There are plenty of things in this short documentary film that I am going to talk about. Before I start to reflect on this documentary film that I am making, I would like to briefly explain the purpose of making this film.
Well, the purpose of me choosing to make a short documentary film is to introduce and promote my ethnical background to the university students via the story of my fellow countryman Fivo Freitas.
Fivo Freitas originally from East Timor and long term activist, advocate and Spokesperson for the East Timorese Asylum seekers since 1999- to the present. He won several awards, such as; International Public Relation United Nation Award (IPRA UN Award) and Outstanding Yarra Community Service Award in 2003.
Fivo play crucial role in helping hundreds of asylum seekers and refuges in 1999, but for this short documentary film I am just focusing on him helping one of the Timorese refugees (Robin dos Santos).
I have faced several challenges in making this film; there are some technical challenges, which caused the plan of making this film keep changing.
The first plan of this film was suppose to focusing on the interview of Fivo and get some information from the third person (Ana Noronha). But there are several factors that caused the first plan for the short documentary film does not work out like it suppose to be.
After I did the rehearsal interview with Fivo Freitas I found out that the third person that I should interview (Ana Noronha) is not available, because she is moving back to East Timor a year ago. When I heard the news of her absence, I had to find a replacement for her, which means that I also need to change the plan that I have made before.
From the rehearsal interview, I gather plenty of information and I used them to make a new plan. When I realized that I had to find a replacement for Mrs Noronha, I straight away contacted Robin dos Santos to replace her.
Besides of having difficulties of finding the third person for this short documentary film, there are also some technical errors that occurred during the process of making this film.
One of my friends who helped me in sound recording was doing a good job. He helped a lot with the sound, which resulting a good sound quality. However there are some mistakes that he did which gives me a hard time to edit this short documentary film.
In some part of this film, there is a shadow of a stick going in and out of the frame, that’s the shadow of shotgun microphone. I had to understand that he felt tired holding the shotgun microphone for more than six minutes.
Moreover there were big arguments going on between the people in my team about the lighting. The guy, who was helping me out to set up the light, was too confident with the lighting quality that he set up. When I looked into the camera, images were not looking too bad, so I deiced to roll the camera and start to shoot. As soon as I transferred the footages to the computers in edit suit, then I realized that there are some extra effort is required on fixing and editing the short documentary film that I am making.
All this errors and silly mistakes that I have done during the process of making this film can be a lesson for me, which I can learn from it and try to avoid it in the future. Furthermore, by making this documentary film I have come to learn a range of skills namely social inter-cultural skills, teamwork, audio and video recording, as well as video editing skills.