1. REFLECTION + CRITICAL THINKING: Write about the most important strengths and weaknesses of the finished piece. Is there anything you would like to change? What did you learn during this process. What are the important lessons to apply towards the next piece? (Think of this piece as a rehearsal for the next.) What are the pleasures and perils of being a video author? How is it different from authoring with text?
One of the most important strengths of my documentary has to definitely be the person I interviewed, Hugh. The main reason why I wanted to do the documentary was because of him and he really carried the audience. I didn’t use any flashy footage, had no text or subtitles whatsoever, and used rather ordinary footage that if stood alone, would put anyone to sleep. It was what he was saying that was engaging, and that was what I wanted to highlight. I guess one glaring weakness that my piece had was I gave a lot of thought into how I was going to introduce the documentary. I was worried about catching my audiences attention and didn’t really focus on the ending. It just ended a bit abruptly; I thought about putting a credit scroll at the end, but decided against it since it looked very unnatural. And I wanted the focus to be on what Hugh said, rather than Hugh himself. So that was probably the weakest part of the documentary.
I would definitely change how I went about editing the film. I was so fed up with iMovie that I decided to transfer everything back over to Adobe Premiere, which ended up butchering part of my footage. So definitely, this time I want to only use one program instead of constantly switching between several. I guess something else I learned was to take as much footage as possible and worry about it later. It’s better to shoot an o.k. shot twice than try and shoot an awesome scene once. I definitely should plan shots more though, especially in longer projects. The more footage the better!
One thing I really like about communicating with video instead of text is it tends to engage people differently. When you are reading something, your view of the scene unraveling before you depends largely on the way you interpret the author’s words and your imagination. With a video, everyone sees the same thing, and then they have to extract something out from that. It also can be very subtle, while in text you have to write about something to point it out, video can adjust the focus of film to highlight different subjects.
2. AUDIENCE RESPONSE: Did you clearly and successfully communicate your idea to an audience? Did you accomplish all your goals? What kind of audience response did you receive? What about the response was satisfying, disappointing, or surprising? What thoughts and topics arose in discussion of your work?
I believe I did a good job at communicating my idea to my audience. My goals that I laid out were to mostly inform other people about the life of a Building Service Worker, their jobs, and their view on college culture. Now granted, the person I interviewed does not hold the exact same opinions as all BSW’s but it provided a way for people to see and hear what other people thought of them. I got people to actually laugh when I showed my video, which, among other things, shows that they actually were engaged in watching it. It was at the end of the period and people were perhaps antsy to leave, so I was a bit (pleasantly) surprised at the reaction. It was nice. =)
3. DISTRIBUTION: Do you want to make this piece available to a wider audience than your peers and classmates? If so, what ideas do you have about accomplishing this? Are there particular audiences and/or venues that you could target?
A wider audience? I don’t think the documentary is fit enough to be shown at screenings or whatever, but youtube and facebook are easy avenues to reach a large amount of my target audience (which are mainly other students).
Bring me Java, Bring me Joy 