Antisemitism Rising - ID# 96

Deerfield
Documentary
Entry Description

The word's oldest hatred never fully disappeared, but in our current period of crisis, antisemitism has been steadily rising in the U.S.

Copyright Info

Recent Teacher Comments

  • 4/1 5:20 pm - Keepers: Very nice story that is unfortunately becoming necessary to tell once again. Your interview editing was very strong and your shot compositions and interview set ups were good. It was a nice documentary short with a very important message. It was good to see and hear. Improvements: In terms of story and editing, some of your decisions regarding broll didn't feel very purposeful in terms of advancing the story. The most important rule in editing is to never make a cut without a positive reason and there were times where broll shots weren't on screen long enough for me to engage with them or they didn't flow within the context of the story. I think you have good broll shots. Now keep working on sequencing them better. Make sure the pans are smoothe and consistent and that the movement has already started before you cut to them. Show more wide shots to give us contexts of locations you're filming before moving in close. Another example that needs attention is the screen shot of President Biden's tweet at 1:10. It's not on screen long enough for me to fully read. If you're going to put that on screen, make sure the audience can fully engage with it. I hope that makes sense! When your speakers discuss their backgrounds it would have been cool to have seen some personal photos of them from those named times in their lives (growing up, high school graduation photos, etc). I think this documentary could have used some "reality" footage of the speakers going about their business. We saw a bit of this from Eve, but I would have liked to have seen Mark interacting with patrons at the museum. Capture those moments and dial up the natural audio of that footage to help drive the story to another level. You're very good at threading a story using only talking heads. Now take it up another notch. There are some good things in this documentary but work on your editing and overall choices a bit more as you mature as a storyteller.
  • 3/5 8:30 pm - An important topic, that you deal with in a mature and thoughtful manner. Good job getting multiple interview subjects and interweaving their material. A couple of audio issues. The head room on one of the interview subjects was a bit too much. Some of the b-roll was a bit confusing.
Judge 1

Positives: Very powerful sound bite to start off this piece - nice job. Overall you did a nice job with telling a very important story. You also did a nice job finding footage to illustrate what your subjects were talking about.

Improvements: From a technical stand point this piece could have been much better. The camera work could have been much smoother. There was an audio issue at on the second sound bite - it was much softer than the rest. There was a jump cut towards the end of this piece. If these had all been better - this score would have been much higher.

Judge 2

Positives: I deeply appreciated that the filmmaker was able to interview a good variety of people from different ages and backgrounds to talk about Antisemitism. The overall theme is incredibly clear and the pacing is excellent.

Improvements: I wish we were able to have more concrete facts and statistics about the increasing amount of antisemitism that is happening. I also think that the B-roll could have been less literal and out of the box instead of showing specific examples of hatred.

Judge 3

Positives: Very well thought out story with good connections between your interviews. Well shot (though you might want to consider a little less head room on some of your interviews), and nicely edited. Very nice use of a thought provoking conclusion, with a call to challenge ourselves. The b-roll was used well, and I really enjoyed the music selections.

Improvements: When transitioning from one scene to the next, consider fading in your music a little earlier, to cue the view that we're about to make a move to another part of the story, then consider letting it fade under a bit longer into the next scene. This will also help subtly tie together interviews and scenes that may otherwise seem disconnected. Also consider your mic placement to eliminate some of the audio static.

Judge 4

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Judge 5

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