“This week has really centred on locating your own interest and documentary desire. What drives you to do this studio, how do you want to use documentary, what different approaches you might make and what are some potential topics, participants and organisations.” Documentary as Action
When I had the opportunity through a recommendation by RMIT to apply for a documentary making outreach program with a North American based filmmaking group I thought in my first year of university, at the age of 19, after only making one documentary in my life and in continents which are considered dangerous in either Africa, South America or Central America, I am out of my league here…
Through a successful application I was accepted by Actuality Media to come over to Central American country Guatemala to make a documentary about water purification in the local Guatemalan communities facilitated by social business EcoFiltro. This unlike my previous documentary making experience actually taught me so much in my producers role, to construct sequence by sequence shot by shot, and in order of importance and most emotive impact to structure my documentary the right way, these simple skills were new to me and before too long I understood more about the behind the scenes construction of documentaries. The highlights were the open classrooms every morning where we would learn vital skills about filmmaking, storyboarding, having real structures and finding the right characters and stories for our documentaries. What I liked about our morning classes was if we we’re in full production and interviewing of our short documentary, we would go into the local city of Antigua and actually put our skills into action, taking meaningful footage, photographs, interviews, collecting information and stories and getting a feel for our skills we were learning in a short period of time. It accerated my skills as a documentarian and to actually construct a full 10 minute documentary in less than three weeks was not only extremely challenging and stressful but unbelievably rewarding.
We had a screening for our documentary in the local Guatemalan town of Antigua where we had people representing the three documentaries made from each respective group including a very strong show from EcoFiltro which made us very proud. The film went on to win the Toronto Youth Film Festival in the short feature section, we won the Illifest – Illinois Film Festival social impact award and not only that but increased awareness about EcoFiltro and helped them get closer to their target of reaching a million Guatemalan families with fresh purified water by the year 2020. What was appealing to me was not only the friendships I made, the experienced I received, the laughs and cries we had, the skills and courage we gained but the social impact we made through our actions in making a strong social documentary. To engage within the community get a feel for what these amazing changemakers do and make a documentary about them was truly a life changing experience. It has inspired me to continue making social impact documentaries, continuing to reach out, change lives, tell stories untold otherwise and grow as a filmmaker and a person. That is why I am here in Semester 2 Media 4, I am excited about the challenges and ready to learn more, grow more, and make more of a difference in the local community.
Finally if I had to choose to particular topic, organisation or group to make a documentary about I would have to say I am prepared to make one about unsung heroes in the community, making real differences that may go unnoticed or aren’t praised, these people, non-for-profit organisations or groups are of great intrigue to me and of great importance to get the word out there. However I love incredible stories for example how a 90 year old women met her husband through the heat of the war, love at first sight stories of heroics, incredible things happening for reasons which until years later make sense, documentaries have such a wide scope therefore it would be unfair of me to restrict that scope to one specific category, obviously as an aspiring documentary maker, I have favourite areas of interest but I think the more areas you cover the more knowledgable and experienced you get.
I look forward to Documentary in Action with Kim Munro and I look forward to making a meaningful documentary about some incredible subjects with sensational stories.
Michael Serpell
