Creative Critical reflection

Our documentary affects almost everybody in the world. Since everyone needs to wear clothes we needed to make sure that our documentary addressed the topic appropriately and in a way that would engage the audience. We ended up trying to create a piece that had correct information and a way to present it in a way that would be interesting. Our documentary represents the lower income citizen by giving them easier ways to get better clothing, and addressing the higher income citizen by showing then ways that they can donate clothes not only to help protect the environment but also help other individuals. 

We tried to make our documentary engaging by combining informational segments with entertaining segments. We included the funny segment in the beginning where we were interviewing people on the street. Then we switched it over to a more informational segment with my standup and then included a segment about thrifting mixing the informational portion with the entertaining by including B-roll and an interview with Cooper. Then we included the ending which was very serious about me closing off the topic. After the documentary finished we added a comedic element by interviewing a plastic gorilla to leave the audience with a smile on their faces after watching our documentary.

To research for our documentary we looked at the amount of clothes being thrown away each year and felt we could make an entertaining and informing segment by interviewing people on the street. Our biggest achievement was making the informational green screen segment. Nor me or Robbie has ever made a green screen style segment. So I feel the way that we were able to put it together was pretty impressive. I researched and wrote the script for the standup about the various different problems related to clothing waste. Then we recorded the standups in the TV studio. Then I came home and did a lot of research on how to create the green screen itself. Another convention we challenged was the previously mentioned gloominess of documentaries of similar premises. Instead of a sad tone from other wasteful documentaries we decided to take a different approach and make our documentary more positive rather than making the audiences feel down.

Documentary Post Production

 After we filmed all of our footage me and Robbie decided to split up the editing tasks. I was going to edit the green screen standups and he was going to put the clips together of everything else.

I have experience with editing but not as much green screen editing experience. It was a bit of a struggle I had to watch multiple Youtube videos to get the green screen to look as good as it does.

After I got the green screen to look like it does I created some graphic for the scenes were we talk about the amount of trash that is being thrown away each year. I used Canva and the animation tools to create these graphics. It turned out pretty well and I feel that it created a very engaging animation that gave a better explanation and immersed the audience into the documentary.

I exported the files and Robbie edited the rest of the video together since I was kind of busy for a while and he offered to do it. He ending up editing it, we didn't really have time to sit down together and discuss what we though of each others efforts. I feel if we had more time to discuss with each other we could point out the mistakes that we had made and improve the quality of the documentary significantly.

Documentary production

 So basically our first day of production me and Robbie went to the TV studio at our school. Since we are members of the TV program we were allowed to use the studio. We checked out a camera and a teleprompter. The teleprompter ended up being broken so I had to memorize the lines for me to film everything. The filming went smoothly and I was able to memorize lines since I often anchor for our schools TV program.

Me in the studio

Our second day of filming Cooper Robbie and I, drove to the thrift store. We filmed out interview with Cooper outside of the store because the music inside the store was very loud and it had a lot of background movement. Inside the store we filmed B-roll of cooper flipping through clothes and searching through bins. We also got B-roll of the store itself. We also stood outside the store and got establishing shots of the store.

Cooper

Store

On our final day of filming me and Robbie went to an area near us called town center. We checked out a camera and a microphone to do the interviews on the street asking people about how much clothing they think goes to waste each year. It was a slow start and we initially had a hard time asking people to get interviewed. We got more confident over time and asked more people. We eventually got all of the interviews and we even filmed an interview with a plastic gorilla and we decided to use it in our bloopers.

Me with a guy I was interviewing

Documentary planning

 Basically for this documentary we were working in pairs. I chose to work with Robbie and me and him started to brainstorm about ideas that we can do. Our first idea was to do it on the decline of mom and pop shop restaurants and the growing amount of major corporation fast food places. We realized that were we live it will be hard to create a documentary based on that. 

After thinking for some more time Robbie came up with the idea to do a documentary about fast fashion. We both liked this idea a lot more because it was much easier to create and we are both interested in the topic. Originally the idea was to create a documentary about how the process of creating clothes is very wasteful but it turned into about the fact of where clothes go after the stores. When they are thrown away. 

Our outline for the project

We created a plan for us to first start our documentary with a MOTS style thing where we interviewed people at town center and asked them how much clothing they think goes to way each year. We want to capture the reactions of them being surprised when we tell them that 81.5 pounds of clothing gets thrown away each year. 

After our introductory segment we want to create an informatory segment where I would stand Infront of a green screen and I will talk about the wastefulness of the clothing industry and give facts and other information about the topic.

We were going to create an additional segment interviewing a member of the fashion club at out high school but we decided that it did not fit the rest of our project.

After that we will discuss a solution to the topic which would be thrifting. We will find a thrift store that we can film in. We found SYZN thrift they allowed us to film there. Robbie has a friend named Cooper who we decided to interview since he is an avid thriftier and often comes to this store. He will talk about thrifting and how it is a better solution than to shop at fast fashion stores. 

After we are going to have an ending sequence where we are going to showcase the wastefulness of clothing,

Viewing and learning about documentaries

The first major project that we were assigned to create a documentary and to do that we needed to watch documentaries to see what kinds of rules we would need to follow (or break). As a class we watched American Promise (2013), Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) and Abstract: The Art of Design (2019). We also watched two New York Times opinionated documentaries. I chose to watch Modern Goose, and Christmas, Every Day. 

The first documentary that we watched together in class was American Promise (2013). Its about two black boys in New York City who attend the elite Dalton school. The film shows how stressful high-pressure schools can be and what's it was like growing up black in New York. An interesting thing about this Doc was that it was entirely filmed by the parents of one of the boys, although additional people were hired later it was primarily filmed by the parents. The use of handhelds shots and everyday cameras make it feel real. Most of the interviews happen on the spot giving the documentary an honest feel, with people saying things that others might not say on camera. When I watched this it wasn't exactly the style of documentary I wanted to do but I still thought it was a pretty cool concept to film your kids entire childhood.

The second documentary we watched was Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010). This was a documentary by the street artist Banksy and it is about a "videographer" named Thierry Guetta. It shows the footage Guetta filmed of other street artists and Banksy. Halfway though the documentary it starts following Guetta as he tries to become a street artists himself. I liked that this documentary had a lot of handheld shots, jump cuts and fast montages. After watching it I wanted to make my documentary with more natural feel with included a street like aesthetic.

We watched an episodic documentary Abstract: The Art of Design (2019). Its about the costume designer Ruth Carter, her career, her background and what she does. The documentary uses a lot of staged B roll to make the narration. This idea would be very interesting and I would like to include some elements such as the graphic styles for my documentary. Overall I thought the documentary was well made and I really liked the use of the bright colors to develop the story. Although the B-roll that was staged was very obvious and looked kind of weird

The final documentaries we watched were two New York Times opinion Documentaries. We got to chose which ones I chose Modern Goose and Christmas, Every Day. The modern goose didn't use any words and only showed the story of how the modern world is taking the world of nature away from them. This is completly different to Christmas, Every Day which focused on two pre teen girls that are forced by their parents to be influencers and promote products. With the parents thinking they are doing there kids a favor the kids do not seem to be enjoying it too much.

With all these documentaries watched im ready to create my documentary

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