Self-Directed Assignment Reflection Part 1 & 2

 Part 1

As someone wanting to pursue a filmmaking career, I'd say I'm most interested in documentaries. For most of my life I've been fascinated more with non-fictional stories that actually happened in real life rather than fictional ones. I'd say this is probably due to some subconscious awareness that fictional stories are intentionally manipulated to enhance the emotional impact of a story, whereas a good real-life story itself doesn't need to be changed at all to engage me; it just needs to be told in a compelling way.

After thinking about it for a while, I'd like the subject of my project to be members of my dad's former band, Anti-M. It has plenty of potential for fun stories the bandmates have, and I know my dad has saved many songs they all recorded over the years as well as videos of the band rehearsing and performing. These could work as good background music and b-roll respectively, although I'd like to incorporate my own b-roll as well.

I also have several ideas for other documentaries I'd like to do in the future, though they won't come to fruition anytime soon. One particular idea I've had in mind for a while is on the subject of Ten Cent Beer Night, an infamous baseball game in 1974 where, as the name suggests, beer was sold for only ten cents, causing chaos and mayhem among those in attendance which led to a mini riot. With the action and photos taken at that event, I could find historians, officials, and perhaps even eyewitnesses (players, fans, officers, workers) to interview to capture how insane the event was.

Part 2

Watching Fyre Fraud was a perfect documentary for me to use for my research. I was already familiar with the source material discussed, so I was able to focus more on the film's aesthetic and cinematography and how it connected with the subjects.

I revisited the film recently, and I noticed other aspects used in the interview clips of Billy McFarland. I mentioned the noticeably wide cuts of him sitting quietly, but there were also really close, side-profile shots and regular medium shots you'd see in any regular doc. So the cinematography for Billy's interview was more varied than I remember. Thinking about it, perhaps the really close shots could symbolize the constrictions Billy was under when managing the festival, which coincide with his loneliness characterized by the wide shots. Though this cinematography style was also used with at least one other interviewee, and they weren't involved with the festival management process. Who knows, maybe these shot types didn't have specific meaning behind them...

I think this doc represents the style I want to use for my docs in the future really well. A nice mix of interviews, photos, and video. This film didn't use a ton of visual flair that some other docs do, but I may want to use it depending on what kind of subject I'm dealing with. If the subject involves something creative or doesn't have a lot of archival footage/photos, I'll use graphical presentations to convey the actions of the event better to the audience. But if the subject is more formal or has plenty of footage to work with, I would say using graphics would be a bit unnecessary and visually overwhelming.

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