Group Documentary Research

 Yeah... Even More Research 

So over the last few weeks, we worked on our group documentary. Our documentary project was to create  This process meant starting to research what topic we wanted to do, creating an outline, and then of course researching to find any information we needed in the production process. When researching for topics my partner Mahattee and I looked into a lot of different things. At first, we were interested in discussing pet shelters, we even looked into pet shelters in the area and how we could produce this documentary in 14 days. The thing is with only having two weeks to do this documentary and both of us having very busy schedules we didn't really feel as though we had the time to drive about 40 minutes to film. So, after having a conversation with my teacher and partner we decided to look into doing something related to how my high school has evolved over time. And what I mean by this is how not only the school has grown but how the students have changed. 

Research 

Knowing the topic made my partner and I happy but we knew we had a lot more research to do than just that. For example, we had a long conversation with our teacher (who's been at our school since it opened) about teachers who have been here that long, the way our school used to be run, and overall content we could discuss within this documentary. One thing we did juggle with the idea of is whether to interview students or younger teachers aside from teachers who have been here since the beginning. Eventually, we decided that the idea of just interviewing teachers who have been here since the beginning would be more evolutionary. I think that after finalizing the documentary, however, it might've added something nice once the future and current explanation of our school began. Another factor of research was going to discuss with said teachers their experience, ask for permission to interview them, and schedule the interviews. The two interviews that we set up were with Coach Ulman and Mrs. Hainsworth, and we were really excited to begin this project. 

Outline/Questions

The next step to having a successful documentary was creating a thorough outline and really planning out what it was we were doing. Essentially in creating this doc, we knew we needed to have good questions planned out, a list of b-roll to film, and more content that could help form the piece better. When composing the questions we wanted to ask things that were very open-ended. As you can see this is what the finalized outline looked and questions/b-roll looked like:

Researching other information

Lastly, before beginning in the production we needed to research the evolution of our school in order to effectively understand and inquire on this topic. We started by investigating how to find old yearbooks and see how our school used to be. Next, we listed out all the teachers who have been here since the beginning and had conversations with a few of them about changes in our school. Lastly, we researched in finding construction videos/pictures from the beginning till now so we can really see a change in the school system. Research was really important to us in these stages and we were very thorough in pre-production for this documentary.

So in the next post I'll be discussing all the production techniques and ideas but that's about all I have to say for today 

Until next time - 

Emma <3