Production Blog Post 5/2

Over the past week I've been making progress on the Mini-THON Documentary during the "production" stage of this work cycle. With the day of our Mini-THON coming closer and closer, the amount of time to complete the documentary lessens and lessens. The following is a quick progress report on how the documentary's production has gone.

Chair Interviews

One of the only sequences that will be produced during this three week production cycle will be the chair interview section of the documentary. The chair interviews serve as a way to introduce the documentary viewers to the chair persons who have made Mini-THON possible for that year. Due to both having to quarantine as well as having to primarily focus on Man Pageant production, I haven't been able to film these interviews but I plan on doing so this Monday. In years past these interviews have been filmed at different locations throughout the school but look visually simple. After gaining some experience with filming interviews, I know that having a visually distinct background that doesn't detract from the person who is talking is ideal for a good interview. I plan on using the THON office as a backdrop for this interviews as to relate to the theme of Mini-THON. Once this section is complete, I'll be able to easily drop these clips into my timeline and add lower titles with each chairpersons name and committee, similar to what Georgea did last year.

Transitions

For awhile, I've had an idea of how to best transition between each of the sections of the documentary. My idea is to have an overhead shot of a corkboard. On the corkboard will be four blue pushpins. These four pushpins will be used to represent the four main sections within the documentary (Introduction, Interviews, Recap of the past year, "Emotional" section). Below each of the pushpins will be a screenshot of the previous frame of the documentary. In order to visually draw attention from one pin to another, each shot will show me wrapping a blue string from one pin to another (think the red lines used for "evidence" and "piecing it together" in all those crime shows). Finally, the camera will zoom into the printed picture of the video frame before finally cutting to the actual frame. I fell that this idea serves as a cool way to transition between shots rather than cutting to black which has been done in the past. Currently, I have all the materials to shoot this sequence already prepared but I simply just need to find a time where I can film it.

B-Roll

Primarily, the documentary visually consists of B-Roll of content related to what the narration is speaking about. Most of this B-Roll will be footage that I have taken of the course of this year. Some events like Man Pageant and THON Factor have a large amount of footage which should make those sections easy to put together. Other events like the turkey trot have barely any footage which might require some B-Roll to be filmed now specifically to be used for the documentary. Which clips I use and how much I use will all comedown to my final narration which I will have completed after Man Pageant production is wrapped.