The Overlooked Mother: Black Women In America - ID# 194

Homewood-Flossmoor
Documentary
Entry Description

This is a documentary about the high maternal mortality rates of black women in America that I felt needs to be addressed. The documentary gives personal anecdotes and ways to prevent the mortality rate from being so low.

Copyright Info

Recent Teacher Comments

  • 4/25 10:07 am - The first frames of the documentary telegraph that this is going to be an important story. The key interview is well shot and composed, but it would have been more effective if the interviewee’s eyeline was off camera rather than directly into the lens. Overall, the storytelling is compelling and dynamic, making for a provocative and effective documentary.
  • 4/24 9:26 pm - Keepers: Tremendous job telling a story that needs to be heard. It is shameful that childbearing people of color have such higher incidents of mortality during birth. I hope that you all continue to seek out important stories such as these and provide a voice for those that need one. Good overall balance and pacing of interview footage and broll. Good music choice. The mix is good. Improvements: Careful with your text on the screen. The two stats regarding myths about black women would have been more powerful if it had been spoken by one of your interview subjects. When telling your story, look for moments to cut back on the interview dialogue. Use natural sound from the broll to help tell your story as well. For example, when showing the doula class, let's hear some of that instruction for a beat or two. Additionally, and perhaps this wasn't possible, but consider following the doula around a bit and getting additional broll of her on the job. Obviously, confidentiality might prevent this, but show her getting out of her car at a person's house or entering a hospital. Just having those little moments can add so much visually. This breaks up the monotony of having all dialogue come from one or two interview sources. Look for opportunities in your story to use more than one song. A documentary of this length should have about 3 songs at least. Look for opportunities to change music according to the beats of the story or the mood of the story. The same song for the entire duration grows stale. Keep things fresh and push the emotional dynamic further with additional songs.
  • 3/4 7:14 pm - +very informative +interviewees are very knowledgeable -bit of a hiss on your audio for first interviewee -make sure camera is eye-level with interviewee
Judge 1

Positives: Super informative! I found myself equally learning and caring at the same time! Fantastic!

Improvements: Curious if you could have started off this piece with something that grabbed my attention and brought me into this story rather than starting with just the interview?

Judge 2

Positives: 1. Very powerful story and well done with your interviews. Your subjects trusted you to tell their story and you did a good job. 2. Nicely lit interviews, adds to the tone/serious nature of this subject matter.

Improvements: 1. The edit starts sort of abruptly with some rough audio. Possibly start with broll or a moment of music.. 2. Some rough portions of the edit with clipped audio bits that could be smoothed over. Could add more "breather" moments to let viewer reflect mid film.

Judge 3

Positives: I think it was very informative and engaging, very well told story/perspective. I think the music fit very well and I think the bits used from the interviews are great and informative, it kept the same tempo throughout the entire thing and was a very easy to enjoy product.

Improvements: I think it looked really good but the second speaker in this you could see the lights reflecting in her glasses, the first speaker was also a little over exposed it looked like but good overall. The sound for the first speaker was very noisy, I know libraries are hard to film in for this reason sometimes but I definitely heard it, it could have been the speakers I was listening to them on but that’s something to definitely think about and get room tone when you film day of in the future.

Judge 4

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Judge 5

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