Actual Documentary

 Here is a link to the documentary! I hope yall enjoy this.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KvY2uXgKHK6Zr8XvqBf0dc2154ioSELY/view?usp=sharing

Documentary Critical Reflection

    When Me and Bia's were creating the op-doc "Violet Storm", we aimed to introduce an up and coming all girls band, how their lives are affected from being in a band, and how they can balance being in a band with school. 

    Research for this doc was fairly straightforward. We watched some documentaries in class which inspired us with topics and techniques, like Exit Through the Gift Shop, which had an interesting narrative of building up to Mr. Brainwash's exhibition. This inspired us to make the narrative end with Visions of Venus performing at the Carolina Ale House. The inspiration for the idea came from the op-doc "Almost Famous: The Other Fab Four", which also showcased an all girl band. We chose to do our doc on Visions of Venus because they were a newly created band that was starting to become popular in our school. They were also prevalent on social media like Instagram, so we figured that VoV could post our documentary as promotional material for their upcoming concerts and single, similar to what The Beatles did with their episodic documentary "The Beatles: Get Back", and how it promoted their "Let It Be: Special Edition" album. With genre, we chose to make it like a rockumentary, because it best shows VoV in action. There were some genre conventions we didn't embrace, like voiceover and direct interviews. We felt like those techniques would put less focus on VoV, by having us seem like we are controlling the narrative too much, which went against the purpose of the doc of showcasing them. However, we embraced certain conventions like montage, non diagetic sound (like background music), and b roll. Montages allowed VoV's performances to be more energetic and to show their variety on stage. Background music was used to match the tone of performances and subjects during interviews, and b roll was used to stop direct interview shots from being stale and show VoV in action. There was a technique prevalent in music videos, where inserts were edited on the beat of the music. Considering that our doc was about a band, we wanted to use this for montages throughout the doc.

    Our target audience are people high school aged 15-18, leaning more towards female, but still having a significant amount of male and nonbinary viewers. They also are interested in rock music. They were engaged by including aspects of school, which fits with our target audience being high school aged. We engaged our audience by showcasing a band made up of just girls, which engaged the female part of our target audience. The rock fans part of our target audience were definably engaged by showcasing a band. They could have been engaged more if more b roll of VoV's performances were shown during interviews, or if other local bands were showcased. The younger audience likes music that isn't just from the past 5 years, but the past 50 and even 60 years. We engaged them by making the background music be hard rock songs from 1965-1975. However, we didn't cover our bases by  including more modern rock songs, so they were not fully engaged. We included shots of Ari and her friends just being themselves and hanging out. This use of "candid" shots are popular among Gen Z. They are also notable for being constantly online, so by distributing the documentary on Visions of Venus's social media page, it engages them.

    Our documentary does represent social groups and issues. It has to, because our subjects are just minorities, all being women. The doc clearly represents young women, and more specifically those who are interested in rock, which is a male dominated industry. The doc has indirect interviews so they can better show their experiences without any influence to their answers. The op doc "Almost Famous: The Other Fab Four", which focuses on an all female band, used a technique where interviews had no cuts, even when the subject paused for a long time. We decided to use the same technique to accurately show their actions. We were mostly successful with representing a social group, but it could have been improved by having staged b roll of the actions that were explained during indirect interviews. But representation wasn't the main focus of the doc, we just wanted to showcase an up and coming band, and we didn't focus on their gender. Social issues are represented by the subjects in their indirect interviews. We asked them questions about topics on like "Has being part of a high school band increased your social circle and affected your social life?" and "Some of you are seniors, have college applications added more stress onto your plate and conflicted with VOV? If so, how do you handle that?", which allowed them to discuss their issues with school, and how it comes with conflict to their band. This would publicize the issues that high schoolers have with balancing school and their free time  / extracurriculars.

Documentary Production (Post 4)

     Post production is probably my favorite part of making the documentary. I'm not sure why. Anyways, before production finished, I was searching YouTube for instrumental covers of some famous rock songs that VoV covered in their sets, like Helter Skelter by The Beatles and War Pigs by Black Sabbath. This would be used throughout the documentary, including with the interviews. The songs we chose were also very energetic, which matched the theme that VoV showed when on stage. I chose to use a cover of Femme Fatale by the Velvet Underground as background music for Cameron's interview, as we felt it better fit her tone. However, during critiques, we realized that the sudden change from a fast paced rock song to a slow and soft one changed the tone to be sad, which wasn't what we were trying to go with. As we edit the documentary for submissions to film festivals (yes, we are gonna submit Violet Storm to film festivals in Florida!! I need to get my IMDB page updated to show off awards we could get), we will be updating the music choice, including adding more music performed by VoV directly! After all, the documentary is all about them, it would only make sense that we would showcase music performed by them. One idea is we could record them in their rehearsals.

This was one of the songs that we wanted to use for the final video, but we couldn't fit it in and we felt that it didn't match the vibe of any subject.

Here is a clip from their original song! We wanted to use more songs they covered as background music, but the vocals would clash too much with the interviewer's audio and be too distracting.

    Me and Bia decided to meet up at a Barnes and Nobles store to edit the documentary together. Together, we got through the first 2ish minutes before we decided to call it a day.  I focused mainly on audio editing, like mixing and putting the music, and text design, while Bia focused on the ordering of clips and shaping the narrative of the documentary. And we finally found a good name for the doc: Violet Storm! We chose this because we wanted to incorporate the purple color that VoV has. The original title was going to be "Purple Rain", but we didn't want to directly copy a title from a famous song. So instead, we changed Purple to Violet (which sounds like violent which reinforces VoV acting aggressive on stage) and Rain to Storm (also aggressive). 

    After that, Bia would edit the rest of the documentary, and I sent her one last song to include, and other possible songs to keep the vibe up without sounding too repetitive.

Documentary Production (Post 3)

    It's funny how we started producing the documentary before we finished planning. That's because we learned that Visions of Venus was going to be performing at our Homecoming, so we captured some footage...while dressed in suits. We forgot to bring a tripod, which would have made our shots stabilized, but the shaky handheld footage can be used to show how energetic the crowd was. And believe me, that crowd was so hyped. Bia recorded footage from a different point of view which better showed the crowd's overwhelming positive reaction. 

This was probably my 2nd favorite song they played. I didn't record my first fav (War Pigs by Black Sabbath) because I was too busy dancing. 

    Some time after that, we went to Arianna's (the singer) house to film their indirect interviews. I brought a microphone and my laptop to better record the audio, and Bia brought her camera and ring light to improve the shot's visual quality. We got all interviews with VoV members Cameron and Ari in her music room (Bia got interviews for the other members later), and footage of Ari’s music room than can be used as b roll. She had a lot of instruments that she played for b roll, so Bia recorded that footage. They were really open with their interviews. I'm not sure how we did it, but I love what they've said in the interviews. 

Here is a little clip from our interviews! Other than the background noise, I think it was good!

    A week after that, VoV was going to perform at Carolina Ale House. I wanted to go there and capture some more footage / b roll of the band, as well as getting interviews for Morgan and Caleigh. But unfortunately, I couldn't make it to the set, as I had to do something for Thanksgiving. But Bia could, and she went there and captured some really good b roll and interviewed the remaining VoV members with the same questions that Cameron and Ari were interviewed. The footage that came out was very good, considering that it was recorded at night, with very poor light, and the camera position was very clunky but ended working out.

One of the interview shots at the Carolina set. Look at how dark it is outside, and how well the subject was lit with Bia's ring light.

    So all of our production is done. Now it's time for post production.

Documentary Research and Planning (Post 2)

     This second post will focus on research outside of documentaries, and planning.

    For research, I suggested that we do a documentary on a local band, because they would most likely want to be in one for promo on their social media, plus all of the interview subjects would be in the same place at the same time (at a performance). We researched by scrolling though their Instagram, TikTok and Facebook pages to get a better sense of their personality, so we could match it in post production. Bia (the other person I was working with) noticed that they use the color purple a large amount, and with some further research, we realized it was a color popular in rock, and used by artists like Prince / The Revolution and Deep Purple. This can be due to its mysterious and eccentric tone from color psychology.

Prince, in purple, playing Purple Rain on his Purple Rain tour. Guys I think he likes purple, which is an example of how popular purple is in rock.

With them sticking to one specific color, it allows them to be easily recognized with their costume design, while still allowing individual band members to show their personality with their personal variations. 

Now we have VOV! Awesome costume design! Notice how each band member all wears purple, but they wear it in their own ways, which shows their personality.

    For planning, Bia created potential interview questions to discuss with the band members. She also managed connections with the band members. We created a documentary outline to keep ourselves on track and to make sure we had the shots needed.

The documentary outline! This will be modified to be interview questions.

    Now that's done, the only things left to do is to polish the interview questions and pray nothing breaks before filming!

Documentary Research Pt.1 (Post 1)

     And we're back! It has 8 months since my last post here, and I kinda missed Blogger! I'll probably ditch the song titles being titles here. That is one part that will not be missed. Anyways it's been a while, but now it's time to discuss the research I did for the documentary, Violet Storm, which featured the local band Visions of Venus. 

    For doing research, I watched some documentaries in class like "American Dream", episodes of "Abstract", and "Exit Through the Gift Shop", which impacted my production choices the most, and some outside of class, including episodes from the "The Andy Warhol Diaries" and some Op-Docs like Blue Room and Almost Famous: The Other Fab Four. From American Dream, I learned about the purpose of using indirect and direct interviews were used, which my group decided to use mainly indirect to better allow the interviewee's thoughts to flow without our biases. From the Abstract, we learned about staged b-roll, and how to effectively use it to reinforce ideas that an interviewee says. In Exit Through the Gift Shop (which by a long shot was my favorite documentary), I learned how Banksy created a narrative from an undirected documentary by pinning it to an event, which we did with our documentary, by pinning it around Vision Of Venus's performance at Homecoming. The Andy Warhol Diaries uses heavy use of archival footage of Warhol, which inspired me to include old photos of the band, to show how they have changed and matured. The Op-Docs showed me how to condense a large topic into a short piece, which I used to condense the story of Visions of Venus into a piece 7 minutes long.