An American Dream - ID# 449
Riverside Brookfield
Documentary
Entry Description
A mini documentary on the story of Mike Angshed's ancestral immigration story.
Copyright Info
Recent Teacher Comments
- 4/23 8:39 pm - The opening is strong and pulls viewers in with the animation that connects to the voiceover. The interviews are well shot, but the color balance is a touch warm, but the shallow depth of field and the clarity of the camera is impressive. The footage where you layer documents and pan with a little bokeh is really effective and beautiful. I do wish that there was a greater use of b-roll and less reliance on the same style of tight pans of documents and use of what looks like stock footage. B-roll of him doing something would add greater depth, as it does feel a touch like oral history in that there is no sense of a greater through line with a beginning, middle and end. Furthermore you don't give us a beat necessarily or any air he keeps talking and talking wall to wall with words; it'd be good to have a bit of a turn narratively somewhere. The omnipresent music also creates a bit of stasis rather than moving the story forward in some way. Overall there are very solid production values with the interview shots and the work that you're doing filming the graphics in the documents, but I do think a greater sense of a storyline with the beginning, middle, and end would have made the documentary more effective.
- 3/26 1:05 pm - Keepers: I really like the stylized introduction. Really nice work! Also, great use of photos and scaling effects to bring both the photos and the text to life. Well done. Improvements: Make sure your interview shots follow the rule of thirds. Your subject should be looking at the interviewer, not the camera. Finally, when using two angles, make sure that one of them is a close up shot, rather than just a differing angle of a medium close up shot. From a story stand point, this needed other voices and more moments to let the story breathe. The wall-to-wall talking is very fast paced. It almost feels rushed a bit. Using a narrator and a voice to read portions of the Ford letter, allows for different perspectives and it allows you to cut down on the existing interview a bit. OR, to break up the monotony of the interview, have Mike talk to you as he looks through documents himself and explains them as he finds them. It makes the piece feel more active. Slow the pacing down a tick and this includes your broll sweeps. Slow those movements just a bit. You needed more than one song choice for this documentary. You should change songs for every beat of the story - and sometimes you don't need music at all to let nat sounds and points live in space to give them emphasis.
- 3/4 5:39 pm - +Good opening title sequence with photos--makes me think of a Netflix documentary +Nice B-roll of the photos-smoothe movement +A cam and B cam look nice! +Nice use of practical lighting (lamps) -Color for A and B cam could be matched better -Only one interview -This seems a bit more like a class assignment to tell a story about a family member's history rather than a documentary.
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