da critical reflection

 “Faith” attempts to answer the question of Why? Why is there any of this? Why do we connect? Why do we feel? Why do we love? Why do we believe? 

A simplistic title card

In “Faith”, we highlight the voices of religious leaders and followers. I feel as though our doc gave them a platform to explain their faith, highlighting the culture of community they respectively have.  One of our main objectives was to explore the interconnectedness of faith. Despite differing philosophies on the purpose of life and where we go after we die, each religion shares the same goal: to connect. "Faith" highlights this connectedness between religions, positing that the meaning of life is simply to live. As we explore this idea of religions being similar, we start to break the norms of what society sees each religion as. By platforming these religions, giving them a space to explain themselves, and building connections between them, we smash stereotypes of these religions and give them room to breathe in contemporary society. The biggest thing we can do to prevent learned hate is to teach love, and by shining a positive light on these religions and their morals, I believe we did just that. While I do believe that we did a good job of showing the interconnectedness of faith, I wish we had portrayed some of the issues facing the subjects in our story today. For example, I wish we could’ve tackled Anti-semitism a bit, and why faith is an important part in uplifting people’s spirits. This would’ve furthered our goal of exploring how faith heals. 

The church

Faith engages with audiences by explaining both Judaism and Catholicism, as well as a non-biased look at faith and religion as a whole. This allows the audience to learn new ideas and decide for themselves the importance and role of faith in their lives. However, a way that I thought was going to be successful in engaging turned out to fall a bit flat. “Faith” relies heavily on anecdotal stories from Talmudic and Biblical texts. While we, the creators of the doc, thought we did a sufficient job explaining the relation of the stories to the central idea of faith, when showing it to our classmates, we found out otherwise. They relayed to us that they didn’t quite get the relation between those stories and the concept of faith. We needed to be clearer and more explicit about the relation between the two. 

Synagouge

We also successfully engaged with the audiences through a sense of branding. The flickering blue theme of the intro, outro, and lower-thirds graphics creates a sense of cohesion across the piece that viewers find pleasing. It allows for the piece to be instantly recognizable, as well as drawing the viewer in with appealing visuals. 

Research played a huge part in the production of our documentary and its ultimate look and feel. The research we did formed the basis of our theme and vibe we were going for, and allowed us to play with conventions of the genre.

The biggest thing we wanted from this documentary was for it to feel important. I personally took inspiration from religious speakers and their sharp, bold, focused statements as well as their long stories and anecdotes. That's how I wanted this to feel. Clean, slowly developing, and flowing. We wanted this to feel like one big sermon explaining faith. In the documentaries we watched, verite filmmaking with shaky b-roll was a common theme. However, this was the opposite of the vibe we were going for. We wanted this to feel larger than life, ornate. We also wanted this to feel like a documentary you could find when scrolling through the TV channels. We stuck to standard sit-down interview shots, using the rule of thirds and having the subject look at the interviewer just off the screen. The motion graphics sequence at the beginning and end was also a bit of a challenge too traditional documentaries. We were a group that loved to learn, but specifically through YouTube creators. Incorporating this motion graphics sequence, an aspect typically found in more amateur docs that have their work premiere on YouTube, allows us to break standard conventions while also providing needed information. 

We utilized background music to emphasize tone and a narrator to push the story along. In documentaries we watched, like in Abstract, music highlighted a certain mood. Our music did the same, switching between ornate, melodic, heavenly music to a more sinister, dark vibe. The docs we watched didn't have a narrator, but we felt the dense subject matter we covered warranted one. 

Our research helped make the doc into a cohesive, wonderful piece that’s cohesive and works to leaves the viewer with moral quandaries of their own beliefs.

where is the panera lemonade that kills you

 Panera is my home, and I live here now. 

There's a certain calmness that washes over oneself when they spend 36 hours in a Panera Bread over the course of 2 days. Editing this doc brought me to nirvana, if, of course, nirvana was the chicken and cheese sandwich I got 4 times at Panera.

Hello Beautiful 😍

After Aneesa and I interviewed her mom, we made our first pilgrimage to the holy land of Panera. We had over 4 hours to sort through. We started to also look at music from Epidemic Sound and Bulletproof Bear.

Some calm structuring at Panera

We were very tired after finishing around 3 minutes of the doc, so we decided to come back the next day and really lock in for real for real. 

                                                                  12 HOURS LATER...

                                                                Hello, I am back in Panera. 

Nico, ever the theologian, came in after filming mass with a great idea for structuring. Meanwhile, just like apostles before me, I was struck with a vision for the opening. I was watching YouTuber and journalist Johny Harris a couple of days prior, and one of his video intros particularly caught my eye. You can watch it here.  In the intro, Harris uses animation to demonstrate his points. I thought this could be a unique way to introduce our story. While interviewing the professor from NSU, she mentioned a pretty interesting metaphor for faith as a concept. She told the story of 3 blind men, all with their hands on an elephant. Each man grabs a different part of the elephant, therefore feels it's a different animal. They may never know what the animal is, and they may never see it. But they know something is there. We thought this was a beautiful image to portray, and certainly a memorable one to start and end the doc. While Nico and I structured to story, Quinn got to work on the elephant in the room. 

The Elephant in the room

Quinn addressing the elephant. 

A few more hours of structuring and all that jazz at Panera, and we had almost a final product. I stepped outside Sunday night and seethed at the fresh air. Take me back. 

Well, on Monday we were! Call me bread cause I be at Panera ykwim. 

This time, we were really focused on cleaning up anything we needed. The night before, I kind of cleaned up the structure and color graded alongside Quinn, really just leaving the b-roll to put on. We also needed to write narration for the piece. 

Nico and Writing the narration

Frankly, Shakespeare could not have come up with what Nico and I wrote (dead for a bit). Aneesa recorded, and I plugged it in and leveled, and mixed it.  Finally, after finding a couple of images, I clicked Command M on my keyboard and exported. 

There is a valuable lesson to learn when you're the hare, but an even more valuable one when you're the tortoise. Basically, what I'm saying is I submitted at like 11:55.                       

 

Banger doc who wanna watch

I LIKE MAKING MEDIA

who up producing they doc right now

        

ISSSA PARADE INSIDE MY CITY YAAA

How it genuinely feels to make a banger documentary

Let's cover the production of my Faith documentary. Oh, I almost forgot. Guess what the title of the doc is. Guess. No, really, Guess. I'm waitingggggg.... Just guess ughhhhhhh. 

Ok fine 

ready 

3

2

1

"Faith"

Original right

Bang Bang doc gang, let's get started. 

On Friday, November 7th, the crew filmed Shabbat service for b-roll. We were kind of locked in there and got some insane shots.

    I made Nico Jewish for this shot

See, it's a nice shot because of the depth ooo woww

Speaks for itself, honestly

   

The next day, we got back to the grind. We headed back to the Temple to interview a Rabbi and a teacher. 

Who up framing they interview shots correctly

We used my Sony A74 and Quinn's Lumix S5 to film. We used Hollyland Lark M2's lavalier microphones for the interviews. I was the one asking the interview questions for the Jewish portions of production (surprise surprise).  The two pictured gave us great info, and the Rabbi especially gave us great insight into the Jewish perspective on community. 

Fast forward a couple of hundred years to the establishment of the catholic church, and I guess like 5 days to November 12th, where God themselves blessed this production. As I kind of alluded to in my frankly amazing piece of literature called the post before this one, we had a lot of issues trying to secure an interview with a pastor. I guess God was hesitant to be interviewed for an AICE Media A-level project. Big if true. We called around to see if any pastors were available, and one church nearby said that one of their highest-ranking pastors was going to be out of the office(church, which I guess could be the big man's office). However, they mentioned he was coming to our school for a prior engagement he had. 

I don't think you comprehend how insane this was. We thought our whole doc was going down the drain, and this man just happened to be coming TO US.  

When we heard he was coming to us

We got our stuff together and interviewed the hell out of him. Wait, I don't think I should say that about a pastor. Hmmm. Interviewed him... well? We interviewed him well! He gave us great insight into some biblical stories about faith, specifically the story of Aberham and Isaac.  

The man himself.

That day, we also interviewed the Assistant Professor in Political Science and History from NSU. She gave us amazing info on the psychology of it all. She also explained some of the facts about religion and religious thought. She really gave the context behind the whole doc, and I seriously do not think the piece would work without her. 

Yes, the irony of her background looking
like Heaven isn't lost on me

A Jew and 2 catholics step foot in a church. This is what happened on the 13th, when Nico, Quinn, and I went to interview our second pastor, Father Saul. 

Father Saul gave a lot of the same info as Father Omar, but he did have a good point about morality and Faith in general. In fact, his piece about faith was so good that it's the opening sound bite for the main portion of our doc. That day, we also got b-roll of the empty church. 

Cross 

Here, my friends, is my second encounter with the divine during this production. On what was an otherwise empty day at the church, one woman sat alone in a garden. 

Wow

She provided the perfect visual representation of sitting with one's faith. How lucky were we that she was there? 

Our last interview was with Aneesa's angel of a mother. She provided a voice for the community as a member of the church.

And to round out production, Nico and Quinn filmed Sunday mass on the 16th. This gave us a great representation of the community that the pastors were talking about. 

While they were doing that, I was editing. See, this, my friends, is what we in the industry call "foreshadowing." 

WE MOVEEEEEE