The Mental Race - ID# 81
Glenbrook South
Documentary
Entry Description
A documentary about former race car driver Steve Jenkins and his journey to achieving success. The documentary focuses on both the physical and mental struggles faced by professional race car drivers.
Copyright Info
Recent Teacher Comments
- 4/4 4:37 pm - Keepers: Great work! My first television job was working on a series focusing on minor league stock car drivers so this gave me some flashbacks! Nice broll coverage of the racing and your interview set ups were visually satisfying. Nice work with the music and allowing those song choices to help drive the mood of the piece. Improvements: There is major sonic audio differences between Steve and Goran. Goran sounds overly compressed and denoised. Try to make sure you can make those signals a bit closer. Some of your broll was a bit dark in places, so try to add more lights or boost your highlights in color correction and grading. Make sure the head space in your interview set ups - particularly the close up shots - are consistent. My biggest note is the lack of natural sound and "reality" footage shown in this documentary. I want to see and hear him getting in and out of he car, communicating with his spotter, reacting to crashes, etc. It was too polished in that regard. Let the viewer feel hear and see the dirty grittiness of the track and hear some moments of real discussion between parties. That is the next step for you all as documentarians. Spend some time following Steve around. Mic him up and let us hear him in and out of the car, talking to camera, to Goran, etc. Overall, good work! This was a very nice piece.
- 3/5 8:16 pm - Some really cool b-roll! Some very effective transitions. Good job shaping the material and going back and forth between the interviews. Obviously, the one subject’s audio was a bit off somehow. The music was a bit loud at times.
Judge 1
Positives: Good use of race footage, mountain climbing footage, good use of capturing some of the additional racing memorabilia. I liked the way this piece was paced out in the beginning - racing cars and fat paced story telling go very well together. interviews were well lit!
Improvements: The overall narrative didn't really seem to have enough of a focus. 25% of this piece is focused on how much Steve loved racing as a kid (could have done this in a much shorter amount of time). Getting into better shape was obviously important, but overall this story seemed to be a bit disjointed. seemed like we had four different stories happening without the all important connective tissue to explain why each element was important to the narrative.
Judge 2
Positives: The editing style suits the story well. The story is incredibly clear and captures the excitement and risks of racing!
Improvements: The interview sound of the video could be improved because it was too muffled. The second person's interview shot is darker compared to the first interview shot.
Judge 3
Positives: This was an amazingly edited documentary. Your intro did a great job building anticipation. Throughout, you obviously paid attention to the delivery of the interviewees and matched the speed of your camera moves (b-roll), how long you held on shots and your music selection. Very well done! Wonderful use of b-roll. Everything you filmed in the garage (interview and b-roll) looked amazing!
Improvements: Goran's story was so interesting, but the sound quality was a bit distracting. Understanding that you can only work with what you have, but in an ideal world, consider how you might need a different mic or or just different mic placement depending on the room acoustics, talent's wardrobe or action in scene. Quality audio from an interview will make or break a documentary. You can always cover ugly interview footage with b-roll...you can't really do that with audio. Goran's interview visual might have also been helped with a stronger key light, or even reframing his shot so that the overhead lights are not visible...allowing you to open your exposure a bit more.
Judge 4
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Judge 5
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