The Crown - ID# 149
Homewood-Flossmoor
Documentary
Entry Description
African American hair is looked at and what it means culturally.
Copyright Info
Recent Teacher Comments
- 4/17 8:45 pm - KEEPERS: Such a great story. I love the style of this documentary in terms of the narration involved. It was very well written and sort of adhered to that Ken Burns style that he made popular when dealing with historical subjects. You had an amazing mix if historical and contemporary contexts when exploring the issue. The timely-ness of this documentary is not lost, and I hope that the legislation outlined in the documentary continues to expand to other states. The interviews were varied and well produced. Multiple camera angles was a nice touch. The broll was well composed and you did a great job of using historical broll seamlessly. IMPROVEMENTS: Keep working on filming your interviews. The two angle approach was great, but I would argue that the two angles were too similar to each other. The general rule is that each angle should be about 30 degrees different from the other at a minimum. The other thing that was a bit off to me was that one of the angles had the subject looking directly at the lens. Most interviews for documentaries feature their subjects looking at the interviewer rather than the camera. It would have been better if the interviewer had placed themselves to the immediate left of the lens for the center shot. Work on following the rule of thirds in your interview compositions. Too often the subjects were too centered in the frame. Finally, is it possible for you to film the interviews in a more 3 dimensional background? The backdrops really flatten everything and aren't very visually interesting. If this is all you had to work with, I get it, but even filming at school or outside can add such a better element to the production value of your interviews. That 3 dimensional quality was missing from those shots. Finally, work on finding music that pushes the emotional beats of your story more. The music didn't feel emotive enough for the subject. I think finding different styles of songs, one for the history of black hair, one for contemporary discrimination of black hair and then one to play when discussing current crown legislation would work well. For each of the music suggestions, choose something that meets the emotional beat of that story point. For example, something sad in tone for early history, something with a more 60s/70s soul vibe for the middle part and then something different for the last bit. I hope this all makes sense. Overall, this was a great story and I enjoyed learning about it. Keep working!
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