Critical Reflection

How Does “Off the Mic“ Represent Social Groups and Issues?

Our documentary “Off the Mic“ highlights and redefines the representation of poets, particularly spoken word poets, in a meaningful way reflective of self growth. One of the film’s objectives was to challenge the stereotypes often associated with poetry; such as when poets are portrayed as overly academic or as prestigious and disconnected from. “Off the Mic“ emphasizes the multifaceted nature of poetry and its ability to host personal growth and social connection.

Our title that implies the personal look the doc will take.

The documentary shifts this perspective by presenting poetry as relatable and inclusive rather than intimidating. It shows poetry’s connection with audiences through emotional resonance and self-expression. The film celebrates how poetry can be used as a tool that builds confidence, communication skills, and emotional intelligence through the lens of the two subjects. For example, through Lola's interview, the documentary captures how spoken word can have a transformative effect on those who write. Lola shares how becoming a poet empowered her to communicate her ideas more effectively in all aspects of life. Her journey shared how poetry can be a medium for self-expression and growth.

“Off the Mic“ also addresses the broader social issue and challenge faced by artists of pursuing careers their passions, specifically Creative Writing and English. Especially when discussing higher education, these majors are often dismissed as impractical or unprofitable, leading to questions of their legitimacy as career choices. Ghost delves into this in their interview, reflecting on how others have doubted their career prospects, who have suggested that studying Creative Writing will lead to limited opportunities. Instead, Ghost offers an inspiring example of how passion for creative writing and poetry can open unexpected doors and create meaningful opportunities. By sharing their experiences, the interviewee encourages viewers to pursue their passions unapologetically, regardless of societal expectations.

Ultimately, “Off the Mic“ offers a inside look of poets and their craft, while also challenging stereotypes surrounding these creatives and their career aspirations. It reminds audiences that poetry is not confined to academics but is a multifaceted art form that inspires individual lives and communities.

How Did Research Inform “Off the Mic“ and Its Use or Challenge of Conventions?

Research played a fundamental role in shaping the vision of “Off the Mic“ and the creators gained valuable insights into genre conventions and approaches by studying a diverse array of documentary styles. This research provided a strong foundation, allowing the team to make their informed creative decisions.

One of the film’s primary inspirations was “Exit Through the Gift Shop“, a documentary that conveys a deep admiration for street art. The team was inspired by the opening montage, a sequence that relied on visuals and atmosphere to convey the subject matter without explicitly stating it. Similarly, “Off the Mic“ begins with a montage of spoken word performances, using archival footage to evoke the raw energy and authenticity of the art form. Despite technical challenges due to the lower quality of clips or footage shot in portrait orientation, the imperfections were embraced as part of the documentary’s aesthetic. 

An image from Beyond Triathlon (2024).

Inspired by the way archival footage was presented in Beyond Triathlon, the team made a stylistic choice to present the opening montage in a square aspect ratio within a rounded frame, as a way to bypass presentation of unprofessional footage while also creating a singular focus point that expands once the title graphic appears. This "opening up" of the frame carries symbolism as the subjects open up about their experiences to the audience.

Certain conventions were followed for simplicity such as a standard interview setup, following the rule of thirds and looking off-camera. By maintaining a conventional approach to interviews, the filmmakers ensured clarity and professionalism, balancing experimentation in other areas of the documentary.

The research process informed every aspect of “Off the Mic“ and the blend of tradition and innovation used allowed the filmmakers to craft a documentary that is both artistic and emotionally resonant.

How Does “Off the Mic” Engage with Audiences?

“Off the Mic” uses a variety of creative techniques to captivate audiences, drawing them into a thought-provoking experience. Prominent tools such as the use of sound, background music, and b-roll footage help guide the audience through the emotional journeys of the subjects.

Audio tracks used in "Off the Mic"

Sound is essential in shaping the tone of the documentary. The opening sequence of live spoken word performances immediately immerses viewers into the world of poetry, connecting the audience to the subjects before they are revealed. These create a sense of authenticity for the poets and the connections to their craft, which sets the stage for the each subject's narrative. Due to some issues with the second interviewee's audio, at times the audience can be taken aback from the switch between Lola and Ghost, but other elements aid the sound quality. As the documentary progresses, background music is utilized strategically to complement the dialogue and visuals by uplifting the mood and encouraging inspiration (which aligns with the overarching themes of personal growth and artistic expression). 

B-roll footage is another essential component of “Off the Mic“, enriching the storytelling without overshadowing the interviews. The visuals reinforce the messages conveyed by the interviewees, adding depth and context to their words. For instance, when Lola discusses the wide reaches and impact of spoken word poetry among people, the documentary includes b-roll footage of people in discussion over poetry. This visual storytelling helps foster deeper understanding, helping audiences connect with the subjects on a further level. 

In conclusion, these techniques work together to create a cohesive and insightful experience that resonates with a viewer after the documentary concludes.

Edit till we die

Now that we finished filming our interviews, we filmed some final b-roll at the Lightning poet meeting on Tuesday. This is when we were supposed to get an interview from a sponsor, but since J didn’t come to school due to illness and M and I were left to our own devices (and filming at school is harder than filming in the comfort of someone’s home) we decided not to get the final interview, knowing we had 40+ minutes of interview footage already. Of course, this would mean some restructuring for the documentary, but it would all be handled in the edit.

Wednesday passed us by as we discussed restructuring issues in class and collected the archive footage we needed, so Thursday was our final day to work on the edit. On my end, I was responsible for the main edit, but I knew I couldn't accomplish the entire thing on my own so I designated roles for M and J to help me. I did my best to cut down the interviews and fit them into a nice structure, sending them section by section to M and J once they were done, and once the group approved, J would begin putting b-roll over the interview footage while I continued cutting down the next section. 

Trying to convey my idea for the montage for M to create.

In the meantime, we left M in charge of the opening montage, in which she focused most of her energy on making the crappy compiled android footage of poetry performances look good. We had around 17 recordings of different spoken word poems over the years and the goal was to use individual soundbites to establish our subjects as spoken word poets to the audience. 

Then we wanted to put the title graphic after the montage, but at this point, we still didn't have a name, so combining the power from all our brain cells (and asking Google for some poetry puns) we came up with: Off the Mic. Once Juan sent me a video of the Canva graphic, I realized it was all coming together. 

Once M had exported her group-approved montage, I finished adding the b-roll to the clips, and J made sure our other production materials were finished (our Production Log and Doc Outline) we were ready to export and submit our documentary. 

The full editing timeline.

After that, we eagerly awaited critique day in class and our final grade from our teacher. Click here to watch our full documentary (although we're going to re-edit based on some advice so we can submit this to festivals!)

Why I wish teleportation was real

Saturday

Mission objective was to go film Lola at Ignite Your Mic an Organ Donation Awareness event being held in Fort Lauderdale where young poets were given the opportunity to compete for a scholarship in a themed poetry slam. However, there was a huge mix-up between my groupmates over time: we thought the event started at 7 when it really started at 5. This caused an unfortunate chain of events, rushing us out of the suburbs and into the city. We had no idea when the event was going to end or if we already missed Lola's last performance but we did whatever it took to get there (shoutout to my dad's insane driving skills). Luckily, we got there and the event was finishing up still which allowed me to get some b-roll shots of poets and of Lola. Maybe if we teleported there, we would have made it in time, but luckily there was still Lola's Mom's Phone footage we could use.

Sunday

Sunday was more smooth, except for Juan waking up with a horrible fever and not being in the best condition to join us. But being lucky that Ghost was in town this weekend for a family event, we met up with them at M's house, found an "arty" spot to sit them in and began shooting the interview. What I didn't expect was 1) how far off the questions I was going to go: my interviewer alter ego came over me and I just kept pullling more and more content out from Ghost and 2) the audio box and lavalier to run out of battery 3 minutes into the 20 minute interview without anyone noticing it died. It wasn't until we finished the interview that we realized anything was wrong, but at that point, we didn't want to redo the whole interview knowing it would lose the authenticity of our first attempt. 

Then without skipping a beat, we filmed Ghost's b-roll, getting a mixture of wide, medium, and close ups and incorporating subtle movements with the items they brought to show off. We experimented with filming a couple shots outside for variety, but didn't quite like how they turned out, which is why most of that footage was not included in our final documentary. However, it was definitely useful to overshoot with any idea we had because in the edit we didn't feel like we were clawing for more footage, we had just the right amount.

Monday

Monday was definitely my favorite shooting day, mostly because Lola and I get along great, but also because the interview and b-roll was bountiful. My camera felt like a cournucopia on thanksgiving, that's how full I felt. The set up was a little tricky because our lens needed to sit far awar from the subject in order to yield the best depth of field (a little bit shallow) so as the interviewer next to the camera, I had to wall squat in the corner of Lola's bedroom for about 20 minutes while she answered questions. Completely worth it though because it looked beautiful.

The shot in question.

Then for b-roll, I was able to film all the pictures and knick knacks on her walls (dogs tags she won at poetry competitions) but we really hit the jackpot when she pulled out a memory box from her closet, containing flyers and journals with photos and writing galore. It was perfect and it set us on the right track to continue our project. 

9 days

After watching various amazing examples and being inspired by the choices of each director and creator, my head was filled with grandiose ideas (an early idea was to follow the lives of 3 students conquering a personal fear through training and practice); however, with our deadline insanely imminent, we had to come up with an idea that was more plausible to come to fruition. 

Originally, my groupmates M and J had agreed with me to center our documentary on our fellow teenage poets to share their stories and experiences competing in a poetry competition. We thought this uncommon event would be a great one to share with the world and as very special and unique to our friends. One idea we had was to make it a behind-the-scenes look at the 2023 Lightning Poets LTAB team in detail and how their synergy led to their success.

The original description for our documentary.

Screenshot of our planning document.

However, in planning this approach and wanting to cover the stories of each person on the team (originally planning to interview over 8 different people), we realized the project was overambitious for the amount of time we had. Another issue would be filming, as two of the subjects no longer live near us (have gone off to college) and currently there was no poetry competition or team meetings to go to film broll for. 

Eventually, after some redirection from our teacher, we realized a more effective approach would be to cut down on the quantity of subjects and focus on the quality. We needed to ask ourselves what the largest message we wanted to convey was, what questions we wanted this documentary to answer, and how to enact the best approach to bring that vision to fruition. 

Our core guiding questions for the documentary.

In the end, we decided on 3 subjects: a current poet in her senior year (Lola), a graduated poet now in college (Ghost), and the poetry club's advisor (Mrs.H). In this case, having personal connection to our subjects helped a ton through production because they were happy to oblige to the filming times we needed. We secured interviews with Ghost and Lola immediately while Mrs. H had a trickier schedule to work around (this changes things later on). 

Deeper questions written for Ghost.

In the meantime, we split up duties with writing questions, mainly with M writing the base questions and me polishing them by developing them to yield deeper responses (all about how you phrase the questions!!).

Meanwhile, J began to plan how these responses would fit into the documentary structure-wise as well as coming up with some b-roll ideas. As inspired by Abstract: The Art of Design, we knew we needed to get staged b-roll, so I went ahead and contacted our interviewees. Lola's interview would be held at her house, so luckily all her materials would already there and she was perfectly okay with showing them off. Ghost on the other hand we would be interviewing at M's house, so I texted them to ask if they could bring personal items to the filming location. We knew we needed a variety of shots with writing in them as the documentary focus was on poetry, so it was essential that we made sure that we could get writing shots and footage of written works (or Lola's case, typed works on a laptop).

Asking Ghost to bring their "poetry stuff."

Mostly, my role in the planning came to coming up with our master schedule to ensure we had enough time to record everything in time. Personally, I was already busy with work and other extracurriculars over the weekend, so ironically, while most of my peers were celebrating because of the upcoming long-weekend due to Veteran's Day, I was dreading my weekend, blocked out morning and afternoon with a different activity.

As you can see, I was stressed.

Ultimately, I'm glad my partners were up to the grind and willing to put in time to make this project great. And we came out with a result we were proud of. Stay tuned.

Documentary Research

Welcome back. If you remember, I mentioned in my last blog post that I had the chance to go compete in a film festival in New York; what I didn’t mention is that back at home I was working on a documentary. See, since the start of October, in A Level we began watching and researching documentaries so that in November we could fully produce our own. In this series of blog posts, I’ll be detailing my process of creating my short documentary “Off the Mic” starting off this blog post about research and inspiration.

I Think This Is The Closest To How The Footage Looked (2012)

Goodness even just rereading the name sends shivers down my spine and makes me emotional. This was the first documentary we watched in class and truly surprised me on just how genius it was; it conveyed grief in a way I’ve never seen before, and drew at my heart strings without using any dialogue. 

Excellent first documentary to watch because it truly broke down any preconceived notion of what I thought documentaries needed to be considered a documentary (such as containing interviews or narration or be on some newsworthy subject). Instead, the director showed a slice of life through figurines which guided the narrative. The editing felt almost literary to me, especially when a clip played back again and again, I felt the repetition emphasize the anguish of the main subject, the son who lost the last footage of his dying mother, and the suffering his family went through. 

Ultimately, human emotion is what connects viewers to a piece and I believe this did one of the best jobs for its simplistic and humble approach. My team and I would keep this in mind when creating our doc, even if it took us a while to return to a more simple approach.

American Promise (2013)

This full length documentary is one we almost didn’t watch, as our A Level teacher asked her class last year if this doc should be shown our year. Luckily, they voted an astounding YES and my class this year did too. American Promise follows the lives of two boys throughout their entire schooling in NY, kindergarten through senior year, and as a student in my last year out of 13 in the FL education system, this documentary was highly relatable, something most of my peers felt too. 

This documentary was more traditional, utilizing a mix of direct and indirect interviews and an insane variety of broll. Of course, what sets this documentary apart from the crowd is the coverage of 13 years of content, which I can’t even begin to imagine just how much footage was excluded given their 2 hr 22 minute run time. Heck I was stressed out with 40 minutes of interview footage, they probably had way over 40 HOURS of interview footage. 

Something my team liked about this documentary is that while they did have some formal interviews, sometimes the interviews were more casual “ in the moment” so we tried to include that type of interview in ours (although ultimately it didn’t make the final edit).

Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

TONIGHT THE STREEEETSS ARE OURSSSS.

Watching this Banksy directed creation showed me that documentaries could be FUN. I laughed a lot during this one but also was incredibly intrigued by the progression of Thierry’s story as a filmmaker turned graffiti street artist. 

I did notice that most of the interviews were taken all in one go, despite the broll and footage covering months/years, which would be the approach my team would take (although this was largely a given based on the fact that we had one week for production and could not follow our subjects for an extended period of time). 

The larger inspiration we took from this documentary can be seen in the opening of our documentary, which we began with a montage as well, albeit shorter than the 2:32 montage in Banksy’s piece and also without featuring a song as catchy as Richard Hawley’s Tonight the Streets Are Ours. But I’ll talk more about that in my post production blogpost. 

Abstract: The Art of Design (2017)

This episodic documentary was good research, but I think it will come more in handy later in the year if I decide to do documentary for my portfolio project, as I know advertising must be exemplified, and as I remember from friends in A Level last year, they also had to outline multiple episodes. 

Largely, this documentary showed us the beauty of staged broll, and how it can be expertly used. The examples in Ruth’s episode was one my group kept coming back to when we needed to film our subjects but had little way of filming them live in their artistic environment. On my own time, I watched Christopher Niemann’s episode, where I realized that every single shot was deliberately and expertly planned and choreographed, as they needed to incorporate fantastical animation elements to the majority of the shots, and this stuck with me when planning because I truly realized that success relied 99% on pre-production.

Op Docs

As a part of our Op Doc assignment, I watched two: Ellis Island and A New Wave. These documentaries were short, around the length that our A Level documentaries were going to be, so it was nice to see some examples of similar length, especially because one I watched was made by students. 

Ellis Island

One of the images featured in the Ellis Island op doc.

The first one op doc I watched was made by two high school filmmakers but in the early 1970s and filmed on 16 mm film. They documented the abandoned spaces in Ellis Island and created a very eerie tone and by the end of it I was confused, but upon a second watch I understood better. See, initially the documentary was quiet, only using natural sound, but in the second portion, sound interviews from Ellis Island immigrants were used, and they shared their experience. And so, while at times the whole thing felt unsettling, I realized that was intentionally the goal of the creators because they wanted to show the other side of the story to a place in American history that’s been remembered iconically, a popular tourist destination, but doing that we have erased the horrors of family separation and human starvation along with it. 

The creators here had a specific goal for the viewer, not just to entertain, inspire, or educate, but to hopefully change the mind of their audience. We hoped to do that too, or at least provide a new perspective on our chosen topic. 

New Wave

A still from New Wave op doc.

New Wave on the other hand was more “traditional”, telling the inspiring story of the first Black South African World Championship Surfer; however, what stuck out to me was that the whole doc was shot in greyscale, except for some yellow graphics. This struck me as strange, considering that a large majority of the broll included waves and surfing, and with filming a beautiful blue ocean I wondered why color was not used? Ultimately though, I realized that the doc was never about the surfing but about the difference the surfer was making in the world/community. His surfing was only the tool he used to do that, which is why the greyscale was used to diminish the focus on the footage and allow a viewer to focus more on the story.

Certainly a unique approach, I would remember that even while trying to get all the most beautiful broll possible, ultimately what makes a documentary great is if the narrative of the story is great, which for us would need to come from the quality of our interviews.

Ready for Round 2

Up until the age of 13, I had never ridden on a rollercoaster of high intensity and especially not any with loop-de-loops. But when I visited Universal's Themed Parks with my older sister (for the first time without parental supervision) I dared the challenge. We ran to the big green Incredible Hulk Coaster when the park opened to avoid any lines and, once we got on the ride, I had the time of my life shooting through the air and going around in loops till the end. Walking off the ride, I could barely stand up straight, my head was spinning, but to my surprise, I wanted to ride again. So we went for Round 2. 

That's what this is. I'm back on board this rollercoaster course and excited to take on more. In my "It's been a wild ride" post that I wrote at the end of the AS course I mentioned never having worked with film before my portfolio project but hoping to become more involved with the art. Since then, a film I worked on with a team of 10 people from my high school was screened in this year's All American High School Film Festival (largest international HS student film festival) where we competed in the Film Invitational Complete Experience (10 weeks of pre-production, 3 days to shoot and edit in NYC) and placed in the Top 10 as finalists (but our critics revealed we were actually runner ups behind the grand prize winner). I worked as the Assistant Director and Set Designer and during it I realized just how incredibly valuable my knowledge I learned in AICE Media was to me. This was a huge experience for me and I'm looking forward to continuing this newfound film side later in the year. In my last year of high school, I hope I come out standing tall (and just a little bit dizzy).

Creative Critical Reflection

View the CCRs below:

Goodnight Stories for Young Princesses:

Youtube- https://youtu.be/jhaB5RItAeA

GoogleDrive- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P_UdlsKlCtGIJImQKiMd8quC6Z-nAb18/view?usp=sharing

On Your Shoulder:

Youtube- https://youtu.be/m_1gbhWffY4

GoogleDrive- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P3d0mNUgPm2r66NnsA9v7aTooLU_ORGL/view?usp=sharing

FILM OPENING

View Borderline below:

YouTube- https://youtu.be/EftZqx5arRk

GoogleDrive- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sVFVaStzy3zoEipQeXFcZ0ZykGOXF8gX/view?usp=sharing

 :)

It's been a wild ride

I can't believe its actually over. Nine weeks and now we're completely wrapped. As I reflect back on my time on the project, I guess the only thing I wish is that I didn't have to go through some sleepless nights over these past final days. I definitely was rushing to get everything done before the deadline, but honestly, it all worked out alright and that's what matters. 

As someone who has never studied or practiced film before taking this class, I'm so thankful for all the knowledge I learned, not only from the lessons but from the experience of working on the opening. I had the skills needed to create something like this, but I didn't have the wisdom or conviction to bring it to life until this course. I'm hoping this is the start of more films to come, and of course I hope to be back for A-level.

While we got a rough start on the project, Faye and I really pulled it together. I'm really grateful to have worked with her because two minds are really better than one. We were able to bounce ideas off each other, teach one another, grow with each other, and support each other throughout the whole process, and we came out better because of it (and our film opening is beautiful). 

To whoever is reading this, I hope you enjoy Borderline's film opening. We worked our booties off on it.

Editing the opening

Alright. Faye did the heavy lifting by line editing the film opening. I'm adding the final touches, like coloring, titles, credits, and effects.

At first, we had said to each make our own version, but ultimately, there was no point in doing the same thing twice, so Faye made the draft and handed it over to me. Before that though, we went back and forth between the sound design, whether to use static or brown noise or anxiety inducing music, or silence.

This original draft of the opening included creepy music underneath the scene of the large painting, which we deleted from the timeline because it sounded too much like horror.

Faye and I trying to come up with something else.

In the end, we opted for silence, hoping that it would contrast with the rest of the opening because each section has sound elements (footsteps and natural sound in the intro, diegetic music from the record player, non diegetic music during the anxiety scenes, water during the fridge scene). We think the lack of sound will create an isolating feel, and feel separate to the rest.

Once I got the draft in my own timeline, Faye and I looked through fonts. Faye liked fonts with a handwriting feel to it, but wanted it to be more simple and clean. Some of the fonts we tested are pictured below:

 

In the end, we chose the font Monotype Corsiva. I then credited Faye and I as creators, Camila as our lead actress, Fesliyan studios for the music, and David Renda for the song. 

Then I worked on creating the title graphic, which we finally named our film Borderline and used a masking effect to reveal the text. I did this by keyframing an opacity mask frame by frame so that the text would reveal from behind her hair. 

First version.

After showing this part of the opening to a friend, we both thought it needed something more, like perhaps a special effect, to understand that the main character is hallucinating. I decided to add a directional blur that would blur the edges of the painting, and increased the exposure while adding rotation key frames to the directional blur, so the final effect looks psychadelic, and in this way we hope the audience understands even more clearly that it is a hallucination.

Final version with effects and the title in ALL CAPS.

The last thing I did was color correct the shots, which was fairly simple with Premiere Pro 2024, because the lumetri color panel has an option to automatically help correct shots; however, I would always have to fix the coloring anyway when the "auto-correct" would often over expose shots, leaving them looking worse off. A mix between my own eyes and the computer intelligence resulted in the final coloring job. 

One cool thing though that I learned was how to match the coloring effect from one shot to another, by usng a tool called Comparison View. I used an official Adobe Premiere Pro tutorial and was able to match the coloring from a warmer shot to a cooler shot, creating the same warm tone throughout.

The shot before comparison view and color match vs after color match.

I exported different drafts and sent them to Faye, then went back to editing, sent another draft, until finally on the 5th attempt, we had it. Our film opening was complete. We now had our final draft. It was time to go to sleep. I can't wait for everyone to see it.