Week 1: 

This week I did pre-work for my project by watching many documentaries and then analyzing the techniques that they used to tell a story. Took notes on this and on how I would like to incorporate these techniques into my own documentary. Talked with my project mentor (my uncle) about what exactly I am going to be filming and when would be the best time to go to the ranch to begin initial filming. 

 

Week 2:

This week I began the filming process. I captured footage surrounding, cattle vaccinations, daily chores, and newborn calves. There were some problems that I encountered regarding the audio of my documentary (read Critical Reflection #2 for more detailed information). 

Photo 1: Cattle being fed.

Photo 2: My uncle preparing the shots for the cattle to be vaccinated with.

Photo 3: Cattle have been corraled into a pen and it is being shut.  

Week 3:

This week I did a good amount of troubleshooting starting with trying to get my footage off of my camera and onto my computer. There was an issue with not being able to install the needed software but that was sorted out. Once I got the footage onto my computer I did work surrounding what questions I am going to ask my uncle next time I film. I also contacted my uncle about when would be the best time to go back to the ranch. 

 

Week 4: This week I went back to my uncle’s ranch to do some more filming. The plan for this week was also to capture some footage of my uncle explaining the things that I had previously shot. However, I do not think that I got enough footage of him talking because after a while I ran out of questions to ask. Once I start putting the footage together though I can always call him and do another interview. In addition to that, I also captured some more footage of daily work. For the most part, there was not anything exciting that happened, but on the 28th in the evening there was a calf that had to be pulled at the vet.

 

 

Week 5: This week I began the editing and storyboarding process.  At the start of the week, I was very confused about how to start editing together all of the footage for my documentary. However, after a meeting with Susan, I got a much clearer idea of the direction that I should go in. I did some storyboarding to decide the visual story that I want to tell and began picking out my best footage and assembling it in Imovie. Now at the end of this week, I have realized that I am going to probably be spending a lot of time editing down the footage that I have since currently, my documentary is over 40 min long in Imovie. I also realized that I am going to need more voiceover for my documentary because I don’t think that I asked enough questions to tell the story that I want to with my documentary.

 

Photo 1: I started off the week by sorting through my footage to determine everything that I have. I then looked at what I thought was the best footage and since I have lots of footage of the same thing I also needed to figure out which ones I wanted to use.

Photo 2: I began assembling what I determined to be the best footage of each section. (sections include: cattle being fed, cows being vaccinated, newborn calves being weighed and tagged, etc.)

 

 

Week 6: I started off this week with a bunch of meetings. I had a meeting with Susan to show her my progress from last week. During this meeting, we discussed some more questions that I should ask my uncle and talked about how it might be helpful for viewers to know a little bit more about who he is. A few days later I met with my uncle (my project advisor) to talk about the new questions that I had come up with. I sent him my new list of questions and we set a date for me to come out and film his answers. At the end of the week, I went to his house to get the footage of him answering my questions. 

Photo 1: This is how I planned out my documentary and thought about what I still needed voiceover footage for.

Photos 2-4: Photos of his house and just the general surrounding area of the ranch. After talking to Susan earlier in the week I thought it was a good idea to get some photos of the location to provide context to the viewers.

Photo 5: This is a photo of a bottle calf that my uncle now has. It was abandoned by its mother after the mother had twins and only accepted one of them.

Week 7: I started off this week by looking at all of the voiceover footage that I got last week. I had to sort through that and catalog all of what I got so that I could arrange it properly in my final documentary. Overall the majority of this week was spent editing my documentary and preparing for my final presentation. Editing has been a tedious process and it has been hard to cut things out of my documentary since I spent so much time getting all of the footage that I have.