documentary process: planning & filming

 planning and filming of pursuing passion:

planning the doc was not as difficult as we thought it would be. at first our outline was too superficial and didn't help us out as much as we thought it would, so we had to reorganize it a second time. 

our first day of filming, we also redid our interview questions to make sure that our topic was clear and we could steer the interviewees in the right direction and not have them feel confused about what "the point" of it all was. we did our outlines, info and questions all on a shared google doc so either of us could access it whenever it was necessary to look at. 

Interview questions:

1. Name and spell it

2. Try to restate there question while answering 

3. I studied ______

4. And now I work at Bamachol Dance Company

5. And now I am _____

6. What is bamachol?

7. What is your position?

8. What are your responsibilities?

9. How long have you been here?

10. Did you always plan on this as your career?

11. What did you originally want to do?

12. Where did you study?

13. Why did you decide to change career paths?

1. Did you previously dance / have an interest in dance?

14. Do you have any regrets?

15. Do you think you could have been more successful in your other path?

16. How different do you think your life would be if you didnt change?

17. What have you gained from this decision/the program?

18. What does this job mean to you?

19. Do you view it as a job or is it more of a passion?

filming:

ughhhhhhhh. i have very conflicted feelings about our filming. on one hand it was so good and productive but on the other hand i had to face a fear.

I HAVE NEVER DRIVEN ON THE HIGHWAY.

I KNOW.

I LITERALLY KNOW.

i've been terrified of the highway ever since i started driving about 2 years ago and i can't believe it took making a documentary for me to get over this. today if i was given the option to take the highway, i'd do it without thinking twice. yay i faced a fear!

but okay let's get serious now. i live in weston. hannah lives in aventura. hannah's studio lives in aventura. she lives 15 min away from the studio.... i live 45 (even when driving on the highway). so the first week i had to swallow my fear and make it there. it was instantly such good energy to be around a dance studio and i realized we totally chose the right topic because it was clear that both of us had love for what we were doing. everyone was extremely welcoming and didn't ask many questions about us filming, instead we received encouragement. the first day of filming we focused a lot on our b-roll and got 2 interviews, i would say that it was really good. to be completely honest we found our path as we were filming. we realized what angles we liked and what we didn't and it all came together along the way.

filming day 1:

our first interviewee was roger, the bamachol dance director. his previous profession was law and he studied years to be an attorney. his interview was really interesting since we got the point of view from the highest position in the program. we put him in his office which was cluttered but still appealing to the eye when we put in his clips.

our second was the joint interview of misha and poke which we had a lot of fun with. misha is a huge personality who is very outspoken and had a lot to say. poke is on the quieter side but being interviewed with misha brought her out of her shell. i really do think that getting both of them to sit and talk together made us get the best answers since they were complementing eachother.

this day we also went into the different studios to get shots of the dancers. stoklosa's words were very clear in our head "dance documentaries have too much of the same" so every time hannah and i were filming we made sure to think of something dynamic and interesting to switch it up.

filming day 2:

this day we filmed the intro of the montage where we got everybody to say their past profession ( the section that we used for our intro ). our main focus was to get specific b-roll of the teachers we had interviewed already. so we got the shot of roger walking into the studio and misha teaching her class. this really helped us out when it came to editing because we matched the b-roll to the person and it all flowed better. this second day i had to leave early since i stayed until 8:30 and the drive back home was going to be long. hannah got tammy's interview (the previous dentist) this day which really helped us out. i think that was one of my favorite backgrounds for interviews since there were ballet shoes and costumes in the back and i loved it.