The Best Part

Hiii guys today im talking about day three of production, and honestly, filming was going way smoother than expected. I was actually excited to start shooting because we finally had a solid plan and a story we were proud of.

Day 1 of filming:

The day after planning we decided to start filiming right away to not waste time. Since we were filming in school, it made everything way easier. We borrowed mics and a tripod from Mrs. Stoklosa and headed straight to the LIA room to start interviewing students. We picked around five students and asked each of them to choose two questions from the list we created. They opened up about their personal experiences with the program, and it was genuinely really nice seeing them speak from the heart. After the interviews, we filmed the class working together and grabbed a bunch of B-roll clips to use throughout the documentary. Honestly, day one was extremely successful. We got home and reviewed everything, and it all looked great.

Clip from student interview:

Day 2:

We focused on getting the interview with the LIA teacher, Mrs. Rodriguez. We set up a little corner in her classroom with a clean background and let her talk about her experience with the program. Her answers were strong, emotional, and perfect for what we needed.

Last days:

After that, the only footage left to capture were the social events. Since everyone in my group went to them but I couldn’t (because they were right after school and I had to work), I took on a different job. I focused on finding a parent to interview

It took a few days, but I finally found someone, my mom’s friend, whose child was tutored last year. I asked her the same set of questions from my last blog.

Buuuut… there was a small problem.

Even though the documentary is supposed to be unbiased, it still centers around how LIA impacts the community. And her responses… were not exactly ideal. She explained that she didn’t notice much of a difference in her child’s learning because the tutoring was “too short” and the ESOL kids had to share tutors on different days. I get it, and she wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t the angle we originally hoped for.

BUT... she did talk about how LIA helped her child build confidence, so we used that part of the footage since it aligned better with our message. From there, we basically had all the footage we needed. Over the next few days, we filmed any extra B-roll just in case, and then we jumped straight into editing.

Here are some extra clips we filmed:

And that’s where we were at, definitely making progress!!