The documentary was a first for me because I had no prior documentary making experience and I had never used an editing program before. My main contribution to the piece was interview footage because I interviewed George throughout our entire project and the responses he gave us throughout the film, which were used as a running voice-over, were answers prompted a large majority of the time by me. I also shot a portion of the film, mostly in or around interview settings, and helped edit a few scenes in the documentary and I did some sound reduction to get rid of unwanted diegetic sound as well.
In terms of the project as a whole, I really felt like it provided a great opportunity for me to gain experience via a very fast learning curve because of the advanced program we used combined with the knowledge employed by two somewhat experienced film makers. The topic of George Payne was a very convoluted one because we had set out with the intent of not staging any scenes and wanted to avoid a biography feeling as much as possible. I feel like we were successful in both attempts and what was really impressive was that we didn’t use any scripts in the interview process. From Joe’s initial description of George and my first interactions with him I was able to understand where his mind lead to and how he grouped his thoughts, which allowed me to ask leading and conceptual questions that provided for amazing audio tracks.
We had great and unusual cohesion between the four of us, which allowed for everyone to have a say in the editing process as well as in the overall direction of the documentary. The four of us were forced to travel a lot because we had a very small window to shoot (basically four days) and we made very good use of our time. Ryan taught me techniques regarding editing and Joe provided critique and analysis on the process of shooting and directing. Joe and Ryan also showed me proper documentary making etiquette and let me pursue my own thoughts within certain jobs needed to create this documentary. Joe and Ryan basically let me do what I wanted with the interviews and conduct them in the way that I best saw fit, which turned out well.
The class was perfect in terms of combining my two favorite interests – film and history. I am a history major so the documentaries that we watched by Humphrey Jennings provided ample historical evidence about World War II and how film played a roll in it. I have always loved watching and analyzing films and documentaries so this class expanded my outlook on how to examine film techniques and meanings. The actual students in the class also gave us great feedback about lowering the volume of our project’s non-diegetic sound track and better forming our thesis or topic.
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