“Faith” explores the role that religion can play in someone's life. While systems of belief may differ, its important to show that they are connected by a central theme: Community. How can faith bring people together? What purpose does it serve for its followers?
We made the choice to let religious leaders and followers speak for themselves. By interviewing the Rabbi at the temple and the Priests at the church, we gave them the pulpit to express how their faith brings their community together. Directly interviewing these leaders allowed us to represent their respective religions from an inside perspective, emphasizing the strongest of human connections to faith.
In retrospect, this angle may have had an unintentional effect on the message of the documentary. If we had more subjects, and more perspectives, we could've had a much more nuanced story bridging throughout the documentary. One that showed both the beauty and hardships of religion, especially in relation to religious trauma and anti-semitism, which are topics that go unaddressed in the documentary
To engage our audiences, we decided to feature an animated opening sequence. The original inspiration from this came from the professor of theology we interviewed. When we originally heard the hindu story of the 3 blind men and the elephant, I was fascinated by how much it connected to the story we wanted to tell. Animating this story felt like a perfect way to set the tone and describe the purpose of our documentary, while also setting a specific visual style for it.
As a main topic for the documentary, we focused on a story that is present in both the bible and torah. The story of Abraham provided a scripture representation of the complex relationship between man and god that we felt was able to perfectly compare the two religions featured. However, when we received feedback from our classmates, we realized where the implementation of this story fell flat. Many of our classmates who weren’t previously familiar with the story felt that it was hard to understand, and didn't connect to the rest of the documentary. In future versions of this documentary, we will need to be more clear and purposeful with the implementation of this story, in a way that everyone, regardless of knowledge on the topic, will be able to understand.
Our research helped us to understand what our documentary needed to show to evoke the feeling we wanted. Two large influences on our documentary were Netflix's “Abstract”, with its use of vibrant graphics, and “why nobody knows what curry is” from the YouTube Channel Answer in Progress. While Abstract informed what a larger scale production looked like, the YouTube documentary showed us how to make a personal connection to an audience, and were able take inspiration from its graphic and narrative style. It also helped us to select music that set the tone, switching between inspirational pieces, to more heavenly and ascendant pieces, which created the perfect blend for our documentary.
These animated sequences at the beginning and end broke from traditional documentary style By taking some inspiration from YouTube documentaries rather than more professional pieces we were able to combine the format of professional documentation, with that of a more personal and introspective piece.
We also made some conscious choices to stray from the typical conventions of documentaries. Watching documentaries like “American Promise,” and “Exit Through the Gift Shop” emphasized a more shaky, verite style of documentary. We decided to specifically diverge from this approach. Instead using more locked-down shots, or smoother motion in B-roll which emphasized the symbolism present in a lot of religious spaces. This created a more “broadcast-style” of documentary, as well as lifting it to a more ascendant, or airy tone, rather than a grounded one.
We also used a strong presence with our narration. While most of the documentaries we studied didn’t include much narration, we decided that it was necessary for creating the tone, and establishing a clear direction for the documentary. This narration helped bridge together connections between a lot of our subjects that would not be as apparent without.
Looking back, I would've explained the story of Abraham more clearly since viewers unfamiliar with it felt left out. I would've explored the real challenges these faith communities face today to add more nuance, and I would’ve included more, and higher quality animations that could draw in the viewers attention more, since it did feel slow at times.
In the end, I think our final product exceeded my original expectations. The experience of creating it opened my mind to how to create purpose through techniques in a way that engaged audiences and represented the topics and people we were exploring.
