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.