After a marathon of pulling shifts day after day, sparing what time we could, when we could in the edit suites, (which I’ve come to lovingly call ‘the dungeon’) we finally managed to (or I should say Samantha managed to, with a few tiny last minute tweaks from me) pull the audio together, allowing us to assemble our documentary in its entirety and finish the day before the crit panel (which was technically the day before it was actually due, but we treated as though it was the actual due date).
Our crit panel was made up of Liam, Paul Ritchard and Van Rudd. Paul, as a film and documentary maker himself was an obvious choice for the panel. Van on the other hand was rather, like the studio, an outside the box choice, but fit our political and poetic studio perfectly, being a well-known political artist.
Everyone’s documentaries came together beautifully, and while I was late because of technical issues, we managed to pull it off and show our films to the panel in time. Even though we didn’t get our feedback in the classroom, we did get it in the hallway after class, after being ushered out. Standing there in a hallway, surrounded by my tutors and group members I felt so incredibly elated hearing all of the feedback they had to give. I am so proud of how Duck and Cover turned out! All of the feedback we received was exactly the response I was aiming for when I was crafting the documentary. The satire and the soundtrack in particular hit-home with the powerful imagery, getting it positive reviews all around. No Borders had the same unanimous positive feedback, which was a major relief for all of us after all of our hard work on the project. There was only one minor piece of constructive feedback related to our use of over-lays, which to be honest, after all the work we put into it, we were willing to let pass and simply hand in.
I’m really proud of both films.