Passion for Ice Cream

Process Post

Alexia Duarte and 3 OthersSimone Alexander
Sasha Rizika
Samuel Waldman

The big idea for our film is about two things, Gus, the owner of Toscanini's, and ice cream. We came up with it because we were in two different groups but both our ideas were not working and we came together for this new idea when brainstorming. Recently we found that our other interview and facts were not interesting so we narrowed our topic down to these two things.

Almost everything did not go as planned. Our first two projects did not go as planned because both of ideas were not going to work. That's when we came up with the idea of passion for ice cream. Then, we started putting together our video and we realized it we very boring and it was not interesting. On the last day, after this realization, we spent the rest of the time re designing the video so that it focuses just on Gus, and ice cream. We changed our approach to making it fun and visually appealing rather than a history lesson. The only thing that went as planned was using our B roll as advantage and taking good video of ice cream and sequences. We went into this project thinking it would be more about history and learning about Toscanini's but ultimately we learned that this was boring and we needed to focus on Gus and ice cream. We think anyone would enjoy this video because its fun, its aesthetically pleasing, and it makes you want to go get ice cream. We would want our audience to take away the love and passion for ice cream.

The technical skill we learned during the studio was the different types of shots, how to use premiere, how to make a sequence, how to conduct an interview, how to use a good backround, how to take A role, how to take B role, how to use music to strengthen the mood, transitions, how to layer B role on top of A role, and more. The story telling skills we learned is to be very specific and not broad, but  to ask the right questions in an interview that are also open ended, to make sure your story structure is strong, and to make sure you are leaving the viewers with something after they watch the documentary. Also, to make one's story have different parts like interviews and good B role to make it interesting. These affected our decisions on everything like the different B role we were going to shoot, the interview background, the types of shots, and more. Both the technical skills and storytelling skills affected everything we did in the process of making this documentary.

If we could do something over it would be to go back to the ice cream parlor and get more B role ice cream but to also interview Gus and ask more questions about ice cream rather than the history. It was not until the last day that we became aware of our complete idea of our topic. Therefore, it would have been better if we took more A role of Gus talking about this specific idea of ice cream.

When describing the entire process of this documentary, when planning and pre production we made a shot list,  interview question list, gear together, and sent emails. When shooting, we shot two different interviews and a lot of different B role of ice cream. After for post production we came back with all of the footage and edited, mixed sound, and ultimately put everything together.