Creative Critical Reflection

 How does your product engage with audiences?

In our documentary, The First Cut: Pressure on Prescreens, our piece attempts to relate to everybody regardless of whether or not you have experienced auditioning for a BFA in Musical Theater. 

This documentary centers around High School senior, Martina Rodriguez, a talented performer who is interested in pursuing a BFA in her future and her journey with musical theater. Martina discusses why she wants to go into a future a future with musical theater, how she feels about the pre-screen audition process, the effects that theater has had on her life, and why she does all that she does for a future in this industry. While not everybody is planning on being a performer in their future endeavors, Martina attempts to make the audience feel a sense of inspiration in regards to what they wanted to do in their future. 

Martina does not sugarcoat anything, which is what makes her authenticity so refreshing for audiences to see, allowing for the formation an immediate connection between viewers and Martina's personality. Martina's emotional rollercoaster is something that audiences do not see often within products as typically what we are seeing within the media, whether is a highly fictional television show that tends to make people feel bad about themselves or a social media account of an influencer showing off money and lavish vacations, situations are highly fabricated with to look like everything is perfect but Martina shows that when it comes to something that you are passionate about, not everything is going to sail smoothly. By the audience seeing a realistic story, it makes them feel better about themselves and that they're not alone with whatever they may be going through or experiencing.

Although this documentary primarily discusses what the college audition process is like, the content that is spoken about can be relatable to anybody who has already experienced applying to college, people who are currently applying to college, and those who will soon be applying to college. The pre-screen audition process is differs a lot from a typical CommonApp application, however, our documentary features a variety of topics that can reside with people who are feeling the same way Martina is. By allowing their to be relatability within our product, it helps the audience to be invested emotionally, keeping their attention throughout the documentary.

For instance, Martina mentions numerous times throughout the documentary that the stress of her pre-screens makes her frustrated sometimes and can have a huge toll on her mental health. By her discussing how she will take that amount of stress in order to achieve her dreams, this can allow the audience to gain inspiration through what Martina has to say and gain a realization that you have to work hard in order to achieve what you want. By Martina sharing her story with the audience, it deepens viewers engagement within her story, leading watchers to be more invested in what she will do in the future. Martina opening up and showing her transparency about the realities of this grueling process openly shows her audience that not everything you do is going to be glamorous, even if you want it to be your future. Tons of viewers can relate to this is different forms whether it is applying for your dream job at a law firm or even campaigning to win an officer position in school, that is what makes Martina's story so eye-catching, while it is not exact to what everybody may be experiencing, people can find ways in her passion and drive that can have even a slight connection to something that one may be going through.

This documentary has an emotional appeal to viewers through the use of Martina's mom. For example, we included a conversation between Martina and her mom. This was an extreme powerful scene to show as it revealed a deeper meaning to just wanting to become a performer in the future. Her mom is seen getting emotional about what Martina is going through is within this process to achieve a BFA in musical theater. Her mom being visibly upset about how this is bothering her grabs viewers attention as this can be relatable to both parents and children, no matter the circumstance. Through the using emotional aspects within our documentary, it allows our piece to create a greater connection with the audience. Even though this documentary is about the musical theater college application process, by exhibiting vulnerable and real life occurrences, it allows the audience to remain captivated by the rawness that our documentary captures.

Not only do I believe that this documentary will keep viewers attentions with what Martina has to say and her experiences within theater and her relatability regarding a topic that most people attempt to conceal, but I think it will go further within engagement allowing the audience to catch a newfound confidence into pursuing a passion that they may be considering. 

The Final Cut

    Music Progression

Our piece goes through a rollercoaster of emotions. Towards the beginning, we used more light-hearted and innocent music to match up with what Martina was discussing regarding the beginning of her musical theater journey. 

This captured Martina's joy for her passion and overall how she feels about being able to pursue what she dreams of. 

As documentary continues, there is a tone shift with the music to represent that even though you have a love for something that you care about, it comes with hardship. The scenes that we included of Martina struggling to create the perfect video for her pre-screen captures the idea that with passions comes with side-effects that can be difficult to handle at times.

As we see these hardships happen to Martina, the music begins to become less enthusiastic to match up with the scenes of Martina becoming more and more frustrated with having to film her pre-screen videos for what feels like a million times. The music emphasizes that Martina is not easy and that even though she loves it, that does not mean it easy all the time.

Although we show Martina's difficult times throughout her musical theater journey, we ended with Martina's purpose for what she loves, why she does it, and why she believes that is is worth it. Through this demonstration, the solemn music fades to demonstrate the happiness that Martina feels from getting to perform. 

The music was not too loud of distracting, however, it played a key role into our documentary. The music was similar to B-Roll as it matched with the scene being displayed and helped establish the tone shift that occurred throughout the documentary. We did not want to make the sound too loud or over-bearing that way the primary focus within the documentary can be what Martina is talking about and what she has to say about the progression of her process regarding musical theater journey.

Interviews from Martina's Mom

Another inclusion that we also added was In-Direct interviews with Martina's mom. Having an outside perspective from somebody who was actively involved within Martina's journey and process was a great touch that I believe we added. We also included a conversation that Martina had with her mom where Martina's mom gets emotional overall her daughter's college process. Having these moments of them two together truly demonstrates a deeper meaning within our intentions and purpose of this documentary. By seeing how this process effects not only Martina but her mom shows the audience how much these means to them and how important this situation feels to them. 

We were unsure if we wanted to include anybody's parents, even from the initial brainstorming of this documentary. This primarily was due to us not having a complete idea of what our intentions would be within this documentary. I was slightly worried that it would take away from the main topic of the pre-screen process and achieving a BFA in musical theater. However, I am glad we did this because this allowed for separate perspective about views and opinions regarding Martina's experience. Martina's moms side within exploring this topic allowed the audience to understand not just from Martina on how difficult this process but that is also effecting her mom as well. Watching her mom's reactions to what she is going through gives the audience a realization that this process goes beyond Martina's perspective.

Final Thoughts

All of these aspects that went into making this piece all came together in order to create a deeper meaning in regards to what Martina is experiencing. Even the smallest details, whether it was background music or voiceovers, all came together to demonstrate our purpose our documentary about inspiring people of all ages to follow their passion no matter how intense or grueling it may be at times. I believe our documentary effectively does this within all aspects between what Martina has to say, what her mom has to say, demonstrations of what she was going through, it all came together beautifully and I am really thrilled that we created an impactful piece that we're proud of. 

I am so lucky and grateful to have worked with Martina and Isabel throughout every step of this process. Between brainstorming, researching, and filming, we produced a documentary that greatly captures such an unseen process that DEFINITELY needs to be discussed for within the media since it rarely heard of yet takes so much hard work and dedication (credits to everyone who has to go through the prescreen process) Overall, I really enjoyed working on this documentary and am super happy with the way that it came out. 

Until next time!

Production on The Pre-Screens

 I might be proud of this title... a little bit. (Lol)

We found the purpose!

The more I reflect on our documentary helped me realize our purpose and message that we wanted to have within this project. Having a documentary with such a specific target audience can possibly limit the amount of people who can relate to our piece, however, this documentary can feel extremely relatable not only for those applying for a BFA in musical theater but also for those who are applying to college or will be applying for college. I am a junior in high school but I realize now after creating this documentary that a dream that you may have is worth it if you are passionate about it, no matter the circumstance. This message has hit me especially hard within these past few days witnessing people around me handling acceptances and rejections from colleges while also realizing that I will be in there situation before I even have the time to process it. This documentary has healed me in a way of realizing that passion is everything and that when you have a goal, you have to work to make it reality. So if you were to ask me now what I thought the main purpose is now, I would have an easy answer and that would be to inspire. I hope Martina's story can inspire other people, I can say with all honesty that it inspired me :)

Now that we have a purpose, we can get to the fun part, making our vision turn into reality. As my previous blog post mentioned, we had a large number of potential subjects that we include in our documentary. However, we only ended up including Martina for a number of reasons:

1. Scheduling conflicts- This was a huge competitor within this documentary since it was difficult for us to find a time that worked with our subjects. 

2. Unsuccessful filming attempts- Due to these scheduling conflicts, we attempted to film one of our potential subjects VIA a zoom call. However when we reviewed the audio, it came back very unclear and inaudible and there was no other time that he was available for us to interview. I really wanted to include this particular subject since he had a much differing story from Martina and I believe he would have gave the audience a much different perspective to the musical theater industry and the overall process of auditioning for a BFA. Despite this, I believe it was a great decision to make to only include Martina as a subject within our project.

B-Roll

Having our subject be Martina was extremely convenient in the creation of this documentary since she had TONS of footage of past rehearsals, video recordings of her prescreen attempts, and other videos that we could integrate into our piece that showed Martina's journey and progression with her life in musical theater. When searching through footage, we thought it would be a great idea to use actual of footage of her pre-screens in order for the audience to get a better glimpse into what a pre-screen actually looks like to further gain context on what work has to be done in order to apply for a BFA. The footage ended up looking really good and matched up well with what Martina was discussing in her interview questions. 

What a Pre-Screen actually looks like...

The B-Roll's structure is done chronologically as the start of the film starts with Martina in the beginning of her musical theater journey at 11 years old (which has B-Roll to match up with what she is talking about). As the documentary progresses, Martina continues to discuss her musical theater journey and the B-Roll demonstrate that as the scenes turn from her being 11 years old to gradually becoming older. We believed that it would best to end the documentary with Martina's final pre-screen in order to exhibit idea that it is not about what school you end up at, it is about  passion and inspiration. Therefore, we decided to end with the end of Martina's Pre-Screen process rather than her getting accepted into schools that she applied for since that did not align with our overall purpose and intentions within creating this documentary.

Final Thoughts

Although we had a lot of changes and rearrangements that completely differed from the outline we created, the decision to include Martina as our primary subject ended up working out really well for our intended purpose and also footage wise since we had to much material to work with and include into our piece. The footage that Martina ended up having working perfectly into the piece as we were able to find past videos of Martina's personal experience and past performances that worked very well with what she had to say about her journey. I believe B-Roll was one of the strongest aspects that we had within our documentary. I cannot wait to discuss the final topics regarding this impactful documentary. 

Until next time!

Making It Happen

 Let me preface this by saying that this project did not stick to its original idea (similar to Exit Through The Gift Shop ;) Our original plan was to make our piece about a few different subjects and introducing our audience to the process of what a pre-screen audition and going into a career within the Musical Theater industry. Martina, Isabel, and I started to brainstorm who we could possibly use for our documentary. Therefore, we came up with a list (which is shown below) of people that we could potentially interview and include within our project. 

Visual Representation of potential subjects with names highlighted who we were especially thinking of using.

I am really grateful that Stoklosa had assigned us the outline as I found it extremely helpful within establishing our overall idea of this project. The outline had discussed a variety of questions such as possible subjects to include, specific shots that we would include, a loose idea of our organization for our film, and the main tasks that each group member would take on. Although our final product was not an exact replica of the outline we had created, it aided a lot with our overall idea for our project.

Before we could do anything though, my group had to brainstorm, research, and plan in order for our documentary to come together. We were not exactly sure of how we wanted to structure of piece or what interview questions we wanted to ask our subjects, therefore, we began to watch other pieces that would help us gain inspiration as well as a better idea of what we wanted our documentary to look like. One particular video was the Descendants cast behind the scenes featuring the actors in the movie. 

This video allowed us to gain inspiration for how we wanted our piece to progress as well as potential B-Roll ideas that we could integrate into our project. 

Although all of the documentaries allowed for lots of assistance and inspiration within this project, The Op-Doc Abstract: The Art of Design, helped significantly within creating B-Roll. This documentary gave me lots of ideas that I could include within our brainstorming regarding B-Roll shots to incorporate within our piece. It showed a variety of examples of what staged B-Roll looked it and admired that this documentary's footage matched perfectly with what was being discussed by Ruth. I knew that this was an aspect that I wanted to have within our piece since it significantly enhances production and simply makes it more understandable. 

B-Roll was discussed a lot among of brainstorming as we wanted to make sure it was incorporated properly within our project. Martina had a idea that I really liked and that was filming in on her local theater company's behind the scenes of auditions in order to allow our audience to get better insight into what theater looks like for performers while allowing us to capture B-Roll for the documentary. We mentioned some ideas that we could film what warm-ups look like, performers preparing by themselves before they have to audition, subjects discussing how theater has effected them, and a variety of other shots that would demonstrates what this environment looks like. 

One aspect that we were still unsure of was what would be our meaning and purpose behind making this documentary. We wanted this to be more of just an assignment that we turned in for a class but a message that we could give to others whether they are involved within the musical theater industry or not. We had a lot of unanswered questions to say the least. Therefore, we took action by brainstorming a variety of potential questions that we could ask our subjects (listed below)

By brainstorming a variety of questions that we could ask our subjects, we believed that whatever we ended up asking could help us come up with what the overall meaning and message would be within our project. We were unsure if our primary focus would be the college audition process, auditioning for local theater show, discussing people who want to go into the theater industry for their future career, the mental toll that auditioning has on performers, or even an intention we had not even thought of yet.

The planning that went into this project behind the scenes was getting me really excited for the production process and what our project was going to look like. By doing the preparation for this assignment beforehand, it truly showed me how important it is to do the proper procedures before jumping straight into a project. After the research was done, it officially time to start creating our visions into a reality, which will be discussed within the next blog post...

Until Next Time!

The First Step: Research

When we first began studying the topic and concept of documentaries, I was immediately engaged. I think what got me so hooked was American Promise created by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson (One of the primary subject's parents.) This documentary was raw and extremely relatable towards my current life situation since I feel an extreme sense of pressure on me to succeed, similar to the two subject's situation demonstrated throughout the documentary. I admired that the B-Roll was very closely related to the event that was occurring in the scene. The well-matched B-Roll had me pondering about a variety of shots that we could brainstorm about during our own creation within our documentary. 

Besides viewing this film, we also watched two other documentaries (Exit Through The Gift Shop and Abstract: The Art Of Design) in order to get a better look into the production aspects and inspiration for our own projects. Exit Through The Gift Shop shows a representation of street artists and their works of graffiti. This documentary taught me a lot about the use of direct and in-direct interviews within a piece. The film's interviews were mainly surrounding the street artist and director Banksy (which is uncommon within documentaries) as well as his role throughout his friend and colleague's rise to fame within the street art industry. Banksy's interviews gave me a better understanding between the differences between in-direct and direct interviews as well as what type of interviews we would want to include within our documentary. 

The final documentary we viewed in class was Abstract: The Art Of Design. This was a series and the episode discussed a costume designer who has worked on a variety of movies within the film industry as she discusses her experiences within this field. This piece enlightened me on what staged B-Roll looks like and practices to potentially think about when trying to create B-Roll within our own documentaries. With a piece like this, it can be difficult to find/create footage to incorporate. However, the production team did a fantastic and admirable job creating B-Roll that matched with being discussed while not mainly relying on old/past photos and images.

Watching these documentaries got me very excited to start our own projects. I made sure to take note on what I would like to see within my own work.

- B-Roll that matches what is being discussed within 

- Concise/Clear shots of subjects when an interview is occurring

- Proper music choices to match what is occurring within a given scene

- Knowing when to use direct or in-direct interviews

The knowledge that we gained by watching these documentaries played a huge role into understanding more about the genre of documentaries as well as having a better idea of what we wanted to see within our own documentaries. Without viewing what a documentary looks like, I think I would have had a more difficult time on the process of the project.

So excited to share more about this project within future blog posts :)

I'm Back!

 HI BLOGGER! I am so excited to be back but this tine in A Level :) Junior year has been all over the place, to say the least. However, I am glad to start blogging again since I actually ended up enjoying it a lot last school year. We're getting started on our critical reflections for our documentaries that we recently did. I am slightly overwhelmed but I know that if I divide up my time accordingly, all will go well. Despite this, I am super excited for this journey.😁