The documentary was one of freestyle’s big semester projects. It had us students formulate and captivate different ideas and opinions from different people, in order to create a specific profile for a subject. in order to do this, we were asked to plan out questions in order to do interviews on different people. After we gathered the answers from the interview, we then created an angle for our documentary in order to build a subject. This unit was one of my favorite units during freestyle because it really helped me utilize interviews and create the captivating story’s with them using different medias. In the film, a documentary is a type of film that really captures the skills you learned in film making, because of its use of different shots, angles, understanding of lighting, and audio.
For my documentary project specifically, Reed Keenan and I had decided to make our project based on Music. We wanted to see what Music was like from the perspective of a Musician. the musician we had in mind was Dominic ‘ Crosby ‘ Christiansen, a 17-year-old musician based off of mountain view CA. We wanted to see what music meant to someone who is upcoming and wanted to see what music meant from an artistic and emotional standpoint of an artist. Like paintings and or drawings, there are different aspects to music that makes it sound good. Good music is very subjectable to the listener, what I might think sounds good, might sound different to you. So we wanted to get Dominic’s input on music to see what he does in order to make music sound good to the majority of listeners on Soundcloud or Spotify.
after creating music for a couple of years now, Dominic was able to amass over 60,000 plays on Spotify and gain a following on SoundCloud. after that, he was able to officially release an EP where you can stream on Spotify.
The documentary first began in English. In English, we were asked to create a profile article on a specific person in order to tell a story. once we found our person, we did several interviews on the subject asking to tell us about His / her life in order to get details for our story. we then needed to write a 5-page profile on the subject, using different skills we learned like captivating details, telling the story, and etr. Here’s a look at what I tried to do for my article.
After we had decided on who we were going to our interview about in English, we then moved on to our elective classes. My elective class happened to be filmed so we were going to make a documentary film on the subject at hand to tell a story. We did this by first create a Mockumentary. in definition, a mockumentary ” is a motion picture or television program that takes the form of a serious documentary in order to satirize its subject.” In short, a mockumentary is just a play on of an actual documentary with a not-so-serious subject. We were asked to create this to solely practice our cinematography skills and our understanding of lighting and audio. We were taught how to work with different angles, how to shoot and incorporate B-roll, and so on. this was probably one of my favorite mini-projects so far, because not only did it teach us the skills needed to create a good documentary, it also allowed us to have fun, and explore different techniques we had already learned or knew about. Reed and I had decided to make a documentary on a teenager and his addiction to the popular game Fortnite.
After the mockumentary, we were asked to the focus on a bigger project. This project was the actually documentary Film
We needed to establish a location on where to film our subject. our location happened to on a rooftop in San Francisco. The area was properly lit, and we didn’t need to use any fancy lighting equipment. Although the area was windy, we were able to use a mic that blocked off most of the outside noise. The last two people we interviewed were Dominics Dad and his friend Soloman, all of which were filmed inside their homes.
After we gathered the footage, we then shot different B-roll that matched what our subjects were talking about. this b- roll included past photos and cinematography of Dominic playing the Guitar and Drums. One specific B-roll that I personally enjoyed was his journey to SF in order to meet with his Dad.
After gathering all the footage we needed, it was now time for Post production. this first started off with a rough cut, a general idea of how the film would look like. In a documentary film, 80 – 90 percent of the film will mostly be of B-roll, so in the Rough cut, Reed and I tried our best to include as much B-roll as possible. After we were done, we then moved on to working on our final cut. The Final cut is when you put the titles, credits, and music to the film. For our music, we decided to use 4 of Dominic’s songs. I really think Reed and I did a very good job captivating and telling Dominic’s story as a musician. Have a look.