Challenges

The challenges I dealt with during this project happened in three different process of making a film. The three processes are pre production, production and post production. Each process has different kinds of challenges based on what is needed for the specific film

Pre-Production

The challenges I faced in pre production were mostly scheduling and creating the questions for my documentary. Another challenge I faced was contacting alumni to be a part of my film, once I figured out who was part of my film the next step was figuring out where I would film these interviews which I split the alumni based on where I usually see them so some I would only be able to see at my house and some I see at city tech so I chose to film there. The rest of the interviews would happen at my high school when I went to go film there. The next biggest challenge was scheduling because everyone is not available at the same time as me to being able to make time for each interview or other filming was defiantly a major challenge.

Production

The challenges in production are a lot different because now that I know who and where I’m filming the new challenge was how I wanted to film it and how I would include the audio and lighting as well. I had to learn how to use the equipment I had because it was all donated to me so I didn’t know what the parameters on the equipment were. Another challenge I had was being able to think on my feet when something didn’t go as planned. For example I was going to interview an alumnus who is now a teacher at my high school, but she had to cancel our interview because she was not going to be in on the day I was going to the high school. I had to think about what else I could film to make up for the time I was losing out on. Another challenge was dealing with creative decisions that I had for my documentary and figuring how I would achieve that. Working with sound was also challenge because I am not the best when it comes to sound, recording sound wasn’t that bad but I did learn later in post that I did have some outside noises in my film.

Post Production 

In Post production the first challenge that I had was actually putting this story that I had envisioned together and I had a harder time then I thought I would doing this because I usually edit narrative films not documentaries. Therefore this was defiantly something I had to overcome because I had to choose the questions that would stand out more and help tell the story I wanted to tell. Another challenge I had was the length of the film because I didn’t want it to go so long that people lost interest. Another issue I had was the audio because there was a lot of background noise that I didn’t realize while I was recording, this I tried to fix by adding an equalizer to my audio by lowering the background noise and raising the voice of the subject. The hardest challenge was taking my footage and creating the story I wanted to tell and trying not to stray away from the story I wanted to tell my audience.