Categories
Category: Uncategorized
Categories
Documentary Pitch
Title: “Stopped in My Tracks”
Concept: Picture this: You have to catch a train and you strategically navigate through hordes of people on the sidewalk and you only have few seconds before the train leaves the station. As you do your best to rush through the crowds, you are stopped in your tracks; by random people immersed in the world of their smartphones, texting and scrolling; oblivious to the fact that their callousness cost you dearly.
You are enraged at the random strangers and blurt out almost loudly:
Why didn’t you move out of the way!!??
Why do you have the irrational need to look at your phone when in public??
Join me as I observe, analyze and document this behavior while asking imperative questions:
Is public smartphone use related to our inherent desire for privacy and need to feel secure?
Or
Are we merely A-holes who can’t wait to reply to that text or swipe up on a TikTok video.
Interviews with:
- Professors of Sociology, Communications and Psychology to understand this behavior and to understand if there is any precedent.
- CUNY students/people on the streets and ask them about their phone use.
Shots: Busy city streets, subway stations, crowds, interviews, B-Roll (with a two cam set up).
Music: YouTube royalty free music and sound effects.
Narrated: Self narration or narrated by a friend.
Categories
Documentary Pitch Ideas
- NYC asylum seeker crisis, from the Mayor’s Office POV
I interned at the Mayor’s office last year and I have a connection in the office of immigrant affairs and to an emergency director in the community affairs unit. The documentary would focus on the toll that the crisis has had on the NYC local government and their departments/agencies since their funds had to relocated to provide for the new arrivals. Documentary would include interview from city officials and NYC residents.
2. NYC asylum seeker crisis, from the seekers themselves
This option would be using all of the available data that the city has available online, with interviews of individual asylum seekers. The objective would be to hear personal stories on how/why they chose to come to NYC.
3. MTA Crimes
It seems like there has been an uprise of violence and crime in MTA train stations. The documentary would focus on the types of crimes that has occurred so far, how the MTA attempts to make the train stations safer, and any legislation/rules that have been introduced to address crime. Feedback would ideally be from MTA workers or daily commuters.
Categories
Documentary Pitch
My Idea is to do a 8-12 week documentary on my friend Izrael Espinel. His physique isn’t the most impressive, so I want to dedicate my assignment on helping him improve his physique. The goal for him go from 128 pounds to 145-150 pounds. And also gain definition and muscle toniest. He will work out every week, But I will only show and interview him on his progress on certain weeks. Since we can make our documentary 5-7 minutes long.
Categories
Documentary Pitch
My pitch revolves around following a day in a life of a religious scholar/mentor since it is the start of the holy month of Ramadan. I want to follow their activities and tie in what this Ramadan means to them and the non-profit work they do to help those in need.
Categories
Documentary Pitch
For the documentary, I want to do a profile piece and focus the attention on a young photographer named Nia based in Brooklyn. Nia has been doing photography for some time now and she puts together her own projects, collaborates with other photographers in Brooklyn, and has her own personal instagram page to showcase her work. She focuses on topics such as black beauty, LGBTQ+, and capturing the beauty within her own neighborhood of Brownsville, Brooklyn. In terms of access, I’ve already spoken to Nia and she’s agreed to be the subject of this project. With this piece, I want to capture her experiences as a young black photographer in Brooklyn, essentially her wins and losses. The pros and cons to being young and black in the photography industry. I want to convey the message of Nia’s journey as a young, black photographer and have the video stress the importance of having diverse voices within the photography industry.
I want the documentary to have a bit of a vintage overlay to it but I don’t want this overlay to be extremely strong. I want it to be very subtle. Some clips in black and white could work too. In terms of pacing, I want it to be more slow paced so that you feel that emotion and you’re able to digest her story better.
B-roll ideas: Art in Brownsville (where Nia lives), people walking around her neighborhood, Nia walking around Brownsville, playgrounds, popular locations such nail salons, beauty supply stores, and restaurants. Nia working on a project of her own (editing the photos or making her way to the photodom to have the photos developed), apartment buildings (NYCHA developments), grocery stores, and Nia in her element (taking photos).
Nia grew up in Brownsville. I think this detail may be an important piece to her story and what made her want to go into photography, so I really want to make sure I capture a lot of where she grew up because I think growing up in this specific neighborhood has shaped her artistic ability in a sense.
Categories
1st Draft Visual Poem
Categories
20 Days in Mariupol
This film was painful to watch. Seeing a pregnant woman carried on a stretcher, with gashes in her side and legs- you see the true cost of war. It makes you wonder why we fight in the first place. It makes you wonder how far removed these national leaders are- from humanity. The filmmaker was clear on his intent: to tell the story and to relay the pain. If we try to forget, the camera will never let us. It sometimes feels like an intrusive tool, but in times like this, the camera is objective. The emotions we are feeling are not of pity, but empathy. The same tool can be used on the Russian front to promote propaganda, and this is why the world is so torn. You would think that our advancements since the world wars or even the cold war, would position us in a more peaceful world, but information is still just as hard to decipher. One thing remains the same- people will never change. The narrator said that times of war heighten the qualities of people… those who are good hearted will continue to provide and help, and those who are selfish will only worsen.
The style of shooting made me feel like I was involved. I was experiencing the POV. Seeing the hospital workers and surgeons react to bombing was almost second nature. One woman was holding a new born baby and had to shift in a split second, behind a wardrobe, to protect this innocent life. The world it has entered is riddled with fragments and shockwaves.
The filmmaker showed his face once, only at the end. I think this was a nice touch. You don’t often see this but it gave me a further sense of humanity from the efforts of the Associated Press news team. They aren’t just a legacy broadcast station, they are humans with lives at risk. He has children and a wife, as did many other souls who were buried in the plot in Mariupol.
With the ongoing war in Gaza, it frightens me to see that no matter how much action the civilian takes, the decision of war is truly dependent on coherence in government. If we cannot agree that crime is crime, especially on a national scale, then the death count of 30,000 will still resemble nothing. The desensitization of this culture is painful. I hope it changes. For now, I still feel as helpless as those children in the concrete basement.
Short Doc Assignment Details
This is still a ways out, but I’m introducing this assignment early because the best documentaries often take time, and I want to give you all the opportunity to start developing an idea and begin shooting sooner rather than later, if you have the capacity and inclination to do so.
Your documentary should be somewhere between five to seven minutes long, give or take a minute in either direction based on how densely edited and tightly paced it is.
Pitches for the documentary assignment will be due Monday, March 11. As before, we will workshop your ideas together in class. Please post your pitches here on the site by class time.
It can be narrated, whether you would like to appear as an onscreen correspondent or feel that the narrative merits a voiceover (often a consideration if the story requires a lot of background and exposition). It can also be non-narrated, which tends to lend itself to a more character-driven, organic, verité-style story.
Narrated, newsy, complicated story with voiceover:
On-camera correspondent:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=euTsHmasdsA%3Ffeature%3Doembed
Non-narrated:
The Art of Typeface in Documentaries
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/text-graphics-in-video/#Text-graphics-Definitions-and-applications
https://venngage.com/blog/font-psychology/embed/#?secret=tECdNLraee
A Baruch doc (published on D&S) that uses typeface in an interesting way: