How does "Faith" represent social groups and issues?
Faith gives the floor to religious leaders and church members, giving them a platform to discuss their respective faith, community, and how it affects them. The main purpose of the documentary is to show how Faith connects throughout different religions, and how despite differences Faith is a common factor. As for the representation of each group, Catholics and Jews, I believe that the interviews we conducted, and how we structured the piece to connect the religions, helped break stereotypes on each group, and showed how they are more similar than what initially meets the eye. While I think we did a good job, If I were to do this documentary again I think I would also ask for personal stories and moments to give parts of the documentary a more personal feel. Overall, I feel like the piece is little surface level and showing real personal struggles with Faith or any other stories showing why Faith is important in someone's life, would make the documentary more authentic and a better representation.
How did research inform "Faith" and its use or challenges of conventions?
Research was a big part of what shaped Faith as a project and why we made some decisions that we did. I was unfamiliar with philosopher Soren Kierkegaard's work but after research with my teammates we decided to incorporate som eof his ideas into the film. Most notably, his "leap of faith" idea, which says that an individual abandons rational thought in order to follow something with no proof. I loved this idea because it is exactly what faith is about, and relates to both religions.
Additionally, when discussing what the style of our documentary was going to be we did thought back to our research and analysis on other documentaries in class. The docuseries "Abstract" gave me the idea to stage a lot of the B-roll, as we would be in control and wouldn't have to rely on chance.
Staged shot of our teammate Nico walking into the Shabbat Service
Common in many documentaries we watched was the crosscutting convention, which we used throughout the entire piece. Since we had two religions we had to cross cut between interviews to directly compare them and show similarities/differences. Additionally, crosscutting makes the documentary more engaging and visually appealing as the audience isn't looking at one person talking for too long. The documentary American Promise, gave me an idea of what I didn't want to do. Although it was one of my favorite documentaries I've ever watched, I knew the verite style wouldn't necessarily work for what I wanted this piece to be. I wanted the documentary to be more professional looking, so instead of casual interviews and b-roll, I went with a more classic approach. For interview framing, I had the subject on a third looking directly off camera, an industry standard. For B-roll instead of raw/shaking footage, everything was filmed on a tripod.
Interview shot example
How does "Faith" engage with audiences?
Faith engages with audiences through multiple techniques. First of all, Faith uses auditory and visual techniques like music, graphics, and B-roll to engage with viewers and give them a full documentary experience. Audio and sound is always crucial to a production. We used music to help convey tone and complement the visuals and interview dialogue. Additionally we used narration as a tool to push the story forward and to give context to some ideas for the viewers. As the narrator of the piece I worked closely with the writer to ensure that our points would come across to the audience and help bridge together different parts of the documentary.
Animated graphics were another key component of how Faith engaged with audiences. As the topic of religion and faith is a heavy and complicated topic, we used simple animation to help portray some of the more philosophical moments. This helps audiences understand the ideas by showing a simple explanation through pictures.
B-roll footage also helps audiences engage with the piece as it makes it more visually appealing and reinforces what the interviews are saying by showing what they are talking about. For example, when Heidi is discussing community in the Catholic Church, B-roll on top of the interviews shows people connected and attending mass together. By using visual storytelling the audience can connect to the interviewees on a closer level, as they can physically see examples of what is being discussed.
However, somewhere where we went wrong was in the heavy focus on biblical stories. The documentary relies on Biblical texts to prove some points about faith and the struggle for faith, however, feedback from our classmates showed that we didn't give enough context on these biblical stories. Growing up Catholic, the story of Abraham and Issac was known to me, and even though I thought we did a good job explaining it, I already knew it before so my perception was skewed. To prevent this I should have done additionally narration further explaining the story, to make it easier to understand for individuals who had never heard it before. And, I should have shown drafts to somebody unfamiliar with the story and asked them if it made sense.
In conclusion, I am so grateful for this opportunity and I learned so much from this experience. I think for our first documentary we successfully accomplished what we aimed for.
I hope my teammates and I made something that resonates with the viewers. If you are interested watch here
