Ideas/ Initial Planning. Pt. 1

 Inspiration has Struck. 

So. Do you remember last blog post when I said that I would think about what I liked from all the doc examples I recently watched and see what to incorporate in my sister's and I's..

No? Well, that was said! and Now I am doing it! (part 1)

When watching the documentaries and this last blog post, I took some notes in my journal discussing what aspects of some of the docs I did want to incorporate:

For this post, I am mainly focusing on the structure of the documentary episode, and all the little things I want to do that I've gotten inspired by from these recently mentioned documentaries!

1. Ugly Delicious:

- After discussing with my sister, we got a lot of help from this documentary, specifically revolving the balance between sit-down interviewing scenes, and casual B-roll dialogue scenes. 

David Chong does an amazing job at keeping the guests entertained and engaged with all the b-roll and insightful conversation, as well as provide sit-down interviews when needed. What Vic and I (my sister, I am too lazy to write out " my sister" all these times) decided is that we do want a mix of these, but they will both serve different purposes. 

We envision that when we have the "sit-down" interviews, the questions will all be surrounding personal statements (like "Why did you choose to start this XXX (hobby)?", or "How do you feel about this XXX/ What has this brought for you?"). During the B-roll, we do want to ask some questions, but more in a conversation, so just hitting a few points. These will be revolving the actual technicalities of the activity the episode is covering, "How do you make these airplanes?" etc.

VS.

(convo, standing/sitting/moving)

In addition, using montage-type sequences to introduce one of our selected people's locations/hobbies is inspired from Ugly Delicious, specifically the beginning for the Season 1 episode called Pizza. 

The beginning of this episode uses music in the background and slow-mo shots of the setting of the pizza place to introduce the tone, topic, and context of the newly developing episode. My sister and I wish to do this but with the locations where the communal hobbies/tasks take place. In addition, this montage gives space for the episode's specific tone to develop.

2. Bowling for Columbine:

- After watching Michael's dedicated presence in this documentary, it further supported the feeling that Vic and I had about us wanting to be more involved in the doc. As Michael was there standing next to most of the people he interviewed/talked to in B-roll dialogue, my sister and I want to do that. My sister and I kind of wanted to make it feel, for the audience, that they were "in it with us", that they were along this journey with us trying to discover if the community is being built in one's daily lives around us. In  my opinion, whenever I would see the director or "narrator" of the documentary (with David Chang too) on the screen getting involved, it made me feel like the myself and the narrator were on a team, and the person being interviewed was an outsider to this journey (to some extent they don't get the journey we are going on). Its just a small addition to why I think it is a good idea to get somewhat involved in the B-roll with the interviewee.

Overall:

This is just part one, as me and my sister are continuing to test other INSPIRING options :)) so far we will just continue to research, but most importantly, start shot listing soon and renting out equipment 😁😥