This is where I keep my weekly progress and plans for the documentary project.
Week 1:
Week 2:
Today was the first week for media studies! We were just introduced to the new documentary project and I am very very excited! I’ve always been quite interested in making movies but never got the chance to so this would be a cool little starter project thats for school as well (killing 2 birds with 1 stone). We analysed a couple openings for the documentaries and it was honestly quite boring but I’m sure it’ll be very useful for when I am going to start producing my own documentary opening with my team. I also am planning to buy a new camera so I hope that’ll come in handy when we start taking footage for the project.
To do:
I’ll need to research and analyse 3 more documentary openings before next week’s lesson!
Week 3:
This week we developed our statement of intent and we decided to settle on an idea, however its still in its rough stages so we’ll need to discuss before we fully commit to the idea. We found a few people to potentially act for us so thats great. I hope that we’ll be able to get the ideas done really quickly so we can actually start to lay down the foundations for the project.
To do:
- Finish the statement of intent and discuss with my teammates about it.
- Decide and try to scout for more potential actors.
- Try to also decide on roles we should take on for this project.
Week 4:
This week my group and I started making our script and screenplay as well as started to figure out the locations for the shooting. I myself decided that it would be pretty cool to do a little sketch of the things that the characters would most likely wear just to help build their identities as well and give them unique characteristics. I think that the progress we have made so far isn’t enough so I might have to catch up on the research and the script on my own free time with my team. Just to add, this week we did a recap of Stuart Hall’s representation theory which will help our group decide what to portray to help influence the dominant reading of the audience when looking at our characters.
To do:
- Finish the script and screenplay.
- Visit possible shooting locations as well as a risk assessment.\
Week 5:
This week me and my team continued on writing the script and screenplay and I think that we made pretty decent progress. We solidified the basic plot of the opening and I think it still needs a bit of work but its enough to give us a direction to go to as well as an idea of what the opening is going to look like. We are planning to make the storyboard after we clean up the script a little bit more. Besides that, we also made a filming schedule so that we could be more organized and it would also help us commit on days we could use to actually start producing the opening. Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GP6YwpxcqXVCxKz5BSc2nDMR5u5dd1qiLAkB5GmUXss/edit
To do:
- Film the draft video and experiment.
- Clean up the script more.
Week 6:
We continued our critical self reflection essays and made the overall plans and outlines for it. Since we aren’t finished with filming our opening and making the thumbnail, I wasn’t able to answer all questions but I still filled in half of them so I think thats enough for now. We also learned about regulation so that could be useful especially since we need to know what we are allowed to put in the opening and what content we should censor from the audience.
To do:
- Film the actual opening scenes.
- Thumbnail development.
- Critical self reflection.
Week 7:
During the weekend, my team and I managed to record footage for the first scenes with our actor, Thompson. Even if it doesn’t seem much, this is a good first step for our polished footage and I’m sure we’ll gain momentum from now on. We’ve made a few changes to the script to make it seem more obvious for the parts where recreations occur to avoid misunderstandings with the audience. Our class has started testing out editing but I’m pretty sure that my team is left behind in that aspect since we haven’t finished the filming yet.
To do:
- Finish filming the rest of the scenes.
- Critical self reflection.
- Thumbnail development.
Week 8:
A lot of things happened this week. During the weekend, I had recorded my final interview scene as Harper in Jocelyn's house. This weekend was also when our actor, Thompson, suddenly notified us that he would be unable to record his scenes during the weekend. This is when we decided to make a big decision and change the actor for Christopher to Devasya. Although this may seem very bad, we had to make this choice as Thompson often was unable to record the scenes. Fortunately, Devasya was really good as Christopher and we were able to record all of Christopher's scenes on Wednesday. This will be the final week to submit the project so there is a lot of pressure. I have finished up a lot of the tasks I need to submit and I am sure I will be able to complete all the tasks I need to do as a majority of it is just writing the reflections for all of my blog posts.
To do:
- Finish the Brief, this post, My team, Research, Statement of intent, Script and storyboard, Location scout and Risk assessment and the Filming schedule.
Reflection:
I think that having this weekly progress and planning blogpost was really helpful. At the end of each week, I would write about my experience, what I did, what I liked and disliked and much more. Writing it down helped to solidify and remember the mistakes I made and things I had to work on to improve. Other than that, the to-do list that I made each week also helped to keep track of the tasks I would have to do so that I wouldn't forget. Having it all in one blogpost also helped to remind me of what I have done so I wouldn't waste any unnecessary time checking it again. I think that for my future projects, I will definitely use this again as it was very good and helpful!
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