Documentary Reflection

Why did you choose the documentary topic/style?
I chose to do a participatory/interactive documentary in the form of a vlog style. This allowed the audience to visually see myself as the filmmaker and take part in my journey of being a vegetarian for 2 weeks. This style seemed best fit for my topic as I could express my feelings and thoughts directly to the audience in a more casual way then say an expository style or observational. 

What was the purpose of your documentary?
The purpose of my documentary started out a bit unclear and because of this I nearly changed my topic. I was originally just becoming a vegetarian for 2 weeks because I wanted to see if I could actually accomplish this however after reevaluating around day 4, I wanted to change this purpose to see if I could lose weight from this alter in my diet. The end results were that I did, losing up to 2kgs. Although my purpose was met, there were other minor purposes to my documentary such as discovering how my parents reacted to this and how resilient my body can be. 

What were your inspirations?
My inspirations for this documentary came from my teacher who suggested I did this as my topic as my family are big meat eaters. Other inspirations was my own curiosity as to see whether or not I could actually do this as I have always wanted to try. Pushing my body to new limits has always been a passion of mine so taking part in this was really eye opening as I learnt a lot about my body and the impact meat has. 

Did you experience any difficulties? And how did you resolve them?
As mentioned before, finding the purpose of my documentary was a difficulty for me as I wanted to create an interesting yet engaging documentary and I felt like I wasn't meeting those requirements. However, turning to the purpose of weight loss this allowed me to keep going as I had a goal and this motivated me to finish this challenge. 

Did you spend enough time to produce quality work?
I think I overall gave myself enough time to film and create all the media necessary to produce my documentary however I didn't spend enough on editing. Also, if I had planned a little better I could have included more and better content. 

If you had the opportunity for more time to work on the task, what would you change?
If I more time I would have down a better editing job like including background music and also filming landscape instead of portrait so that there wasn't black strips either side of the documentary. I could have also gone around to restaurants and cafes looking at what options they provide for vegetarians, more of an uncovering the truth documentary. I also would have liked to interview family members on there perspective on this and also friends who are vegetarian to see how they live their lives.