Documentary Planning...☺️

 Group Documentary Project - Research and Planning

After all that research and watching various kinds of documentaries, we were assigned our first big project of the year: to make our own documentary. When I first heard this, my reaction was something like, “Um…😦🤒🤕…there is no way.” I mean, a whole documentary? The idea felt impossible. But then my teacher showed us a student-created documentary called Counter Conformity, which explored fashion as a form of personal identity. It was so impressive. After watching this documentary, I really had no idea what I was going to do.

When we were sent off to start brainstorming, I ended up partnering with the girl who sits in front of me. She had this amazing idea: a documentary on pet shelters, specifically comparing traditional shelters to no-kill ones. It was one of those ideas that instantly felt important to me, so I was totally on board. Once we confirmed our topic, we started researching local shelters we could interview. The idea of filming actual shelter animals and hearing the stories behind them sounded so amazing and I started getting super excited. 

Following some initial research, we began outlining our production process. We established our purpose—basically, what we wanted to show and why it mattered—and brainstormed a list of potential shots. Think: adorable pets, but juxtaposed with stark shelter environments for that emotional impact😉😜. We also divided up roles. I’d handle writing the interviews while my partner would focus on filming and editing. Then, we put together a rough outline of how we wanted our documentary to flow, from opening visuals to the closing message.

Our pre-documentary planning sheet! →

Everything seemed to be going decent, but then we had a meeting with our teacher. As we talked through the logistics, it became pretty obvious that our idea wasn’t as doable as we thought. Filming at shelters meant traveling quite a bit, setting up proper interview spaces, and coordinating with shelter staff. It was a lot—maybe too much for two high schoolers😣. During the meeting, our teacher helped us brainstorm different topics, and we eventually landed on one we both liked: the evolution of education, specifically how our own school had changed over the years.

After scrapping our original outline, we started fresh with a new plan. Since we wanted to explore how education at our school had evolved, we thought it would be cool to include visual contrasts between the past and present. As a result, we began the great search for old yearbooks. We wanted to include B-roll clips of the school as it looked in its early years, and we thought tracking down yearbooks from when the school first opened could be a cool idea. What we didn’t expect was how much of an adventure that would be.

We trekked all over campus, starting with the yearbook room. Then it was off to the front office, the principal’s office, and finally the media center. Eventually, we found the yearbooks from 2003 and 2005. Flipping through them was wild. Seeing photos of students in the same rooms and hallways I walk through every day—it was like stepping into a time capsule. 

Interviews are a huge part of documentaries; subsequently, me and my partner decided the best interviews we could get were from teachers who had been at our school since the beginning, as they would have seen the evolution unravel as they taught through the years. After brainstorming about four potential teachers, we tried to plan out times we could interview them. After scheduling about three interviews, we were ready to start production. 😝😋