what i've learned...

This is one of my attempts to catch up on my blog posts, which I've been pretty behind on lately. And when Ellen offered a good opportunity the other day in class, I thought I'd take it...so, here's what I learned about making my documentary this semester.

#1 You can't hope to address all of the world's problems in five or ten minutes.
When I first thought about an idea for a documentary, I wanted to tackle almost everything ranging from the Iraq War to other current occupations to "soft" propaganda to the media and mainstream news to the effects of such media on the behavior and culture of American society to natural disasters in the US like hurricane Ike and Katrina to lack of electricity and water and food in the world. It didn't take to long for me to realize that I would have to narrow my topic down quite a bit.

#2 Your documentary never turns out as you expected it to.
What I thought was a "documentary" that I was working on turned out to be more like a video essay. I didn't end up having any footage that I recorded myself, and as a result, the whole piece was from my own voice. Probably the thing I didn't expect the most was how emotional the tone of the video ended up being. But I guess given the topic, the outcome makes sense now.

#3 It's hard to branch out from your own conventional style.
One thing that I'm a little disappointed of is the fact that I never employed conventional skills in making my documentary: recording B-roll and interviews, dealing with light and recorded sound, etc. So I did what I have already learned to do: take already recorded footage and edit it to make my own story. I posted a while back a 2-3 minute video that I edited last year, and I noticed that it had a very similar style (and even similar topic) to my final project. So, I hope to make something very different next time.

#4 It always helps to get feedback.
Usually, for some reason, I don't like to tell people what I'm working on or at least give away the details of a project. Maybe it's because it sets up an expectation that I'm afraid of not being able to meet. Whatever the reason, this habit results in less feedback...which is what I know now that I really need. I showed my documentary to my roommate with two optional soundtracks before I turned it in on Thursday...and her response helped me see something in the music choice that I didn't consider before, which made a pretty big difference fortunately.

#5 There is less time to work than you think.
Enough said :)

And that's all! Good times :)