After a lot of discussing and debating,
we decided on centering our documentary on music. We did not, however, know
where to go from there. After talking about it with, Mr. Mayo, we decided on
focusing on the Internet’s impact on the music industry. We lined up interview
with Kip Berman from The Pains of Being
Pure at Heart and Sean Peoples from Sockets Records. Mr. Mayo got us an
interview with Ian MacKaye, the founder of Dischord Records, and a member of
the Evens. (He was also in Fugazi, a
band from the 90s.) Our topic was very interesting, although maybe a little
boring compared some of the other topics. After completing the film, I am
definitely still interested in the topic. It would be interesting to know
whether or not the Internet really ahs a positive or negative effect on
artists. Although it does make marketing much easier, music can now be
downloaded for free illegally, and artists have seen a sharp decrease in record
sales.
Topic selection is the most important
part of the project. Finding a topic that is possible to condense into a
five-minute documentary, but is also interesting to all of the members of the
group is fairly difficult. I think that we should have had a little more time
to explore different ideas. The freedom we had in choosing our topics was
really great. Since we worked on the project for almost three months, it was
important to have a topic that was interesting. I do not necessarily regret
selecting the topic we picked, although it did not make for the most
interesting documentary.
As a result of doing this project, I
learned that interviews are a key-probably the most important- part of any
documentary. Voice over are boring and do not seem as reliable as a real
sources opinions. Getting an expert’s ideas on a subject is really important
for a student-made film like this one where we did not know much about the
topic going into the project. The different interviews also gave us a broader
perspective on the Internet’s effect on the music industry, as we got to hear
from the director of a record label, a musician, and a man who manages to do
both.
Our biggest challenge while making
the documentary was really going through the Interviews that we had (more than
an hour’s worth) and finding the most important, concisely stated ideas that
Kip, Sean, and Ian had said throughout their whole interviews. At first we only
chose the best segments, but did not end up with enough footage. We had to then
go all the way back through the interview footage and listen to them again. By
the time we were done going through the interviews, we had memorized a good
part of each of them. As boring as listening to the interviews over and over
again was, the end result was well worth it. If I had the chance to create
another documentary, I would probably find more stock footage from the
Internet. We did not fully take advantage of all of the resources that are out
there at our disposal. Our documentary probably would have been a little more
interesting had we found footage from someone else’s perspective.
I think that giving us a little more
time in the pre-production phase to really plan out our film would have made
post-production easier. We went into editing not fully knowing what we wanted
from the film, with really only our three interviews. We had not given any
consideration to the incredible amount of B-roll we would need to keep the
documentary interesting. This project was a very goof experience. I was able to
explore a new topic with my peers, and, with Mr. Mayo’s help, speak with
experts in the field. The end product was more of a summary of my experience throughout
the project than anything else. The freedom we had in the assignment also gave
us the opportunity to choose a topic that truly interested us, and that would
keep us dedicated to the project throughout the months spent planning,
interviewing, and editing the film.
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