My critical reflection

My Critical Reflection

The Art of Comedy

The Website

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The Full Story

Before I finally share the final excerpt of our documentary, I would first like to mention the full story.

The Full Story
 This documentary follows two comedians, Chris Perez and Robert Solomon, as they try to uncover the art of comedy. Our reason for making this documentary is because we believed that stand-up comedy is sometimes looked over as a hobby and is not considered an art form. We wanted to showcase the importance of comedy, and truly demonstrate that it takes more than just a good joke to be a comedian. Our main focus is Robert Solomon because he is just starting out as a comedian, and Chris-already being a comedian- serves as the voice of reason. We also wanted to capture Robert live as he performed for his second time stand-up comedy.

The 5-min Excerpt
The 5-minute excerpt that we chose was the first 5 minutes of the documentary. In these first 5 minutes we have an introduction of the characters, and an introduction to out story. For our opening credits, we chose to make it funny, and visually express each comedians' personality. We paired our intro with some fun, quirky music that kept thatfun feel to the film. We chose not to do a voiceover narration because we wanted the artists to tell the story themselves.  This also kept the feel of the documentary light and fun.

Making the Poster

    In order to make the poster the way I pictured it,  I had to use Photoshop. I had never, ever used Photoshop in my entire life. So I grabbed a computer, looked up "how to make yourself a cartoon on Photoshop," and then just started working. I had no idea what any of the Photoshop terminologies  meant let alone what they did. I'll admit i got stuck a couple of times, and sometimes the computer would freeze for no reason. But after 9 hours, I have to say that I couldn't be happier for the way this poster came out.

How to make yourself a cartoon: click here

Photo-Shoot

    During our interviews with Robert, not only did he walk into my house with a green mini-skirt, he also wore a Brazzers shirt. Although this was a bit inappropriate, it was part of Robert. It was his daring jokes and fearless attitude that made Robert such a great guy. I thought that his bold statement spoke a lot about comedy, and it was then that I came up with the Idea to make Robert into a cartoon for our poster.


  On Wednesday night, I had a photo-shoot with Robert. I just told him that I wanted him to wear his mini-skirt, his Brazzers shirt and to just be himself. Robert did just that.

 

The Million Dollar Idea

Bob Marley

    On Saturday April 11, I had the opportunity to meet Eduardo Sanabria (Edo), a very respectable and talented cartoonist, in my art class. He showed us a bit of his work and taught us the basics of cartoon art. What's interesting about his art is that he utilizes both his skills for art and Photoshop to create very unique cartoons. His class inspired me to do something similar for our documentary poster.

Eduardo Sanabria

Steve Jobs

  For our poster, we knew we wanted it to be fun and capture the essence of comedy. At first, we were going to use a photograph of Robert performing, but then I came up with the idea to use what I had learned in my art class and apply it to our poster. I had the idea of using a photograph of Robert, and make it a cartoon with an influence of pop art. This would make the poster more intriguing and unique.  My only setback, however, was that I had never used Photoshop in my life.

View  more of Edo's work here:   Edo's Pinterest

Plan B

   Finally, the night we had been waiting for. Robert was going to perform stand-up comedy live at Improv. But then, an hour before the show, Robert calls me and tells me that the club was closed for the night. We were counting on this night to showcase in our documentary, this footage was critical for our documentary. But there was nothing we could do, so we devised a plan B. We decided that we would use the first 5 minutes of our documentary where we would introduce Robert and Chris, and then our story-line would lead up to Roberts big night.
 

Interviewing Robert

Robert Solomon

      The next day, Christina and I interviewed Robert Solomon. The interview was not what we expected at all. He was hysterical, and made us laugh the entire way through. When he walked into the room and was wearing a green mini skirt and his T-shirt read: Brazzers (an adult-video company). Having talked with him the night before had really helped him open up with us. The best part of the interview was that it wasn't a normal interview. When he made jokes, we would play along with them, making it more fun and natural. We wanted to capture Robert as himself and at the same time get a great interview. We managed to do both, and I love how Roberts personality and great comedic timing made the interview so fun to watch.

Meeting Robert

    Robert Solomon is a unique 19 year-old with a passion for comedy. Our documentary is based on the art of comedy, but it mainly focuses on his story. On Monday night, I had the opportunity of interviewing him for the first time. I went to his house with the expectation of getting filler shots of his room, and anything that described Robert.

"However, when I got there, I realized that he was actually really camera shy."

     I was able to get some footage of him talking and items in his room that were meaningful. Afterwards, I felt like it was my job to make him feel more comfortable. So I turned my camera off and just started talking to him. I wanted to know who Robert Solomon was, and I knew that if I didn't do something to make him feel comfortable, he wouldn't have been himself on camera. I told him that on Tuesday we would be doing the interview portion with Christina, so to just relax. I put my camera away, and for the next hour, I talked to him and got to know a little about Robert Solomon.

Drawing Inspiration

I have never made a film, let alone a documentary. I researched for ways to make a documentary but then came to the realization that I'm a visual learner. I found this website where they shared the short documentary films of the week. After watching a few films, Christina and I stumbled upon a documentary film, "If I Die On Mars," about an upcoming launch to mars in 2025. Not only was this documentary very inspiring and honest, but it was visually mesmerizing. We wanted to do an opening similar to theirs because it introduced the interviewees and the plot of the documentary in a very creative way.

Click here to watch video:
 If I Die On Mars

First Day of Filming

On Wednesday night, Christina and I went to a comedy writing class at Blue Dog Acting Studio where we met up with comedian Chris Perez. Apart from doing standup comedy, he is also a teacher at the studio. Christina and I joined the class for the night and later we interviewed him. The class itself was so incredible. There were a group of young girls writing comedic lyrics to a blues track and then improvising verses to another blues song. Chris himself was probably one of the coolest guys I had ever met. He was so welcoming and encouraged me and Christina to film. We had the opportunity to watch some great acting pieces written by students and I even got to sing some blues. This project has really opened up a whole new passion for filming that i thought I never had.

The Art of Comedy

 

For our documentary film, we decided to do it on the art of comedy. We will be following the lives of comedians and finding out why they enjoy making people laugh.  Luckily we were able to two extraordinary comedians that do standup comedy, Robert Solomon and Chris Perez.  I'm very excited about this documentary because I share a passion for the stage and I truly appreciate the job of a stand-up comedian. We will also be going to Improv, a comedy club, to capture the magic of comedy. I'm so excited to film this documentary because not only is it something that I've never done before, but working with these people is going to be so fun. I just want to say that this project has really given me the opportunity to go to some incredible places. I can't wait to get started. 

Finding our Focus

In the beginning of the year, Christina and I wanted to do a documentary based on the arts. We were planning on interviewing different types of artits such as musicians, dancers, artists, ators etc. Unfortunately some of our plans were not going to work out, so we decided to start from scratch.

. Before we came up with a new idea, I found a blog, udemy, where author Matthew John discusses what to think about to come up with a documentary idea. One of the biggest things that caught my attention was one of the firts things Matthew had said:

"Make a movie about something that you're passionate about."

Christina and I are both fasinated with poeple. We love finding what makes people happy, sad, excited. We love learning about people and their passions. Luckily that day I had heard hat a friend of ours had done a stand-up comedy act at a club called Improv. I have always admired people who can get up in front of a large crowd and make people laugh. Instantly, we knew we wanted to base our documentary on him. 

https://blog.udemy.com/documentary-ideas/

Critical Reflection

Here is my critical reflection, I hope you guys enjoy it just as much as we enjoyed making it.

                                   Limitless Critical Reflection

Limitless

    Well here it is, Limitless. I cant believe we finally finished our short film. I'm incredibly proud of how it turned out. We got some incredible shots and I have had the time of my life making this film. We go to go to some really great places and meet some incredible people. The best part is that we got to dance while doing this project.