Blog Post and Reading Response #10

Sooooo. Our documentary will for sure be done on time! Me and Lena spent tonight at MTN editing and going more crazy. It looks better than it did, but we're still trying to decide what to put at the end of this very um.. un-professional film. Lots of our footage is no good, but we're doing our best. I think if we would have picked a topic we love or are extremely interested in it would have been a lot easier to put this together. But another tough part is.. our documentary is on a radio station. There's not a whole lot to see and I suppose that's why no one makes documentaries on (basically) a place that creates commentary and noise. I've learned my lesson.
This week's reading is "They'll say, 'She must be from another country'", by Imtiaz Dharker. I liked this poem. Most of the time I'm not a huge poetry fan, but I could make some connections. The author literally means from another country and even though I don't know how that feels I do know what it's like to be a weirdo. I, myself, rarely follow the rules whether they be socially or technical. I'll add my twist or veer from the path completely. Either people love me for that or they'll be weirded out. Either way I enjoy being this way and the way others respond to me won't change that.

Blog Post and Reading Response #9

Me and Lena have completed all of our filming and now we begin the long process of editing. We're going to start Friday after school. The first step is going to be typing up a script of everything we've recorded. It sounds like it'll be agonizing, but if we skip it we might be unorganized. I can't wait... Actually I'm sure it'll be fun, but I always go slightly insane being in those small editing rooms getting frustrated and swearing at the computer.
This week's reading was called Defending Freedom and Freedom of Speech. It talked a lot of Cuba's issues with freedom. I liked the last paragraph. I would have to agree the unanimity is worse than censorship. Just going with others, is worse than not saying anything. It's going against yourself.

Blog Post and Reading Response *8

I'm really excited about making the rest of our documentary. Hopefully we'll get all footage we need by tomorrow. Tonight I'm going to try and film the intro using my mom's amazing record player and some jazz records. I hope it works out. And I think it'd be great if we could find some old photos of the KBEM station. When it was starting or just at another period in its time.
This week's reading was "A Gift of Love" by Martin Luther King Jr. This was in recognition of Black History Month, was it not? I liked this reading. It's nice to hear that people can learn to change and stand up for what they need, but without physical harm. It's harder to try to make something happen with words only, but this is a more powerful way of saying what needs to be said than with violence. To me, a march shows a lot. Shows that you are really standing up for something, whatever it may be. "They decided to rise above the cruelties of those slums and to work and march,peacefully, for human dignity."

Blog Post & Reading Response #7

I think me and Lena will be able to make a good documentary. After much stress and going insane we were finally able to make a successful trailer. Apparently people liked it more than we did and I'm really happy about that. We're going back to the KBEM studios this week to film more for our documentary and hopefully we'll be more organized and get less scribble. I think we'll do great in the long run! I'm so excited.
This week's reading was A Bed for the Night. It was poem I believe. I like it, because what it says is truth. There are homeless people who have to spend there nights out in the cold and lots of people don't want to accept that it's reality. Helping someone get a bed for the night may not change the world, it's true, but it will make an impact on someone that needs help. It's all you can really do. Try to help one person at a time, unless you're Oprah or Angeline Jolee or something.. Most likely you aren't.

Blog Post #6

I forgot all about this week's reading.
On another note...
Our documentary is finally making progress!! Today we got some shooting done for our trailer (mainly) and have made more plans. We will be editing like mad women on Sunday in order to make our Monday trailer deadline. It's going to be a great time. I feel like an idiot though... basically forgot how to use the camera it's been so long. There was a lot of swearing and under the breath mumbling at today's filming, but eventually we'll get our groove back. I'm so happy and excited!!!!!!

Blog Post and Reading Reflection #5

Wow. So my group is extremely far behind. We've lost a group member, which is okay. Me and Lena work really well with each other and I think our final project will be great regardless. We've now changed the topic of our documentary from the topic of monogamy to the topic of how people show affection towards each other. We've decided to interview Eva Neubeck and we're working on others. Lena was sick two days this week so that's another reason we're behind. Next week will be real stressful..
This reading was called Theme for English B by Langston Hughes. Poetry is a pretty confusing thing to me. It's like alphabet soup.. if that makes any sense. But what I am getting from this reading is that he feels one with his environment. Maybe not one, but very intertwined. He breaths his city. And (even if not by choice) a part of him is white, because he is surrounded by white people. He learns from them and teaches in return. People are people and the color of your skin won't pick your hobbies or likes and dislikes. America is a melting pot.

Blog Post and Reading Response #4

My group honestly hasn't accomplished so much since my last blog entry. We've created a timeline with which we are to strictly stick to. I think we can. Our documentary was originally set to monogamy. It has now been changed to love in general and how people communicate this to each other. I think that even though this is a rather vague idea we can turn it into something specific in the end. We'll find a specific question to answer about love. I believe "How do people communicate there love for each other?", would be a great question. It's a cute idea.
The week's reading was from a book by Michael Rabiger. Interviewing is apparently the core of a documentary. There seems to be no story with out it. In interviewing the subjects thoughts and feelings must be there. You need to get close to them and help them be comfortable so as to share all they have. Look over your questions, but don't read them off like a survey to the person being interviewed. Help calm their on-camera nerves by conducting the interview like a normal conversation. Make sure sound is good before any of this takes place.

Blog Post and Reading Reflection #3

My documentary group is going to have a lot of fun with this project. We've figured out the main question we want to be answered, "Can monogamy really exist?" We've to interview two different couples and a single person to get there takes on the question. It's going to be really difficult to get all that we want to show into a 5-10 minute film, but I think we'll do okay. Right now as far as people we want to interview I only have one couple in mind and Lena knows of another. We just need to set up times.
This week's assigned reading was all about research for a documentary. The article says that in all the excitement a lot of people will most likely only brush over the research process, not getting enough information. There seems to always be more room for research. This article is a great guide to how to do research. I didn't even think of looking into old news articles or political history. They say, "the best research is done when there is a genuine desire on the part of the scriptwriter." I have interest in my topic so I think my group will be able to do some good research.

Blog and Reading Reflection #2

We just added another member to our documentary group, Bea Cooper. I think we can still do really good with three people. It'll probably be a little harder to coordinate, but I'm sure we'll come out with a great finished project. We have yet to decide on our final subject of the documentary. It's between the question "Is monogamy really possible?", and the topic of sentencing juveniles in the court. Tomorrow we'll make a decision and write down a time line, so that we have a schedule to follow.
This week's article was called "How Real Does It Feel?", by A.O. Scott. I guess sometimes people make movies and fool the public into thinking what they made was a documentary, when really it's not. Recently it's become popular with film makers to make movies in a way that makes them look somewhat home-made. This seems especially popular with horror movies, like Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity. This style seems to captivate the audience more. It freaks them out, to know that it could all possibly be real. Recently it seems kind of impossible to be able to tell which film is reality/based on reality or labeled reality, but warped into something an audience wants.

Documentary Period: Blog and Reading Reflection #1

The VOICES class is now going into Documentary Mode for the next few months. I'm really quite excited, because I love documentaries. They are very interesting to me, even the dullest of subjects in documentary form can strike my attention. My partner for the documentary assignment will be Lena. We're having a whole lot of trouble deciding on a subject or topic to do our documentary on. We both have a lot of great ideas, but some of them are very unrealistic or boring to others. My two favorite ideas that I came up with; the way children view the world as apposed to adults and a mash-up of a few old couples' love stories. The children idea I find interesting, because kids are so honest. They tell you what they see and there isn't a whole lot of bias. The old love stories would just be adorable. Sort of a When Harry Met Sally feel. There are problems with both ideas of course. Where would the issue of the stories be?
The reading assigned to us this week was an intro to directing documentaries. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of documentaries. They can be shown from a future view, as a creative treatment of actuality, social criticism, or from one specific person's point of view. Successful documentaries have interesting stories, people that present themselves well for interviews, and some tension. You want to engage the audience and then keep them there. Many film makers will argue, but a documentary can really come in any form as long as it's the documentation of actuality. Many documentaries are biased, because the person making it clearly has their opinions and wants to share them.