Making a cute little elephant :)

 Okay so setting the scene back up, Our group met back up at Panera to finalize an edit.

My glorious partners Zach and Aneesa were on the grind, working on a first draft of an edit the day before.

When we arrived, Zach and Nico got to work on laying out the new B-roll we had just captured, while I, the bumbling idiot, had to drive back home to pick up the laptop i forgot.

Once I finally got back, I was able to finally do what makes me happy, animating!!

Was it a smart use of my time to spend 3 hours rotating an elephant?? maybe not, but it brought me joy so I think that counts for something. After this, I animated the actual sequence, which would be the beginning of our documentary. In it, we explain the Hindu description of faith, where 3 blind men all feel an elephant, yet none of them will ever be able to truely understand what it is they are feeling. I thought this would be a good opener for the documentary because it is something that grabbed my attention during the research, and I thought it would do a good job of establishing a tone for the doc.

After doing that I'm not sure if there was something in the air or if I was genuinely just burnt out, but I proceeded to work on the graphics package, including lower thirds, a title, and end credits, but they all just ended up turning kind of bad!

However, life goes on, and my AP gov teacher gave us a free period the next morning, so it was back to the grind for me! I think coming back at it with a fresh mind and body actually helped me, because within that hour I was able to animate a completely new graphics package, from scratch, that I liked A LOTT better than the previous one! Once those were done I sent them over to master editor Zach, where I would patiently wait for the final product.

This came later that night, and It was low-key a BANGER!! and you can watch it here!

Filming, Filming, and more Filming.

 I feel as if im coming off one of the most stressful weeks of my life. 
To recap for everyone, Last weekend we filmed friday and saturday at the temple, interviewin the Rabbi and other followers of Judaism. 

Still from what we shot at the Temple

Due to scheduling conflicts, the interview we had with the original church we planned on filming at, we had to come up with a new location and interview subject. I reached out over email to another local church, and they didn't get back to us, so me and Nico showed up to their recpetion office on monday to ask about it in person, but they couldn't really help us.

Tuesday morning, we were saved. Our group decided as one last desperate effort to call the Priest directly through the number listed on the website, and to our surprise he actually answered, and was going to be coming to our school to speak with a club.

It felt like just when we were absolutely cooked, things started taking a turn for the better finally. We got our stuff together, and Zach and I called in late to working a football livestream in order to interview the Priest, and it turned out really well!!

Still from the church

From then we interviewed the other priest on thursday in the church, where we were also able to get some pretty nice shots of the church while empty. This is where the scheduling got a little cluttered. This past weekend we had a week long competition called STN Challenges, the general idea was that all of us would be busy creating a video for the competition. This situation ruled out our Friday evening, and all of Saturday. So sunday morning, after wrapping up filming for the competition, Nico and I went to the morning Mass to record some B-roll, and it ended up turning out pretty well. After this we regrouped with Zach and Aneesa at Panera for the next steps...

I was honestly surprised I was able to make this schedule work, and I feel like this weekend, despite the stress, I was able to create 2 full bodies of work that Im actually really proud of!!

Starting our doc...

It is officially time to start out documentaries!! Im glad to be working with a good group, however the 2 week deadline does stress me out slightly!! Especially since were gearing back up into competition practices for my TV Production class. 

For the documentary I'm working with my friends Zach, Aneesa and Nico, and we've already established our idea. Zach and Aneesa have been wanting to create a documentary about faith for a very long time, more specifically about the connections between the two for a long time.

We started by planning out or structure, and deciding on potential subjects and locations. We ended up deciding on two nearby locations, a temple and a church, hopefully being able to interview the rabbi and the priest.

When thinking about the stylization of the documentary, I really loved the style that came out of this short documentary that was uploaded to youtube by the channel Answer In Progress. I really liked the style of narration where she almost felt like a part of the story.

I also really loved how they incorporated motion graphics into the opening sequence, and I would love to do something similar in the documentary!

Overall im excited to see where this project goes! we have a clear vision, and we plan to begin filming over this next free weekend! We already have an interview with the rabbi on friday so I hope that goes well!!

Documentaries, School Trips, Short films: What the hell, sure

 If i had to describe to you my 1st semester of senior year it would be like playing basically like Five Nights at Freddys. I almost felt like every week I had a new responsibility put upon me.

That being said, as I entered the second level of media studies, one of the first genres we explored was that of the documentary. 

We started by watching 2 episodes of Netflix’s show “Abstract” . The two episodes we watched were actually very interesting and it showed me a new style of creating a documentary, using graphics to explain concepts when visuals for the thing being explained aren't available. I think the main thing that I learned from watching those two episodes was the importance of B-Roll and how it can shape the tone of the documentary.

Theres a huge difference between just listening to the documentary and watching the documentary. The visuals end up informing a lot of what you can take away from it and the opinions that you can form on the subject matter

The next documentary which we watched in class was American Promise.This documentary was by far the most unique of the 3 we were assigned to watch, as it was filmed over a 13 year time span, documenting basically two entire childhoods. What stuck out to me about this selection was its dedication to truly document life. Unlike abstract, this one almost felt like a drama film, it wasn’t just someone explaining their passions or motives, It was much more in action, which I really liked about it.

The last documentary I actually had to watch coming back home from a competition trip in new york (shoutout all american highschool film festival) with my good friend nico. I had downloaded the documentary before boarding the plane, and this definitely did a good job of shaking the travel shivers out of me.

Selfie from when we arrived back home

I think the main reason I ended up loving it so much was because the documentary in question, "Exit Through the Gift Shop" was the editing style. Up until that point I had for the most part percieved most documentaries as slow. This one changed all that by being quickly edited, and correctly pacing the story that Banksy (the director) was trying to tell within the documentary. I really admire its style especially when it came to the editing.