Learn, Explore, Fly and Film!

Hello! I just finished a concluding Maker 9 project for this year. This project was called “Your First Film”. This project was about creating a documentary about something that interested the filmmaker (AKA ourselves). The documentary was meant to use and enhance our filmmaking skills from the past project, Vibrant Video. I fell that this project also felt like some sort of continuation of the Vibrant Video project, which I found to be quite an interesting connection. The contents of this project were somewhat like milestones because they helped build up to the desired goal of creating a documentary. These contents were the foundations of creating films, such as a screenplay, storyboard, treatment etc. In addition to creating a documentary I really tried to build on my creative thinking, and communicating curricular competencies throughout this project. From utilizing this project to understand this curricular competencies I also strove to answer the driving question for this project “How can I engage and entertain an audience using my video and storytelling skills?”. 

To start off this project we started to learn about the topic of an interview. We all watch a few famous documentaries that featured good and varied interview styles. With watching and discussing these factors we started to practice filming documentaries both individually and collaboratively. I completed a personal interview after discussing the interviewing questions we would with my small group. We then created our collaborative interview using different camera techniques, such as the rule of thirds, to create an interview. When I reflect on this point in time I realize that I didn’t know a lot about the qualities of a good interview, causing this ‘steppingstone’ to success to be very helpful for my learning.

 

Once the concepts of a good interview was explained and understood we started to evaluate the contents of a good documentary. This was done in an daily assignment called ‘Doc a Day’. Within Doc a Day we, as a class, would watch a documentary and answer questions that made us think about the techniques throughout it. The questions we were asked always made me think about the message behind the film, as well as the storytelling and filming techniques that make the message of the documentary come to life. Once my answer/notes were writing I was able to contribute to a class discussion of the documentary that was watched (causing my answers to be amplified based on other peoples thoughts). Throughout this learning activity I was able to use the curricular competency, critical and reflective thinking, to identify the techniques of the film and analyze them with greater context.

In addition to ‘Doc a Day’ the process of creating a documentary was able to happen. To create my documentary I was tasked with finding a topic that it would be about. The criteria of the topic choice wasn’t a much of a criteria at all because we all had the exciting opportunity to chose our own topic. This had me thinking about my skills and hobbies, which ended up being placed in an interest brief. After thinking about different ideas I realized that I would be going on an new experience/vacation really soon. This realization made myself realize that I should make a documentary of this topic, so I did. I instantly thought of a message that I would want to convey throughout this documentary, which is…

I actually filmed my trip while the planning products were taking place in class time, but I strove to fit time in my vacation to planned out my film by creating a treatment, longline, and screenplay. Within these three planning products I was able to organize the contents of my documentary. I started these three planning products by first completing the treatment and log-line. To complete the treatment I wrote an, approximately half a page page long, explanation/description about my documentary and the main plot of it. The log-line that I created was a short caption that was around 1-3 sentences long, describing my documentary in very short eye catching way, typically meant to capture and attract the audience to your film (I thought that was a very interesting fact to learn). Even though that is the main purpose of the log-line I found it more useful to remind myself of what my idea was for my documentary. 

Treatment and log-line

After, completing my treatment and log line I was able to move on to the creation of my screenplay. Since I was already filming about my vacation…well, on my vacation I was able to film in the planning stage. I was still able to write my screenplay, which really help me be able to stay on the right track and guide myself to film the concept of my documentary. A screenplay is a written version of a storyboard that showcases the different shots of film shown as well as any dialogue present (also similar to a script). I was able to rely on my screenplay while filming and I found that a very helpful attest to have. As I reflect I also really referred back to the screenplay for editing purposes and I think that just the screenplay in general was a great way to give myself a layout and a foundation to build the rest of my film upon.

Screenplay

After the creation of my screenplay I arrived back to school from my vacation and I already filmed a large portion of the film, due to the fact that it was about my experience. When I got back the timeline for the class was still in the planning process. I didn’t want to miss out on any fundamentals of a good film, so I spent time to make a storyboard. Generally a storyboard would be used to visual layout the contents of the product your making, but in my case it had a different meaning. Since I had most of my filming completed I used the storyboard to visual organize these clips in a time format, which would be very useful for editing my film.

After my planning products were done I filmed extra parts that weren’t already filmed yet. I was then able to start my first draft of my film. To start editing my film I shortened my interview clips by finding and using specific questions and getting rid of long pauses. Once my interview was roughly cut I referred back to my storyboard for the layout of my film. When mostly all of my film was in place I inserted an iMovie soundtrack in the background as a placeholder to the music I would soon create. I think this rough cut was definitely not perfect, but it was a great way to enhance the quality of my film and receive some feedback by Nolan. The feedback I received definitely made me understand what I would need to do  make my final film better than the draft. 

When my final draft was done I was tasked to create my own soundtrack for my documentary using GarageBand. I’ve never used this platform to create full songs, or anything that actually sounded good, but I really wanted to create something that would enhance and imply the tone/mood of my documentary. As a baseline, I purposefully wanted to create something that was somewhat similar to stereotypical travel music (so I analyzed this using critical and reflective thinking). When I had an idea of what interments and sounds I wanted to included I made my first song draft. I used live loops and auto play to create this song, but when I listened over it I wanted to make it even more original. To make it more creative and convey the tone of my documentary I really had to tap into my communicating skills to convey this tone in novel ways. To do this I created my own drumbeat by hand using an acoustic kit and overlayed some guitar. At the end,  I really think my end result showed the effort I put into making this authentic songs one that suited my film with customizing qualities.

When all of the planning and creating up to this point was completed I started to edit my final film. Within this finalizing process I finished editing any audio delays and made all of the clips flow smoothly to one another. I was also able to insert my song in the background which, in my opinion, really helped enhance my film. Also with the previous feedback I received I was able to create my own title cards using the green screen visual effect, which definitely showed the pull away for the standard iMovie titles available on this editing platform. I was as able to create my own credits clips, which used my previous technology skill of using magic move. By the end my documentary was able to have an upbeat tone that gave a message to the concept it was referring to in a unique style. To create such a product I truly think I improved my communicating competency by conveying my message of the documentary by using filming and storytelling techniques in extraordinary ways.

Overall, this project has enhanced all of my skills that make myself a successful learner. I specifically improved on my communicating and critical and reflective thinking skills in the process of creating my documentary. With this project at a close I’m able to circle back and answer the driving question “How can I engage and entertain an audience using my video and storytelling skills?”.  I can engage and entertain an audience using video and storytelling skills by planning the layout in which this skill will be applied. When creating an engaging film you must planning out your story and intertwine the skills into this process. For example and different shot angles, music, editing effect (green screen), and filters are both the video and storytelling techniques used to make an engaging film.

What would your film topic be about?

Alicia 😀

Credits:

Everyone who gave me feedback throughout this project!

A special thanks to all of the Maker teachers who make these extraordinary projects possible!

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