Commentary: My documentary, "we do not care"

 Hello! It's been some time. As I've been reflecting on this past year, a big dissapointment is that I haven't written anything new for this blog. My creative energy lately has been largely exhausted by the demands of regular life and academics. I have managed to create something this year, though.

In March of 2022, I began working for Texas State's housing department as a Resident Assistant. I was a midyear hire, so it took me a while to adapt to the lifestyle and culture that surrounds this uniquely demanding job (much more demanding than I relized when I took it.)

Part of this job was mandatory trainings for three weeks before the start of the fall semester. Now, the housing department had just undergone a massive change in management, and, to commemorate the change they decided to implement a new "tradition" to RA training... a lip-sync battle.

This documentary follows my staff of RA's as we prepare to perform a lip-sync in the epic finale of RA training. They face trials, tribulations, and bad food.
The rest of this post will be a sort of "director's commentary" of the entire documentary, with timestamps included. If you'd like to follow along, please watch the documentary on YouTube! 


Preamble - So I jump back and forth between calling this a "documentary" and a "mockumentary." The character's (my coworkers) of the film often break the fourth wall, and it's obvious there were some heavily directed scenes mixed in with candid ones, as well as the whole arc of the film. The story arc and presentation of this film was heavily influenced by Peter Jackson's Beatles documentary Get Back. The whole story follows a group who are planning a performance, the climax is the performance itself, in between there are moments of bonding of the charactrers, arguments, etc.

0:00 - Even the beginning text is ripped off from the intro to Get Back. The "Numerious editorial choices... accurate portrait of the events depicrted and the people involved" was a straight copy paste. I thought it'd be a fun nod to Get Back and I thought it was really funny to present it in such a dramatically serious way, despite the plot that was just explained being somewhat ridiculous. The text almost serves as a narrator for the rest of the film, at least that's what I envisioned it as when I was editing it. It felt too distracting to film commentary footage of myself and splice it in between scenes, so I felt text was more appropriate. I also purposefully tried to use it sparingly, which I think is a reason I don't feel the "narrator" really gets to develop a voice, or a personality. Nonetheless, the text that ended up in the final cut served a purpose.

0:35 - I always loved the jousting scene as a cold open. I think everyone here gets a nice first impression moment with the audience. 

1:10 - When I was filming I sort of had to plan the scene in real time. I knew part of the challenge of only having one camera is trying to balance how much action or reaction footage you get. I knew it would have a very "fly on the wall" feel similar to the office, so I figured when I do get reations I'd do the classic zoom, quick pans, etc.

1:26 - I always worried it would be confusing to the audience who actually won, since neither team consisted of both Retama or both Laurel staff members (Diego and Ava are Retama, Jackson and Yodi are Laurel.) But I soon came to realize none of the footage really made a distinction between the Laurel half of the staff and the Retama half. Oops!

2:56 - The cafetria scene is where I really wish I had at least another camera. There are so many different plots/exchanges going on at the table, and I was trying to get as much of everything as I can. I recommend rewatching this scene a few times to get every word of dialogue between characters not in the forefront.

4:00 - I neglected to put in subtitles for this, but what Jackson says to Ava that makes her react that way was "You're embarassing yourself. All the eyes are on you right now!"

4:31 - Another time a second camera would be useful, I wasn't able to actually catch Madison's pasta go onto Ava's plate. Nonetheless I'm really happy how this scene turned out. I was really going for like a super mindless Kardashian-esque mellodramatic scene. The absurdity of the conflict matched with Ava's embellished "airhead" delivery really makes it great.

5:59 - Several times in the film does Jackson coldly stare into the camera lens. As if trying to make it explode with his mind. This made me insecure while filming and want to stop, so once you see the Jackson Stare that's how you know the scene is almost over.

8:25 - At this section of the film scenes of us learning the choreography are interspliced with improvised/scripted "candid" scenes (Hodge leaves the group, Yodi and Madison fight, Ava and Jackson have a private conversation, etc.) It was fun seeing how sometimes they go smoothly and the joke gets across, and sometimes it's very clumsy and sort of breaks the fourth wall, reminding people it's roughly scripted. I see it as kind of a self depricating meta joke, it's almost like admitting how not seriously this film is being taken by the people making it.

12:08 - Another "Kardashian" moment between Ava and Madison. I love this one because of how obscenely one sided the argument against Ava becomes. In the matter of one scene everyone turns against Ava and starts airing out dirty laundry. Going along with the Get Back comparison; if the staff is the Beatles, then Ava can be seen as the Paul McCartney as protrayed in the documentary. Kind of a creative totalitarian that gets dogged on by everyone in the group.

12:48 - What was left on the cutting room floor of the film was a lot of food talk. Since we had every meal together, it was a common subject of conversation.

16:19 - It's debatable whether the fight scene actually lost us points. The theory is that since a lot of other staffs had fight scenes as well, when we went last, the fights became stale.

19:25 - I liked how there was almost a meta subplot of Jackson being frustrated at me for filming everything. It's a fun throughline that brings it together nicely.

20:29 - One of the few bits of footage I got of Hannah for some reason.

22:50 - So dissapointed in how poor the video quality ended up being. We actually had two different phones recording, and neither came out in good quality. The one primarily used was slightly better, and you could see evetyone pretty clearly. My hopes was for a "rooftop performance" moment from Get Back, with cinematic cuts and zooms. 

22:43 - I was really proud of the narrative direction the post-result interviews led in to. It took what could be a Camp Rock-like conclusion, where they lost despite being the "clear winner" but have a good attitude about it anyway, into a conclusion that makes them seem like they were almost certain they would lose, yet are strangely petty about it. It was a nice semi plot twist ending, and of course Ava being the only one devastated adds to the contrast in how much the competition meant to everyone individually.

26:33 - The single best improvised moment in the film is easily this interview with Hodge. The violin line was the perfect end to "act 2" of the film. And if you pay attention, Hodge wasn't done talking, I just knew in the moment that's what I wanted to end the scene with. But he actually continued talking, and when he realizes I stopped following him, he's like, "what the fuck!"

27:54 - The bat getting into the stadium reception hall was the most unpredictable thing that happened in the film. I feel so lucky I was already filming when it happened. The camera doesn't do it justice, but the bat got insanely close to us numerous times. 

28:29 - Though not focused on, you can hear Jackson from under the table trying to get out, but can't because I am blocking him. He yells at me to move but I didn't even hear him when it was happening, I only found out about it after.

28:40 - The bat cornered TWO different people in the corners of the hall! I remember afterwards the other girl asked for the full length footage of the bat chasing her, which it did for about 30-40 seconds. The bat was only on Ava for 5-10 seconds, then it flew away.

29:01 - Somewhat of a "lost" subplot was Yodi getting her bike stolen soon after we moved in. She didn't have a bike lock on it, but thought no one would steal it if she put it NEXT to a bike with a lock. I didn't have much documentation of our conversations about it though, other than this snippet of Lilly mentioning it and a meme in the collage at the end of the credits.

29:55 - I wanted to spice up the ending, so as a kind of comedic stinger, I put "In loving memory of Andrew Hodge" to add some drama. I also thought it served as a nice "moral" idea for the film.

This documentary was a fun experimentation in film making. Thank you for watching the film and please let me know what you think about it. If I write again, it will be here. Same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel.