Evaluation

                                                                           Evaluation



In this evaluation, i will describe the aims and context of the practical project i had worked on for this year. I will discuss the strength and weaknesses of the project and briefly show what my intent was with the project including the stylistic approaches and the featured content including interviews, extra footage and commentary who have worked with, and including, Robert Rodriguez.

For my practical project, i completed a step out line for a documentary discussing the Latin American influences that are seen with in the films of Robert Rodriguez that would be featured as a bonus feature on a DVD/Blu-ray re-issue of the "El Mariachi" trilogy. The documentary consisted of seven separate scene each highlighting different events in Rodriguez's career that were relevant to the subject material and could be used as main examples. The format was set up as a table which included the scene number, a scene description, slug-line, ending and central question and conflict (if any, depending on the style of the documentary).

The documentary was inspired by the stylistic approaches seen in Robert Rodriguez's films which made me want to go against the conventions of typical documentary, such as basic, clean editing, formally delivered information and the overuse of still images, and make these stylised aspects run consistently through out the feature (i.e. having narration, splitting scenes into chapters/ acts with Spanish titles .etc) I wanted to included celebrities and other film-makers who have associated with Rodriguez in the past and create the impression that they would go into detail about him as a person and creator to gain some background on his influences. The personal representation and the practical representation was shown in contrast to one another as opposed to being split into two sections. The aim was to place emphasis on elements of Rodriguez's first two film that came from a place of Latin American influence, with some mainstream western influence included.

The strengths of the step out line was the description of each scene. The amount of detail to describe each scene was short and concise to allow the pacing of the documentary to be as quick as it is in most Rodriguez's films and match the tone in which he generically creates. I added some descriptions of the visual aspects of the documentary but the focus was on the discussions and the people that were interviewed in relation to the films they were in or the relationship they have with Robert Rodriguez. Another strength was the stylistic choices i had in mind for the visual aspect of the documentary. In some form of homage to his movies, i wanted to emulate some of the tropes and cliches seen in some of Rodriguez's earlier work, such as very quick and manic camera movements, withered film grade filter, multiple cameras during interviews allowing for several angles to be shot at once and quick editing leaving no pause between information unless under specific circumstances such as for comedic effect. I highlighted this in the description but i also connected each scene together with chapter which are titled in Spanish for aesthetic purposes

One of the weaknesses of the step out line was in the pacing of the documentary. Due to it's 30 minute length and the quick delivery that i wanted to address the information with, the documentary ran a risk of being too crammed with the information as it would only have a small time frame to say what it needed to. Another weakness was the level of detail which each interviewee went into. It was not specified in the step out line what exactly was said by each person, or even a basic summary of what they said individually.