The two sides: the emotional, heavy hearted response from someone who has experienced a loss along with the cold, analytical response from a medical background and factual text is clearly outlined. It most definitely leans towards simply making a taboo topic more available to the public eye instead of a debate of sorts but being such a intimate and personal subject it is almost impossible to take no side whatsoever.
I chose to have a poem narrated for the opening scene: vocals on top of images. The work then goes into the interviews -- I chose to move fluidly through all the characters' stories. Each person led into another person and back -- it worked very nicely. Instead of cutting away from the person being interviewed all the time, I presented typed facts overtop of the video as a break from the visuals.
Some symbolic imagery I employed were pictures of shoes, and flowers. The shoes pairs well with the poem from the beginning and having a lot of natural imagery I felt relates to the subject and it's fragile nature. I shot the entire thing with my iphone, including the pictures and video clips used along with the interviews. I found that sound quality is tough when the person speaking sits too far away. The lighting worked well and in fact, in order to preserve the anonymity of my characters I used the "romantic" filter on the video clips so that it puts a blur over their face. The documentary ends with suggestions on what could change to help people that experience this tragedy. Music over the video was difficult to decide on because it had to be short but I didn't want it to just cut out - also music carries such emotional baggage with it that I had to be sure it was holding the documentary where I intended.
I'm happy with where this is going and can't wait to finalize it so that I can present and distribute it.
