The Critical Reflection

    Through the documentaries we studied in class, my group was able to pick up ideas and techniques to structure "Mic Check" and create a documentary that follows typical conventions of the documentary genre. What I feel especially helped in our process to create the best product that we could, were the shorter documentaries in the Op-Docs series from The New York Times, which features short documentaries about anything and everything by all kinds of people from around the world. When we started watching these documentaries in class, I made sure to watch the shorter segments of the series, as I wanted to understand and see examples of how to make a short, yet effective documentary. The Netflix series Abstract: The Art of Design also helped to show us how a documentary can be short yet effective, relaying important details on a topic while still providing a connection with the audience, which is exactly what we were hoping to do with "Mic Check". 

    The two film length documentaries we watched in class, Exit Through The Gift Shop and American Promise, provided excellent examples of how to use indirect and direct interviews, and how using a specific type of interview can create a certain effect and feeling for a documentary. We decided specifically to use indirect interviews for "Mic Check" as we felt it would make the piece feel cleaner and less repetitive this way, as well as feel more organic, and like the interviewees were simply having a conversation.  These two films, along with the other documentaries, provided us with examples of how to incorporate b-roll, archival footage, and interview footage in a way that flowed smoothly and made the most overall sense. We used archival footage and b-roll to interject in between every few seconds of interview footage while the voice over of the interview continued playing to make the documentary more visually engaging for the viewer as well as provide visual examples of what the interviewees were talking about. 

    As for research on the technical side of theater and techies in general, we were lucky enough that both me and one of my other group members have been actively involved in theater since at least middle school, we both were at least familiar with the technical aspects of theater and personally know people who do theater tech. This helped us, not only to be able to easily find people to interview for the documentary, but also to formulate interview questions that would be appropriate to ask each interviewee depending on their position within the technical theater department.

     Through "Mic Check" my group was aiming to showcase a bit of what the technical side of live theater is like, and what the people, including high school students, behind it all had to say about their experience working in technical theater. As someone who has done some work in technical theater side of live theater and who has friends who are techies both at school and out of school, it was a topic that was particularly interesting for me to learn more about. It was important to get as many sides of technical theater covered as we possibly could, while still creating an easily digestible piece that would portray technical theater and the people who are apart of its community as accurately as possible. Through interviews, we ensured that we got information from three different people who work in tech, that way we could make sure we got multiple perspectives on what it is like to work in that particular field. 

    We made sure to ask questions on what it was like to work in tech as well as how they viewed themselves within the theater community as a whole. This helped to not only get the reference for what it is like to do tech for a show, but also to show how some techies may feel while about themselves and their work, and how their work affects those in the shows and those watching the shows.  Along with that, we also felt it was important to include an interview with an actor, allowing the documentary to offer up an outside perspective on techies and what they do, showing just a snippet of how the theater community views techies. If given the opportunity to add on to the documentary, we would try to include one more interview with another actor to gain even more perspective on how performers view techies and what they do. 

    The documentary's target audience is teens and young adults, particularly those who are interested in theater and learning about the technical side of it. Through "Mic Check" teenage audiences that are interested in theater tech get to see what it is like for other teenagers who are apart of the technical theater community. For teenage audiences specifically, seeing teenagers being involved in technical theater could encourage them to get involved in technical theater as well if they are interested, or at the very least appreciate just a little more the work and dedication that goes into doing technical theater. The documentary is also meant to help inform audiences on what theater tech is and why it is important for live theater overall, and provide an insight into the side of live theater that is not necessarily always the forefront in conversations about theater. 

    "Mic Check" serves as a way to get the audience involved with what theater is with and without all the technical aspects as well. A way that we chose to showcase this was through the b-roll that was included throughout the documentary. We included various scenes from different shows where we could see the footage from rehearsals with no lighting, set, or costumes, and then included the same scenes after all of the lighting, set design, and costumes were added. This helped to visually show audiences how much tech in theater makes a difference in a performance, and makes what the interviewees say about how important technical theater is to overall performances that much more impactful for the viewer.

    

Part 4: Finishing Up Production

Post Thanksgiving Work

    The week back from Thanksgiving break rolled around and it was time for us to get the rest of the footage we needed to put together our documentary. I had a club meeting on the Tuesday we were filming the interviews with the heads of lighting and sound, so Ace and Gabi had to start and get one of the interviews and some of the b-roll.

 Once I got back, we had around an hour to do the second interview and get all the necessary b-roll with the whole group being present. In that hour, we got the second interview with the student lighting tech at our school, and got b-roll of the two using the equipment. I honestly found this part of the project the most interesting because we got to actually see what it is that the people in tech do to make things on stage happen. It was really cool to see the auditorium from the perspective of the sound and lighting booth. 

    Once we finished filming that day, Ace was in charge of doing the editing while me and Gabi helped to review the editing and give advice due to the two of us having too much going on to be able to help more. We came up with the name "Mic Check", and I sent Ace a couple more clips of archival footage. On Friday night, we all got on a group call to do a final review and viewing of the finished product before submitting the documentary. Once we reviewed and watched we sent in our project feeling confident in what we had created.

Part 3: Beginning Production

Rainy Day And Forced Rescheduling

Coming up with a back up plan

    The night before the Thursday that we were supposed to record, we heard news that school would be canceled the next day due to heavy rains and flooding, meaning that we wouldn't be able to film the majority of our footage when we originally planned to. We thought of recording our film the Friday we got back instead, but that wouldn't be possible due to the auditorium being used all day and after school. We decided the best course of action was to talk to our teacher about what we could do to still be able to go through with our documentary idea, and we made sure we had a backup idea in case we had to switch topics.

Rescheduling with interviewees

    That Friday, we went to our teacher and explained our situation. She told us we could either keep our original topic and get a few days' extension, or we could pick a new topic and stick with the original due date. After some consideration, my group decided it would be best for us to stick with the topic we had already, and take the extension. Once we let our teacher know, we quickly got to rescheduling all of our interviews aside from the one with Andrea, the head of technical theater at Inside Out Theatre Co., because her interview was scheduled for a day that was not effected by the flooding.

  

    After sending a few messages, we were able to reschedule our interviews with the student heads of light and sound at our school as well as the day we film our b-roll for the Tuesday we got back from break. With everything planned, we were ready to proceed with the first interview with Andrea on the first Saturday of Thanksgiving break. Throughout the rest of the break Gabi, one of our group members, was able to get the interview with one of the actors from our drama class, I looked for archival footage we could use from past shows at Inside Out Theatre Co. and recorded the voiceover used at the beginning of the documentary, and Ace began to structure the what he could through editing.

Part 2: Topic Research and Planning

     Finding a Topic and Getting Everything Together

    After having watched the documentaries in class, it was time for my group to begin figuring out what we wanted to do for our project. We brainstormed a couple of ideas of what we could do like a documentary on single moms, or immigrant stories, but there was one topic in particular that interested us: the community within theater. It was perfect, especially since two of us out of the three in the group are actively involved in theater, we knew a lot about the topic, and had the connections to be able to get good b-roll and good interviewees. 

    The only problem we had with this topic is that I am friends with someone who did a very similar topic for this project last year, and we wanted to do something more original and still stick to the overall topic of theater. After a bit more brainstorming we realized we could do a documentary that focuses on the behind the scenes of live theater, the technical side. Once we had our topic set, we quickly got to making a shot list of all the B-roll we would need for the documentary. We decided to get b-roll from the school's auditorium and sound and lighting booth, with permission from the theater tech teacher, as it would be the easiest place for us to access. We also planned to use some archival footage from rehearsals and shows to better show the before and after, and just how important lighting, set, costumes, and sound are for live theater.

Document with interview questions

        Once we had our shot list set, we started thinking of who we could interview as well as brainstormed questions we could ask our interviewees. Thankfully, finding people to interview was relatively easy as, like I mentioned previously, me and Gabi are both involved in theater. We decided to ask and schedule interviews with the student heads of lighting and sound for interviews, the head of technical theater at a local theater company, Inside Out Theatre Co., the head of technical theater at our school, and an actor to get an actor's perspective on the technical side of theater. 

    After all this, the group came up with a rough schedule of when we were planning on filming our interviews, getting all our b-roll, and editing. With the plan in place we had set up to film the majority of the interviews and all of the b-roll the Thursday before Thanksgiving break, the final two interviews on that first Saturday of the break, and meet up throughout Thanksgiving break to sift through archival footage and edit.

Part 1: Documentary Research

    When starting the documentary portion in our class, we watched a series of documentaries to get us familiarized with this specific genre. Of the documentaries we watched, we watched two full length films, a couple of docuseries, and a couple of Op-Docs from the New York Times website.

The first we watched was a full length documentary called American Promise and followed two boys Idris and Seun as they make their way through their school years at the elite private school, Dalton. This documentary gave us our first example and really introduction to what a full-length film style documentary looks like. It gave me personally a really good idea of how indirect and direct interviews can be used in a documentary to make the narrative flow better.

   

   The second full-length documentary, and my personal favorite, was one called Exit Through The Gift Shop. It follows a man, Theirry, as he follows various street artists doing graffiti around the world, introducing the world to what goes on behind the scenes of the street art world. Even after the documentary shifts perspectives and follows Theirry on his journey to try and become a street artist of his own, the documentary still continues to show the behind-the-scenes of the whole process and shows what consumers may not have known during the initial opening of Mr. Brainwash's first gallery. This documentary was my favorite out of all the ones we saw in class   Looking back on it now, this specific documentary was the one that helped inspire the idea for my group's documentary of showing the behind-the-scenes that people may not be fully aware is happening or don't stop to think about. 

    The final piece that we researched through and watched consisted of select episodes from Abstract: The Art of Design. This piece in particular, along with the op-docs, allowed me to get a better understanding of how to make shorter, none film length documentaries, and showed me how to keep a shorter documentary concise, and straight to the point, which would end up being extremely useful for our first documentary project.

Aand.. We're Back!

 Ladies and gentlemen, we are back!! 

I'm so excited to get started of blog posts for this class again. In the few months I've been gone I actually started a personal blog because of how much I missed posting on here. It's so good to be back, let's make A level the best that it can be!!