Mini-Documentary

Music and Making of a Song Mini Documentary Reflection

For this project, Mason, Jack, Dom, Mario, and me all collaborated to make the concept of the film. For the script, we just created a list of questions we wanted to ask all of the band members consistently then use it as the voiceover throughout the film. The concept of the film was to interview all the band members and ask them why they enjoy making music and then interview them on the process they individually go through to create a song. In pre-production we created interview questions and figured out the overall theme of the video. During production, I was the DP so I worked on filming all of the band members playing their instruments and answering questions. Post production was mainly just Mario working on editing the film and my group provided feedback along the way.

Throughout this film I was mainly just responsible for doing all of the camera work. My role was mainly important on set since all of the guys in my group were a part of the band and had to be interviewed for the project. Along the way I learned how to film a different style of video. I have never filmed a documentary and it required a different style of cinematography then I am used too. I had to spend more time collecting b-roll and framing interviews then I normally do and it was fun to experiment with lighting and location. The technical skills I learned from this film were mainly just in ways to frame interviews differently and uniquely as well as how to use colored lights to convey a mood. I haven't gotten to work with the light kit a lot when i'm behind camera and this project allowed me to learn how to use them more.

Professionally, I was able to learn project management and leadership skills throughout this film. My group had a lot of conflicting schedules and we had to have around 5 filming days in order to get all the footage we needed. This video took a lot of planning and organization which was a lot different then making a short film.

If I were to do this project again, I would want to film more professional footage of them actually composing the song. The song got done really late at night so I wasn't able to film it so it was mainly shot on an iPhone. I think our video would've looked a lot more professional if all of the footage was filmed by me and with consistent lighting.

If I were to do this project again I would definitely keep the group of guys I worked with. My group was so fun to collaborate with and everyone was able to use their strengths to make the whole film look good. No one in the group was having to carry the production of the film and we all worked equally which made the filming process a lot more fun.

I would take the collaborative environment into my next project. Choosing a group of people to work with that all have different talents is really important in filmmaking and it's something I should always remember when beginning a project.

Overall I had a lot of fun filming this documentary and I'm proud of the work my group put in even though we weren't able to get all the footage we needed near the end.