Documentary Project Reflection

Looking back on the project, the changes I would make are mostly within my preproduction process as opposed to post production.

In making the project, I filmed all the B Roll before the actual interview because of schedules. This was good, but not ideal. In retrospect I should have filmed the interview first and edited together sound bytes. That way I would have known exactly what I needed B-roll of. Instead I just had a massive amount of B Roll (3 hours) I had to go through and log in order to figure out what to use.

This wasn't too much of an issue though, as I was able to find pretty much all the B Roll that I needed. What I wish I had gotten was more of was footage of them building their drones as opposed to flying them. Building was a big part of their story they discussed a lot in the interview. However I wasn't able to include it in the video because I had little footage that related.

My filming process was not too preplanned. I just decided to follow the subjects around on a typical day of flying. I picked out the equipment that would let me do that best (A C100 with a basic zoom lens and a shoulder rig). This gave me a large quantity of usable footage to sort through but again did not always relate to my interviews. In the future I will do this, but I will also bring along a shot list of things I need to get for sure. That way I have everything I know I need.

After hearing the classes feedback there are a few specific alterations I would make to my video. One of which would be to drop the saturation on a few of the interview shots. It seemed a bit extreme and unnatural at some point and I don't want that to draw the viewer away from the video. Next I would remove the title from the very end of the video so that it is only in the introduction. Lastly, a few of the cutaways to the flying shots would have the audio faded in as opposed to cut to. This would help make the documentary flow a bit slower.

I am looking forward to implementing these ideas in my next project. I hope to learn as much from that as well.