This is my first documentary studio throughout the course making everything I learned about documentaries relatively new as I had no prior deep knowledge of them. Considering the nature of our topic, I learned that we’ll have to apply the strategies relevant to ‘expository’ documentaries, a style of documentary that I was aware, but did not know the term for. It is safe to say that I thought ‘expository’ documentaries are the only kind of documentaries there is. Hence, in our expository documentary, we used interviews, B-roll that complimented the subject matter well, and background music. To make it more intriguing, we also used the ‘teasers’ strategy to foreshadow the topic and setting of the documentaries.
There are plenty of pride-worthy moments in this project. For starters, our amazing group-dynamic, in the sense that we all Supported/listened to each other. We all demonstrated leadership, organizational skills while working collaboratively. Our interactions were always respectful. There was a clear awareness of the key components and finer details of the task. Finally, we displayed innovative thinking about the project with a positive attitude and completed all tasks on time, to a very high standard. I believe these factors are the main reason for the quality of our documentaries. Aside from that, we all had a great sense of aesthetics and creativity, which factored into the appealing side of our documentaries.
In terms of what could have been improved, one thing comes to mind: our relationship with some of the people we worked with. Although we tried planning everything, we realized there are some things that we have no control over i.e. people. On the technical side of things, the audio could have been better if we did not film outside, but then the message of the documentaries would have been compromised as we are talking about nature and grasslands, and they are always ‘outside’.
I believe we spent enough time and thought into our project because we planned every aspect of it very well. However, there is no amount of time that could be considered “enough”, the more time we used, the better the project would have turned out obviously. But, I do believe we gave this project our all, and it turned out very well!