Planning for interviews

 Interview questions:

1. How do you convey aspects of your personality through your favorite items?

2.  How did you develop your sense of style over the years?

3. What or who inspired you to dress the way you do and how has it impacted you as a person?

4. How do you want people to view you based off of the way you express yourself through your physical appearance?

5. Do you think your physical appearance accurately represents the person you enjoy being/ the person you aspire to be?

Coming up with my interview questions was kind of a challenge. Mostly because I had to constantly remind myself of the main point of my documentary, and that my questions should stay on topic and be specific. I feel like my fifth question isn't as strong as I want it to be. I think I'm gonna tweak it a little later if I find a better way to word it. While I was coming up with my questions I also had to make sure that each question was asking something different for the interviewee to describe and explain. I think that ,\my questions do a good job at getting out the information I need from my interviewees. Though I'll confirm that with Mrs. Stoklosa when I have my meeting with her.

Planning

 Today I'm going to start asking the people that I've chosen if they'd like to be in my project as interviewees. I chose the topic of how people express themselves through their physical appearance because I care about my physical appearance and I enjoy decorating myself with clothes that I think are cool and lip products, jewelry, etc. So, I was kind of thinking about whether or not I want my project to include myself as the beginning subject of my documentary. I feel like it could be a cool idea to start off with the creator of the documentary and then transitioning to the people that the creator associates themselves with. Me being the creator of course. However, if I do choose to do this I'd already have to start filming b-roll of myself and I do have a few ideas for what I can do for my little appearance. Since the idea of my project is gonna be mostly attached to clothes, I think the fact that I have a job at Hollister can help out a lot. I want to get some shots of b-roll at Hollister and other clothing shops too. I'm at the sawgrass mall working on the weekends most of the time so getting ahold of this b-roll isn't going to be too hard for me. 

I feel like getting some b-roll of shopping at the mall with the interviewees is such a good idea and it'll be great for the b-roll that I want. The shopping b-roll will help emphasize to the audience what types of clothes interest each person and how that helps convey their personality through the clothes and accessories that they are interested at looking at and purchasing. I also know that I want to ask them for my interview questions, what their favorite pieces of clothing are, favorite make-up products, favorite accessories, etc. They'll explain why its their favorite. This will really add onto how they demonstrate their self through their appearance. I feel like the only problem standing in my way is my camera on my phone. It's like really bad. Whenever I try to record something on my phone it comes out really laggy and with the worst quality ever. So, I'm going to either buy a camera or look around my house to see if my family has any that I could use to film. Probably gonna do that first. I really want my documentary to look natural and raw, I don't really know how to explain it. I just want a lot of handheld shots, I don't want to use a tripod for the majority of my documentary. I think I'm only going to use a tripod for the interviews.

Social media research

 Ok so, it's time for me to take a look at some ideas for my social media so that I can get started on developing it. I had trouble looking for a social media account on Instagram at first. I tried going from the source of most docuseries, Netflix. However, I couldn't really find anything about any docuseries that I knew about on their account. So, I just ended up remembering that we previously watched a few episodes of the docuseries, Abstract on Netflix for my class. I just searched up their account and found it on Instagram. Their Instagram is a great template for a social media account for a docuseries.

I'd have to create a logo for my production but my mind is completely blank when it comes to that. So, I'm gonna have to come up with something soon to make it my profile picture for when I create the social media account. I'm also going to ask that my classmates follow my account so that it can gain some type of "popularity" for my docuseries. I also still need to come up with a name. I know for sure what my topic is but I just haven't brainstormed a name for it yet. Since we need about 20 posts on our social media, I need to make my social media account ASAP so that it doesn't look like I spammed a bunch of posts in a very short span of time. What I do want to do differently from the Abstract social media is that I want to include highlights and behind the scenes posts on my account.

Researching more media texts

Since I had previously talked about the docuseries, Formula 1: Drive to Survive I just figured that I'd continue to research more about this docuseries for my project. I did some searching on Google, and I found that for marketing purposes, the Motorsport Magazine wrote about the docuseries. This is obviously a great strategy to promote the docuseries. So, for my project would I could do for my magazine part of the portfolio I can choose something kind of related to the topic of my docuseries. Since mine is primarily on the topic of how people express themselves through their physical appearance, I can choose make up brands, something like Sephora. I'm not really sure if they do magazines though, so I'd have to look more into that. Maybe clothing brands and things like that too. 

Ok so, I did some research for my possible print idea, and apparently Sephora does have a magazine. 

I had no idea about this actually, but this could work really well for me! Especially if my interviewees use products that Sephora sells. I'm not gonna advertise the products or anything like that, I just wanna see what I can do with this connection between a brand and my print. I'll see what I come up with. As for clothing brands, I think a brand like Zumiez is pretty common among people. Like, a lot of people like their clothes. Especially people my age. Zumiez does have a connection with the Thrasher magazine since Zumiez sells the skater aesthetic at their stores. They sell the Thrasher magazine and Thrasher clothes. So, if one of my interviewees wears something along the lines of this I can follow my template and go from there.

Researching media texts

 I was browsing google and I found an article on how to make a docuseries. I already know how to make a documentary since I was taught in class, but I just wanted to see what the article had to offer. While I was reading I came across a section where it talks about leaving cliffhangers at the end of each episode for the docuseries. Reading this made me think of how exactly I'm going to structure my documentary. I really want it to be the first episode of the documentary, and I wanna create a fun intro. I'm definitely gonna make my documentary the beginning five minutes of the first episode of my docuseries. So that the audience can get a good idea of what the docuseries is about. The article also mentioned a few other docuseries that I can use for inspiration like Formula 1: Drive to Survive, I'm pretty sure it's on Netflix. I might check it out.

Since the previous article talked about Formula 1: Drive to Survive, I decided to search up any behind the scenes articles that were available for the docuseries. I ended up finding one. While I was reading I eventually found where they talk about how they had some doubt on whether or not they were going to be successful with their docuseries and that they were strangers to everyone and had to slowly be introduced to everyone to actually proceed with their project. This reminded me of the fact that I need to start picking out interviewees. I already know that I'm going to interview my sister, brother, boyfriend, and I don't know who else yet. I know that I want to interview these three people in my life because I know that the three of them love to dress nice and enjoy expressing themselves through clothes. I do want to ask some strangers on how they express themselves, which I will be looking for in the upcoming days.

Genre Research

 I did some research based off of the topic that I chose for my documentary, which is like how people express themselves through their physical appearance. At first I tried searching up episodic documentaries about lifestyle and I mostly got results that were documentaries about food and eating healthy. Which is not really what my genre is about. So, I tried rephrasing. Instead I searched up episodic documentaries about how people express themselves but I didn't really get any results that I was looking for.

After a failed attempt at using google for research, I decided it would be a better idea to take a look at what past students have done on Mrs. Stoklosa's website. It took a bit to find a portfolio project that was a documentary. However, I eventually found one from the 2023-2024 A level section. Her name is Dana and she made a documentary about the role of animals. Which is pretty cool. Her magazine spread is also really cool and creative. Hers looks very much like a newspaper, which kind of inspires me to do the opposite. It makes me wanna make my magazine spread as very colorful and decorative, but not too decorative to the point where it doesn't look elegant and presentable. Like I don't want it to be too formal but I want it to represent the colorfulness and fun that comes with expressing who you are.

Project schedule

 I thought about how I would plan the production of my project. I really want the first two weeks to be consisted of me figuring out the important details that I want to be incorporated in my piece along with having a solid idea of what I want my documentary to be about and with the layout of the episodes figured out. Then I'll gather information for interviews and start conducting them as soon as possible to get things started for the documentary. I also would like to figure out where to film most of my documentary. I don't really want it to center around only one specific place. I want a variety, so I should think about locations during my second and third week. 

Later on, I'll start filming for b-roll. I know that I want to film aspects of an individual's life that contribute to their style and how it influences on their outfits and things like that. This will take time to do this for every individual that I decide to interview for the documentary. So, having to coordinate with each person for available times to meet up will probably take up some time. I think this will probably happen when I'm scheduling interviews and choosing who I'd like to interview. So around the second or third week. Then of course later on I will start choosing music and begin the editing process.

Project choice

 For my portfolio project I decided that I want to work by myself and that my project choice will be a documentary. I really want to work by myself this time because I want to have control over my creation and I really want to make it mine and something special to me. I was kind of stuck between going with the music promo or the documentary at first because I know a band that's consisted of a few juniors and a senior that go to cypress. I thought it could be kind of cool and fun to make a music promo for them. However, I ended up going with the documentary because I really want to express an idea that is special to me through a documentary. 

As for my idea for the documentary, I only have one thing in mind so far. I was thinking that maybe I could do an episodic documentary on how people express themselves through their physical appearance. Like their clothes, jewelry, make-up, hairstyle, hair color, etc. The whole idea for the episodic documentary would be that every episode would focus on a different aspect of a person's physical appearance. One episode could focus on clothes, the other hair, and the other jewelry, I thought of that layout and of another one. The other one being something like, one episode focuses on the grunge aesthetics and the main characteristics of their physical appearance and how their express themselves through it. I haven't really decided on which layout I like better for the episodes yet, but I only have those two ideas which I think are already pretty good.