Scheduling Meetings

So a few weeks have passed and our group is realizing that we do not have as much footage as we would like to have at this point. What does this mean for us exactly? We have about 10 more days to get footage, and if we don't get something we want, we will just have to scratch the idea entirely.

You might think "why can't you film anymore after 10 days? The project is not due until May 18th." Well if you have never edited footage before you might be surprised to know that it takes a VERY VERY long time. I timed myself during a previous project and it took me on average 10 minutes of editing to get just 30 seconds of finished product, and that was with sound-bytes ranging from 30 seconds to 1 minute. Therefore a 30 minute final product will take about 600 straight minutes of productive editing without changing my mind or messing up the editing.

Normally I would never suggest having 30 second to 1 minute sound-bytes, but for that project I only had 4 interviews so I had to make best with what I had. A good sound-byte in my opinion is between 7 and 15 seconds long. If it is any longer make sure you have B-Roll to play because without it you could lose viewers interest.

I'll talk more about these processes when I get to the editing phase of the project but for now it's back to how hard it is to schedule meetings.

Right now we have about 2 1/2 hours of total footage. Half of it is from a Student Outreach program that the PAC is involved with and the other half is from the Ailey II show.

2 1/2 hours may sound like a lot of footage, but to fill a 30 minute documentary it is far from enough.


James Cameron’s Titanic has 240 hours and 45 minutes of footage.

The average 45 minute TV Show shoots about 60 to 90 hours of footage per episode.

TO LEARN MORE LITTLE FACTS ABOUT FILM CLICK HERE!!


We probably are not going to shoot 58 more hours of footage, so instead we are going to try and get as much footage as we can in 10 to 15 different interviews. We have decided to break the documentary into 3 chronological parts: the past, the present and the future. For each one of those 3 parts we are hoping to have about 5 different interview pieces. We probably could get away with having just 10, but I believe a documentary will have a better effect with more variety in interviews.

To decide how we are going to get these interviews our group has broken down the chronological parts, and started to list people who would be good to talk to.

The Plan

So we have now been working for about 3 weeks on our video and things have been going very smoothly. Each week of class we spend Tuesday watching a documentary, and then Thursday doing group work. On our first group work day we met with Michelle Ellia the assistant marketing manager of the performing arts center. The group members and I sat with Michelle around the conference room table, broke out our notebooks and got right to planning the documentary according to what the client, the performing arts center, wants.
After about an hour of questions and discussion, we have come to the conclusion that we will be making a twenty to thirty minute documentary celebrating the fifteen years that the Performing Arts Center has been up and running.
2011 will be the 15th anniversary for the Performing Arts Center, and to celebrate the birthday the staff is planning to have a big get together to show off the upcoming season’s programs. Also at the big unveiling of the 2011 programming they want to show the documentary we have made. Yikes, that kind of seems like a lot of pressure. Even more intimidating is that for the unveiling they are attempting to fill every seat in the PAC… that’s 800 seats.
After talking with Michelle the team decided that we are going to use a simple three part chronological format for our documentary. The first part will be the past. For this part we are going to have to sort through old footage in the basements of the school library and the Performing Arts Center. Hopefully there we can find a lot of good stories and B-roll for the film.

B-roll is video or still pictures that you show during VOs

VOs are voice overs

Together VOs and B-roll make a SOT which stands for Sound Over Tape

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Also for the history segment we have assembled a list of important people to contact when it comes to the history of the PAC. These people are the former President Garvey, the Guelchers, Dr. D’Angelo, and many more who were there or helped out when the building was erected.

The next segment of the three part theme will be the present. For this section we will interview the current staff members, i.e. Michael Fuhrman the director of the PAC, student regulars who attend the PACs shows for their benefit, community regulars and season ticket holders who come to the performing arts center to experience culture, and finally students who have performed on the PAC stage.
Also during the present section we hope to go over this past season’s programs showing footage and images from the events.

For the last section we have decided to show the upcoming programs, and where the Performing Arts Center is headed in terms of growth, programming and influence. Ellia told us that the budget for the Performing Arts Center has went from about $80,000 in its first year of operations to $700,000 this past year! That is a tremendous amount of growth over a 16 year period and we are sure that it will keep growing so we are going to do our best to predict the future of the PAC.