Critical Reflection

 This documentary has been one of my favorite projects I have ever worked on. I have had experience in working on film openings, music videos, new stories, and many other forms of media, but I had just now worked on something that was remotely close to a documentary. Being that a documentary is one of the options for my future portfolio project, I really wanted to do the best I could with this in order to test the waters and see if this is what I wanted to do later on. This also to me was an opportunity to try new things and expand my skill-set, which is exactly what I think this documentary did for me. 

When creating this documentary, we came across the idea of centering our piece around our group member's grandma, Susana Hernandez. Susana had emigrated from Cuba, her home country, to Budapest, Hungary. After a couple of years, she then immigrated to the United States from Budapest with her daughter, Diana Szabo, where they now established permanent residence. In all my past work that I had created, I had never really delved deep into the representation behind, or even when I did it was very simple and common social group and issues. With this idea, however, I saw the opportunity to tell the story of an immigrant who found her future in the United States but also addresses the challenges that emigration sparks and is never really talked about. Susana is just one of many people in this world who leave her home country and family behind for her safety and assimilate to a brand new area, in her case two. This includes having to learn and get familiar with a whole new language and culture. This piece was a way for us to spread her story to others and advocate the struggles of immigration in a whole new way.

With this message in mind when developing everything in pre-production, we really wanted to make this piece accessible to a large target audience. This would allow for so many people to be able to learn about Susana’s story. Our target audience was roughly 15-60 in age, lower to middle socio-economic class, and open to both genders. The topic of our documentary was not only informative but also sentimental, appealing to multiple age groups. The substance of the story being told and the fact it was structured in chronological order were huge ways we were able to engage our audience.  

Jumping into Editing

 As soon as I got home from all the filming, I grabbed my laptop and went through all the footage. I first watched all of the interviews, to make sure none of the audio ever peaked or even the camera went blurry. After making sure everything was good with that, I then moved on to reviewing the b-roll. I wasn’t looking to delete any B-roll other than if it was shaking or blurry. Thankfully, not much was, leaving me with a lot of b-roll to work with later. 

The whole editing process was done using the software Adobe Premiere Pro. I was the editor for the whole documentary. Once I create the project, I always start by organizing all of my content. I created 3 bins: interviews, audio, and graphics. I then imported everything into each bin. 

Project Monitor with Labeled Bins

Beginning the editing process, I dragged all the interviews into the timeline and synced both angles with each audio. This made things a lot easier once I continued. Then, I created a rough line edit. We had created an outline of how we wanted the documentary to flow during pre-production, so I used that as my guide when making it. This was important since we decided that the only audio guiding our documentary would be from our interviews.

Angle 1 of Susana Main Interview

Angle 2 of Susana Main Interview

 We started off with our main interview with Susana. I had to cut down a lot of the interview, as it was 22 minutes full of content, making sure to put the most informational and important responses. After, I placed a small portion of our interview with Diana. This was done purposely as our main focus was Susana, so we wanted to keep the focus on her, but Diana’s interview was a nice transition and gave versatility in perspectives. Finally, we ended with Susana’s sit-down section, first having her go through the photo books and then ending the pieces with some final statements from her. 

Once the line edit was made, I then moved on to placing the B-roll and the music under the audio. I went through the sequence, placing the specific b-roll filmed where it was mentioned by Susana in the interviews. Then, I moved on to placing the remainder of the b-roll over any jump cuts or empty spaces. There was also a specific staged b-roll placed during the transition periods from the three main parts. It was actually harder than expected to find music that matched the preferred tone we wanted for our documentary, as we didn’t want it to be sad but it also wasn’t supposed to be super happy. We needed something that was neutral, which is very hard to find on Youtube. I asked for Nati’s help with searching for the music and together we were able to find a lot of good potential music. We narrowed it down to 3 tracks, as each one was used under each different section in the documentary.

After everything was placed, I moved on to transcribing the interview audio and translating it into captions. Since we conducted the interviews in Spanish to adapt to Susana, we decided having English subtitles over the interviews would be a good thing to add for all viewers to understand what she was saying. Adobe has a feature to transcribe audio to make it into perfectly timed captions. However, I realized once I used it that it did not translate the transcriptions for you. So, I transcribed all the audio, exported the transcript file, translated all the text from Spanish to English, and then imported the newly translated transcriptions. Once the correct transcriptions were imported, I was able to use Adobe again to create all the captions. This was the most challenging part I experienced when editing as I didn’t realize what a long, elaborate process it would be. I also do not speak Spanish, so I was constantly in communication with Nati to make sure the captions produced were accurate.

Finally, after adding all my constant powers over the audio cuts, having my group members watch/review it, and rendering everything, it was finally time to export the final product. The whole editing process took me about 5 days to complete and the final documentary came out to be around 7 ½ minutes, a few minutes longer than I anticipated.

Final Editing Sequence

Here is a link to the final product my group and I produced, we are very proud of how everything came out. The documentary is titled Encontrando un Futuro, translated as finding a future. We felt as though this fits perfectly with the purpose of our piece, as Susana’s long journey helped her find her future here in America, which she values deeply. 

Hope you enjoy it! - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qcmQisGhNO7O6yp-FYmChLRVdODiHGH7/view?usp=drivesdk

Filming Day

 I’m not going to lie, finding a day where we can all meet up and film our content was not the easiest. Originally, we wanted to have 2 filming days. The first one, on November 16th (Thursday), to film the interview of Diana Szabo, our main subject’s daughter. The second one, on November 17th (Friday), would be all focused on Susana. We would film her interview, her sit down, and all the b-roll. However, on Wednesday night, it had rained all day causing an immense amount of flooding not only in Weston but in all of Broward County. This caused us to have to combined everything into one filming day on Friday. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I wanted to have the two filming days just as a safeguard and so we wouldn’t have to feel rushed. However, everything ended up going perfectly. 

We decided to film everything at Susana’s house, to keep everything convenient for her. All of us arrived at her house around 5 pm and set up all the equipment. The first thing we decided to film was Susana’s interview, as this would be the main audio guiding our documentary and was the most important part. The answers she gave in the interview would as help us set up any potential b-roll shots. Nati, one of my group members, was the interviewer as Susana was her grandmother. We thought this would make her feel a lot more comfortable during the interview. We also allowed Susana to answer the questions in her primary language, Spanish, as we realized she was very hesitant with her English and her Spanish was more fluid. We then shot her daughter’s interview, Diana, who was with her on the journey towards the end. She spoke English for her interview.

While filming the interviews, I controlled camera 1 and her mic audio, Yoav controlled camera 2, and Miguel was talking notes of any main points Susana talked about or any potential b-roll shots. We decided to go with the two camera angles when filming the interviews as it give the visual a little more variety and also a cinematic feel. It was a common thing I would see when watching other documentaries, so I thought it would be cool if we included it too. 

Miguel and I took turns using the main camera and the handheld stabilizer to film b-roll. I loved the experience of using the stabilizer as it allowed us to get more diverse and dynamic b-roll, with out all the shakiness. I had never used one, usually I would just go completely handheld with the camera, but I will definetly be using it for future projects. All the equipment we used for this project we borrowed from BECON TV's Shortcuts program, where they provide filming equipment for students to use in order to produce any kind of projects they wish. This was such an amazing opportunity, a huge thank you to them as now of this could have been done without them!

Local News Station, BECON TV

After all the interviews were filmed, we filmed a sit down section with Susana, where she would go through photo books she had from the journey and answer some concluding questions. The main angle was of Susana sitting at the table going through the books. However, we used the second camera to get an additional higher angle that was a close up of just the books. This would be used to give the section some variety when she is talking in the new setting, constantly switching from the wide angle of her to the close up and vice versa.

We finished filming everything at around 9-9:30pm, concluding to about a 4-4 ½ hour filming day. I planned to go through all the footage that night when I got home as we cleared Saturday morning as a possible re-filming day. However, after going through the footage, I saw we had everything we needed and it was all technically sound, so there was no need to go back the next day.

Working on Pre-Production

For this documentary, I decided to work with three other members: Miguel Cabrera, Natalia Szabo, and Yoav Dahan. I had worked with Miguel and Nati in the past in previous media projects. This was my first time working with Yoav, but I had known him before so I knew he was very creative and hard working. Once we came together as a group, Nati approached us with this idea to center a documentary around her grandmother, Susana Hernandez, who was an immigrant and apparently had this crazy long story. Nati explained to us how her grandmother had emigrated from Cuba, to Budapest, to finally the United States. She explained how her grandma loved telling her story to her and had always told her that she would love a way to tell it to others. Immediately I thought, we can be the way she shares her story, so let’s do it and help her achieve a dream of hers. Everyone agreed and we drive right into the pre-production stage. 

We started by creating a pre-production sheet, that included potential interviews, possible b-roll shots, and a rough outline of our documentary. This helped us really develop our piece and visual everything. We then moved on to creating our interview questions.

             

Our Pre-ProductionWorksheet

After some discussion, we decided we wanted our piece to have indirect interviews, so the audio would be soley our subjects speaking and guiding the documentary. This meant we had to ask a lot more questions to make sure we had a lot responses to work with. We wanted Susana to be our main interview, but we also wanted to get an interview with her daughter and Nati’s mom, Diana Szabo. Nati told us that her mom at a point was on the journey with her grandmother, so we thought it would be a cool perspective to capture as well. It would add variation to our interview subjects in our piece. After finishing the worksheet, we spent 2 days creating all of our questions for Susana and Diana.

 

Interview questions for Susana and Diana

We definetly spent the most time in our pre-production stage, which really helped us in the long run as everything was already planned out and thought through. 

Documentary Viewings and Research

Everything in life has a purpose. 

That’s a strong belief I have as I live out my life. There is always a purpose you can derive out of any situation or decision. 

We recently just completed our first really major long-term project of A-level, our documentaries. When first introduced to it, I was definitely anxious. New experiences can be scary, as you lack the familiarity that provides you with a sense of comfort or ease of mind. However, as you think towards the future, I am realizing just how close we are to starting out final component project for this course. With that, we have a choice of producing a short film, music video, or documentary. So, I really set my mind to putting my all into to this piece, as its purpose could be to prepare me and practice for my component project if I took this opportunity to do so. 

With this project being such a new experience for me, I really had to dive deep into developing a feel for the conventions for a documentary. I have always actively enjoyed watching documentaries for leisure, but had not really thought about any of them past their surface level as in my eyes they were merely for entertainment. We started to watch a few full-length documentaries in class, American Promise being my favorite. 

American Promise (2013)

By Joe Brewster and Michéle Stephenson

The story, produced and directed by the parents of the children, followed 2 little boys (Idris and Seun) through out 13 years of their academic journey. It mainly highlighted their life in a predominantly white school, as they were some of the only colored students enrolled in the highly prestigious prep school, Dalton Academy. This documentary really introduced to me the power and difference between direct and indirect interviews. 

Our teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa, also presented a lecture all about not only documentary conventions, but also production, which I took notes on and frequently looked back on during our pre-production process. A lot of research was done to help develop the pre-production of our documentary.

 

Notes on Documentary Conventions

 

Notes on Documentary Production

Vol. 2 Loading…

I’m back baby :)

It is so weird to see that the last time I posted on this blog was all the way back in March, that feels like a lifetime ago. This blog was such a blog part of my life my junior year, especially when working on my film opening. I would like to believe that during this time away I have matured and changed as a person and creator and I can’t wait to display that through here again. Maybe by the end of this year I look back on this post and feel the same way I do now.

I am so happy to be back, now in A-level, and to tackle more complex and long-term projects. Now that I’ve entered my senior year of college and have had endured almost the whole first semester, I’m really starting to appreciate the things in my life that hold memories. Looking back at this blog today and all my old posts just brought back a whole wave of nostalgia that I wasn’t expecting. Never when I was working on this blog last year did I ever think I would come to love the idea of it this much at any point in time. I’m excited to see where this class takes me and document all the cool content I end up creating.

I’ll be back soon, we are about to start our documentary projects! Stay tuned…