Emery's Kitchen - ID# 103
Glenbrook South
Documentary
Entry Description
Our documentary is about Emery Sill, a high school small business owner. This film is about her journey as a upcoming baker in Chicago. Her story begins with continuing her grandma's legacy through keeping her recipe alive. Emery Sill bakes with love and care, keeping her coworkers in a positive environment.
Copyright Info
Recent Teacher Comments
- 4/24 4:33 pm - A good diversity of visuals. The interview shot is beautifully lit and composed. The B shot of the interview that isn't as strong and it is a little bit distracting from the story to see the two intercut so closely as the angles are quite similar, but just reversed. Those are compelling and very cinematic with shallow depth of field and impressive compositions. The story is really interesting and overall the documentary is executed really well With very solid production values.
- 3/27 11:02 am - Keepers: Really nice production value, overall. Nice customized lower thirds and footage quality. The multi-angled interview shots work well. Good sound quality on the interviews and you provided a good overall mix. Improvements: Use some natural sound from the broll. Let's hear the sounds of baking and the conversations taking place throughout the process. That's a huge part of the story that is absent from this. It makes the story more authentic and moves away from the constant talking heads driving the story forward. Make that the focus of future documentary work. The best documentaries combine interview footage with natural sound from footage to create a more organic, realistic story. The secondary shot of Emery needs to follow lead room rules. She's positioned on the wrong side of the frame. Change music. The same song quickly grows stale. Music is the driver of emotion. You should have 3 different songs in this piece. One at the beginning, one when a they purchase the new bakery and one at the end. Overall, this has great production value, but work on exploring how natural sound helps impact story and how music is vital to creating a more impactful story.
Judge 1
Positives: Excellent job striking the right balance between information and actually caring about the people and the story. I liked all of the footage and pictures and the video of a younger Emery with her grandmother was a great touch. I also really liked the use of the music throughout.
Improvements: You all did a very nice job producing this story - to help make it even better - just try to smooth out some of the edits. Try allowing the sound to breath a little bit more. some of the edits seemed just a tiny bit fast.
Judge 2
Positives: 1. Great work using the broll to set up the story/kitchen at the beginning. 2. Really nice use of broll that was layered over the VO to illustrate the story. The story was well edited and I was following throughout.
Improvements: 1. Some of the broll would have been great to have the audio accompany it. 2. Possibly would be good to add more moments of non-interview where she is doing her cooking/interacting with customers/etc.
Judge 3
Positives: Speaking of just the content I think it was told very well, congrats to Emery. I think the way it was shot and paced out was very professional. Seemed like a recruiter ad you’d see on tv at a certain point. Every person speaking sounded clear and even. All in different locations made it sound very smooth and made the whole thing come across easy.
Improvements: I think the song selection was a bit of a “corporate vibe” which works for an ad but for a doc is a bit more of a unique choice. I didn’t hate it but maybe could have been improved. The lighting on some shots were a bit harsh on the lighting definitely looked good overall though.
Judge 4
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Judge 5
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