect their performance on stage. Once we were finished with the questions, we received feedback from Mrs. Stoklosa as to how we should reword the questions to get the best responses out of our subjects. The final document is linked here. Ale also looked through their phone for pictures and videos of some technical work for previous shows she's done. She mainly focused on the before and after of different songs or scenes and looked as if technical elements were being implemented. This would give more examples of the work, "Techies," do in a production, which is the purpose of our piece.

    Once the interview questions were written, we had to set them up. We talked with our subjects and decided we would do our interviews with Sam and Isabel the same day as we filmed our b-roll of the tech booth and the auditorium. We would then get our interviews with Andrea and Natalia that weekend. Everything was set in place and we were ready to film until disaster struck! Find out what happened in the next blog post. 

Documentary Research

    I made a documentary! Well, my friends Ace, Ale, and I made a documentary. We created our documentary on the work of "Techies" which are the people who work backstage on a theatre production. I am going to detail our entire processes from our research to planning, filming, production, editing, and a reflection of the entire project in a series of blog posts. This first blog post details the individual research to prepare for creating a documentary. 

    My research started with notes on a presentation prepared by our teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa, about the conventions, characteristics, techniques, and different genres of a documentary. This presentation gave the class and me good background information about documentaries and what they entail from a production and viewing perspective. The notes taken from the presentation proved to be very useful throughout the creation of our documentary as it gave us valuable information to look back on and reference to ensure our project followed the proper conventions and directions to qualify as a documentary. These notes were one of the most useful aspects of my research to create the project. 

The notes I took about documentaries

    To provide examples of the techniques and conventions highlighted in the notes, we watched three full-length documentaries in class. The first documentary we were shown was American Promise, directed by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson. It detailed the lives of two boys, Idris and Seun, growing up from kindergarten to their senior year of high school, starting at The Dalton School in New York City. It also talks about the adversities the two students face as two black kids going to a predominantly white school. I enjoyed this documentary and found it very engaging. I liked how transparent it felt and the way it implemented interviews to further its story. Throughout the documentary, the subjects were growing up and maturing right in front of the audience's eyes. You saw their triumphs, their failures, their losses, their successes, and everything in between. This causes the audience to root for the subjects and keep watching in the hopes that they succeed. The documentary also heavily relies on interviews with the different subjects to tell their side of the story. This is what my group and I strived to capture with our documentary. We wanted our subjects to tell their story and be honest about their jobs as "Techies" and what their experiences are like. We wanted different perspectives of the job from people with different roles, like an actor, and how they view a "Techies" work. This documentary helped me with my own documentary in terms of finding a formula and elaborating on it to share the experiences of the subjects involved. 

  

The trailer for American Promise (dir. Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson)

    The second documentary we watched was Exit Through The Gift Shop, directed by Banksy. This documentary followed the work of street artists, documented by a man named Thierry Guetta who fell in love with the art so much that he became “Mr. Brainwash,” and started creating and selling his own art. I really enjoyed this documentary and it taught me about a subject I always thought was fascinating but didn't know too much about, street art. It also made me contemplate and reflect on what the true meaning of art is and what really qualifies as art. This documentary utilizes different techniques to highlight the work of street artists as well as provide perspectives as to how others, both in the street art community and outside of it, feel about Mr. Brainwash and his work. It used techniques such as voiceover to continue its story and provide background information to explain the topic and what was occurring at the given time. This was something we wanted to include in our documentary. We knew that not many people know who "Techies" are and that we needed to provide background information to prelude our documentary. We realized this would be the most efficient way to do that. Just like the voiceovers in Exit Through The Gift Shop provided information and narration to parts of its story, we utilized the same technique and highlighted what exactly it means to be a "Techie." 

The trailer for Exit Through The Gift Shop (dir. Banksy)

    The final full-length documentary I watched in class was an episodic documentary called, Abstract: The Art of Design. I watched two episodes. The first was about Ruth Carter and her costume designs, and the second was about Es Devlin and her scenic designs. Both episodes talked about what each person's process is like how they started in their field, their inspirations, parts of their life before their art, and many other topics. I loved this documentary and thought the topics were so entertaining and engaging. I particularly loved Ruth E. Carter and the beautiful costumes she's created. In both episodes, they use a lot of archival footage, mostly to show their work, designs, or a transformation from what something was like in the past to now. This was a technique we knew we needed to utilize in our documentary. We needed to show the before and after of different performances to highlight the effect and impact that tech has on production. We also wanted to show some of the work that techies have done using archival footage. These episodes gave great inspiration and insight as to how to utilize an important technique in our documentary.

The trailer for Season One of Abstract: The Art of Design

    In class, we also watched small, short documentaries submitted to The New York Times called, Op-Docs. Op-docs are quick documentaries highlighting a singular topic made by an indie filmmaker. They submit their work to The New York Times and if it gets chosen, it gets put on their website. These Op-Docs are a great way to showcase new filmmakers and learn about topics you never knew about before. I watched two of them. The first was called H.A.G.S. by Sean Wang. (linked here) It talks about a guy who reconnects with his friends from middle school because he is lost and unsure of where his life is going to take him. The second one I watched was called The Paradise Next Door by Lance Oppenheim (linked here). It was about a retirement community in central Florida called The Villages, what it's like to live there, and how the community affects the people living in the surrounding areas. Both Op-docs were very engaging and taught me new things, but also gave me insight into people's personal life and how they change as they get older. The Op-Docs were a very helpful resource for our documentary. They gave my group and I a good general idea as to how long our own documentary should be and how we could fit all of our ideas into a shorter span of time. It also gave us the idea to create our documentary on a topic that not many people may know about. These Op-docs gave me insight into a new type of documentary and how to incorporate different formats into our work. 

    Aside from the documentaries we watched in class, I watched one individually that was recommended to me by another student. It was called Saturday Night and it was directed by James Franco. This documentary followed the season 34 cast of Saturday Night Live and their process to write, review, prepare, perform, and air an episode of the show in a week. The episode that was featured aired on December 6, 2008, in which John Malkovich hosted. I loved this documentary and it was my favorite out of all the documentaries I mentioned, but that's likely in part due to how much I love SNL, especially this cast. I loved the use of color, particularly in the interviews. All the interviews are shown in black and white while everything else is in color. I think this shows are great contrast between perspective and what's being aired or worked on. I also think the use of b-roll and production footage throughout the piece was great and kept it engaging. This is what we incorporated into our piece. We wanted to show as much about techies at work as possible. Working on lighting fixtures, soundboards, etc. Showing what the "Techies" do and how their work affects a production highlights the purpose of the piece and keeps it more engaging.

The documentary Saturday Night (dir. James Franco)

    Each documentary I watched and all the research I did helped prepare me for creating my own documentary. My group and I implemented techniques and concepts from each one and learned a lot about what makes a documentary complete. Without this research, our documentary wouldn’t have been as successful; it was crucial to our process. 

I’m Back!

 Hello, I’m back and I’m now in the A-level media studies class! 

My blog posts this year are going to explore what the creative processes of working on various projects throughout the year as well as what it means to be a student in an advanced media studies class. This year is going to be rigorous and challenging but excited and I can’t wait to take you guys along for the ride! 

I’m glad to be back and I’ll see you in the next post!