My Journey of Documentary Making: The Truth We Almost Hid My journey of Media design and critical has been quite a fun ride. It's not about the documentary film in the end, in fact how it changed us and brought out different creative versions of each one of us. When the roles came out, we were supposed to make a group of five members. I chose the role of Director. As director, I wasn’t just telling my truth. I was creating space for others to speak even those who are uncertain about the masks we all wear. The camera became a bridge between silence and our hidden self. This wasn't just about the story we were supposed to uncover rather It was about the struggle to tell it in a way that everyone could really understand and relate to it.

 

I started to talk to each member in my class to find the right roles for my crew, for editing and cinematography I took in Alvin and Ambrose for their prior experience in similar fields, for sound we had Huzaifa as his bachelors had a major subject to this specification. Lastly, the role of a producer was really important for our crew and the decision was difficult but we talked with a few members as a whole group and ended up adding Rumeena to the crew. Our first meeting as a crew was in Mall of Emirates where we met with two ideas each. That day after a lot of insight from each one of us and discussion we finalized we will take the idea of how life is at two extreme ends for different people and how we all tackle them in our own ways. We explored how and why do people hide their real emotions and identities, even when the world today respects transparency? Or is it just a fantasy thought? As a director, I set out to explore the hidden layers of masks we all wear and how technology, AI, social pressure. Our documentary went through stages of production described by film historian Bill Nichols (2017), moving from conceptualization to research, filming, editing and how to engage the audience. That day we went home with this idea and next we met at university to even explore this topic more for the pitch presentation, that was when our idea took a proper shape as we were writing down the storyline/shots/cinematics etc. The pitch went really well with the vision I had as a director and the story idea was not only about how we shape facts, but also silence, fear, and memory. The documentary film was supposed to be semi-performative where it becomes part-confession(for the interviewees), part-self-discovery(for crew and audience), part-emotional archaeology(for all).

 

Cinema has not only captured fantasy stories but also attempted to reveal what lies beneath human behavior. From the early work of Dziga Vertov, who used cinema to expose “life caught unawares”life caught unawares (Vertov, 1929), documentary where she used it as a tool for revealing the unseen. The working title The Truth We Almost Hid reflected that tension between presence and silence, between the truth that exists and the truth we dare to show.

 

Next stage came where we were supposed to start shooting for interviews, we gathered tripods, camera and lights which Alvin and I already had and did a google teams meet as I was traveling for work and we discuss about the angles and camera placement after I made a short notes from Rabiger readings chapter 9 where camera positioning and lights placement was discussed so we could use it for all interviews as a check list. The first interview was for an AI specialist whom I knew as a judge for AI software being developed for the Abu dhabi govt. We conducted it in my office workstation with all the lights set up manually and after talking with the interviewee gradually we started rolling. As it was my first time taking an interview, I was nervous too but the experience was really satisfactory after we got the data we needed. The second interview was with my CEO who is Japanese and with whom I have quite friendly terms. We got a lot from it if it wasn't really all relevant to our topic but as an individual we learned a lot about how life used to be before the digital era came and almost ate all the authenticity out of us. Half way through the interviews with cinematics were still not all figured out as we only had the idea of what we wanted but wasn't written down the exact storyline for it. The third interview was of my Art professor from bachelors at his home in Al Ain. On our way to his apartment we discussed with cinemastics and noted down how we wanted to shoot them and finalized the locations but still the storyline which was supposed to be run along with interviews wasn't yet in writing. The interview went well followed by our last interview of a Media professor from our on-going semester, the toughest one as interviewing my own professor was making me really sweat-out but it was insightful and gave us different perspective of our story,”when she mentioned that wearing a masks its bad for everyone as some only explore them better after they feel their true self is hidden and can't be seen.”

 

Interviews completed and discussed with Aron and daniel to clear further doubts we had about our story directing, same day we sat in university cafe and started writing down our story where I was the painter(who was going to paint after her levels) and there was a catalyst interview side by side we did straight shoot two days at my apartment where curtains and props were moving all around with lights and so much discussions happening, we had food cameras and paints everywhere with a lots and lots of re-takes. Lastly we did some shoots at a metro station running on the platforms on both ends to get the exact horror we needed along with some B-rolls at university with masks guy(huzaifa) scaring students over the campus. The editing credit as a Director i would give to Alvin as that really is his expertise and helped by huzaifa with all the sound effects he came up with, the production part was amazingly handled by Rumeena our crew star and lastly Ambrose who drove us everywhere and got perfect camera angles.

 

The journey from concept to execution proved that truth is not something easily spoken or shot in fact it must be earned, witnessed, and sometimes performed to finally be understood.

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References

https://www.kufunda.net/publicdocs/Bill_Nichols___Introduction_to_documentary-1-3and6.pdf https://www.artforum.com/features/a-revolution-in-film-the-cinema-of-dziga-vertov-197128/