Better Half - ID# 249
Neuqua Valley
Documentary
Entry Description
This is a documentary about a former Neuqua student, Lucy Smith, who was born with a congenital heart defect that only allows her heart to operate at 50% capacity.
Copyright Info
Recent Teacher Comments
- 4/24 10:41 pm - KEEPERS: Very moving story about growing up with a heart defect. The use of photos worked very well and considering you only used photos for broll, you did very well. I never felt bored with the photos. Each picture was different and visually reinforced the content well. Good use of animation throughout that broll. The story was informative and I felt like you did well editing down that interview into the need to know parts. IMPROVEMENTS: The pace of the documentary felt too fast. The speech pattern of the mother is very fast so it almost felt frantic. Obviously, there's not much you can do about that, but when you have an interview subject like that, you want to look for moments to have pauses and breaks between all of the sound bytes. If you don't have any video footage, then use photos to do it. Just show a photo and bring up the music a bit for a few seconds and let us absorb everything. This also gives you an opportunity to change music cues as needed. The music needed more changes. It's all sort of one note. I see this piece as needing 3 music changes. A sort of neutral song at the beginning, one that gets sadder in the middle as we learn more about Lucy's defect and then a more hopeful tune toward the end as she survives and thrives. In terms of the interview, work on the production value of your shot. If this is the only interview source you can get, then try to film it in the very best location. The shot needed more depth behind the subject and more objects in the frame to break up the white wall. Overall, this was a good story but additional voices were needed to make this really shine. Keep working!
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