Process

For us, trying to determine how we wanted things to look and how to pace them was really important and we ended up dedicating a lot of time to researching other successful documentaries, looking at what they did right and things that could be improved, looked for camera techniques that pulled you in and things like how to use backgrounds to make a shot really pop. We looked especially hard at how other filmmakers like to frame professionals such as doctors and created a mood board of the things that inspired us most.

Mood Board

Rough Cut 1

We decided that for the information we were trying to convey we needed actual references and a way to display the information for viewers, so that came in the form of on screen text but we didn't want to just use a template to fade in the text and have it at that and so we turned to after effects to hand animate several text sequences so it appeared as if they were being typed onto the screen, since it is a documentary about technology this approach made perfect sense to us and it meant we had custom text blocks on screen and some lovely lower thirds.

Reflection

Danny Botham's Reflection

"Working with Brad on this documentary has really taught me a lot, from things that are purely educational which emerged from the contents of what we filmed and hearing our interviewees talk on the subject, to things like how much just two people, a couple of cameras and some film gear can achieve. We set into this documentary with a vision of making something engaging and worthwhile and I truly think we did just that. We did really well in discussing out strengths to each other and made use of our individual knowledge to make things flow smoothly and most importantly, to make a good film."