I found
this project to be very difficult. Upon hearing that we were producing
documentaries I immediately had a thousand ideas of how I was going to do it.
However, I found that is extremely difficult to turn most of my ideas into
reality. In my head I had envisioned all of these different shots that would
seamlessly flow together with no noticeable cuts or transitions, but that was
nearly impossible. I wanted the music to frame the story and carry just the
right amount of weight and volume for the narrative, but nothing I did sounded
right.
This
project was truly a learning experience, and honestly it flat out kicked my
ass. Before this assignment I always thought I was somewhat creative and at
least competent with video editing software, but I found myself at many dead
ends with this project. I couldn’t find any inspiration to make the documentary
work all that well. The interviews turned out to be very little footage with
poor audio quality and the music doesn’t flow with the video. I tried so many different
combinations of filming, transitions, and music choices but I found it very
hard to put it all together.
I think the
strong points of my documentary are the topic choice of cyber bullying and the
use of a story as my base. I think cyber bullying was a good topic because it
allowed me to focus on the more serious side of social media. I also decided early in the process that I
didn’t want the documentary to be a boring question and answer session. I
decided to ask my interview subject to recount the story and I believe that it
creates a more personal connection between the audience and the victim.
I think my two weakest points of
the documentary are the poor sound quality of the outdoor interview and the
poor choice in music. There is way too much background noise with the scenes
outdoors and even though the lyrics might have matched the interview, the music
didn’t frame the narrative like I wanted it to.
I
definitely found this project to be much more difficult than I had anticipated, however, I do not think this project was a
complete failure. Sure my documentary has many flaws and it definitely didn’t
turn out as good as I had hoped, but this project gave me a new found respect
for anyone who pursues a career or hobby in filmography. I have found that what
I once thought would be an easy skill to learn is much more challenging to
master. You can’t simply have a good imagination and know how to work a camera.
It takes an immense amount of talent and hard work to actually produce any sort
of edited film. Even though this project kicked my ass, I absolutely learned
valuable lessons about video editing and gained a lot of respect for all those
who attempt to master the art of filmography.
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