Doc diary-Last blog

Yesterday, 6 June 2013, was the last day of our documentary class. I was kind of sad. Before sleeping and after waking up, I kept thinking about my time at Medill and how time just flew by. Ten weeks seemed like a long time when the doc class started two months back but now it feels like it was just yesterday when we were shooting for the skill-test video.

Our finished piece will be showcased on 13 June 2013 at Harris Hall, Northwestern University. It makes me proud and nervous at the same time. My mom and my husband will be there and I hope they like our (my team) work. I could not have done it without my family’s unconditional love and support.

Making this doc has been a roller-coaster experience. When we started shooting almost six weeks back, we thought we would be making a movie on the men only hotel in Chicago (only two of a kind hotel left) with one of the hotels, Ewing Annex Men Only hotel as our main focus. We decided to break the stereotype that only drug addicts, homeless people live here, in our movie. And instead show that people like us; everyday people live here too by focusing on one character, a white young male student representing residents like him. Pretty straightforward, journalistic approach devoid of any hand holding of the audience was our way to go forward with this doc.

But no! That. Did. Not. Happen. What happened was just the opposite. Just a week to go before we showcase our doc to our super talented cohort in particular and Northwestern community as a whole (just the thought of it turns my stomach) our story has completely changed. Various factors led to this change. So for now and it better be, we are following a completely new genre, (at least for us) as none of us has ever done anything like this before. It is lyrical, essayist style doc that we are going for. I hate to acknowledge this but it is really making me nervous. Considering that it is our first documentary, we definitely have overestimated our potential as filmmakers. Lol.

I am nervous to the hilt. But, I know being nervous or frustrated will not help us at this point. So I have decided to see this change in our idea as an opportunity to learn and understand something new. I watched some lyrical movies in the class and not only did I hate them and found them boring, I never thought I would be making one. So here you go. Never hate anything because you never know how that would come back at you! Laughing again….

So, more on the lyrical style documentary and the thought process that goes into it. Well, to start with, the lyrical style is driving us crazy because as Brent, our professor said, with lyrical, we can take any direction. Any direction!! It’s a blessing and a curse at the same time. Blessing because it means freedom to portray things that we want to be seen and be opinionated too at the same time. Curse, because we don’t know how to do it. Since the time, we entered into this program, all we are told is to keep our opinions to ourselves, be unbiased and let people draw their own conclusions from our work. Not anymore! Welcome to the world of documentary making.

But I am happy that we are taking this risk and I hope we make something that we are proud of or at least something that makes some sense to us and to the audience. I also think that we have this kind of confidence in us because of the great stuff that we learned in our documentary class. It taught us to be risk takers, to be creative. Brent exposed us to the different styles in which documentaries around the world are made. I am fortunate to have been a part of this class.  On that note, editing…….here I come!!

Cheers,

Shruti