Doc Pre-Production

    Pre-production for my doc started with brainstorming with my team members the different possible topics we could cover. We created a list that composed of possible topics like immigration, teachers, community in theater, and single-mothers. The next time we discussed the doc, we landed on community in theater, but we thought the topic was too generic and a bit reductive. So, one of my teammates, Gabi, gave the idea of making the doc only focus on the technical part of theater and those who work in that aspect, the techies. The idea was great and pretty original so we decided to do that. Another teammate, Ale, had lots of connections to techies, so gathering interviewees was one of the easiest parts of pre-production. We then structured our doc through an outline and created a shot list of a variety of shots that we wanted to include in the doc. Most of them had to do with technical equipment and work done backstage.

    We also created interview questions, but they focused too much on the fact that techies were "underappreciated," so we changed them to focus more on the work that techies do, which is often not entirely known.

    Gabi also bought these little mics to use in the interviews (although they didn't work as well as we thought they would, they were still cool to use).

    Pre-production was pretty simple, until scheduling. We were originally going to knock out all filming before Thanksgiving break, with interviews being shot that Thursday, Friday, and Sunday (Thursday being CRUCIAL), but tragedy struck. School closed on Thursday, making it impossible to get footage of two interviews and all of our b-roll before break. The plan was to gather two techies, who worked in the school's theater production, in the school's auditorium, so b-roll of them working with equipment, of the auditorium itself, and interviews with them would all be filmed on that day. But it didn't happen because it rained too hard. The school's technical director was going to be interviewed on that Friday, but he was absent, so TWO DAYS of filming was thrown down the gutter. We considered changing our topic entirely to something more manageable, but I really wasn't a fan of that. Not only was so much work already done (and would have to be redone if we restarted), but I was genuinely interested in the topic and wanted to make the doc about it. So, we were able to get the deadline of November 27th to December 1st and I was able to convince my team to keep the techie topic. We were able to reschedule when we would film b-roll and the two interviews in the auditorium to after break, and we would keep the date to film an interview with another technical director on that Saturday. There wasn't much we really could have done differently, I honestly believe we did really good considering the circumstances. At one point it did feel a bit impossible to keep the techie topic but we were able to do it, so I'm pretty proud of that. Though, I could have reduced stress for myself by not worrying about the problems we faced so much. I should have controlled my worries, and just did what I could.

Here's my crudely drawn calendar of our schedule.