Week Thirteen: B-Roll and Editing

As we come to an close to on this documentary, I am really proud of all of the hard work that my team and I have put into this film. Our main course of action for this past week was to obtain all of our needed b-roll and to keep editing the film to our final cut. We met last Tuesday evening in the edit lab to work on editing down the interviews even more, figuring out a cleaner beginning, middle, and end for each interview scene. We also narrowed down what b-roll we wanted to film that would coincide with the interviews. As producer, I requested permission to film at all of the locations that we needed to, including on campus through the amazing Kimberly Howell. I also contacted the Head of Facilities of the Rec Center on campus to obtain permission to film there. It  took some time to hear back from them, but one cannot be afraid to make a few phone calls! We filmed yesterday in the Rec Center and have the rest of the b-roll shoot on Monday during our production day. We will also be utilizing that time to edit the film further. Overall, it's turning into quite the successful documentary.

Week Twelve: Cucalorus and Circles

This week was absolutely amazing with it ending with Cucalorus! It was a fun weekend filled with connections, fantastic films, and valuable Q&A sessions. We began the week as a group in the Edit Lab for three hours working on how we wanted the film to be edited as well as work out transitions. After much discussion, and Matt messing around in Final Cut Pro, we came up with our plan! Then we were busy this weekend attending Cucalorus. I went to the opening party, which I found to be interesting in both a negative and a positive way. I loved the location and the opportunity to network with people. It gave me the chance to talk with some fellow female filmmakers about Circles and I was recommended festivals to submit it to. But the music was very loud, making it hard to hear people.

We managed anyway and it was a fun night. I saw several features, including She's Allergic to Cats, Dark Night, The Arbalest, The Levelling, and Buster's Mal Heart to name a few. Most were followed with amazing Q&A sessions that made me excited and energized to be a part of this industry. I even got a chance to talk to the director and lead of The Arbalest (who also made the online sensation Too Many Cooks) and let them know how much I loved their awkward and amazing film. The real highlight of my weekend was the documentary entitled Tower. Using found footage a rotoscope animation, the filmmakers created a recreation of the University of Texas mass shooting from their iconic tower in the 1960s. It was even more inspiring that the producer of this film was a UNCW Film Studies alumni, essentially doing what I want to do. Though the comedy at Dead Crow was great and Jengo's was a blast, I am glad that I was able to watch the features and shorts from this year's festival. They truly reminded me of the pure magic of film and why I want to be in this field.

Week Eleven: Interview Wrap

And it's a wrap for our interviews! Thanks to the wonderful women of the Wilmington area, we now of all three of our interviews for our documentary completely done for our 495! All we need to finish is our b-roll for one of our interviews, and then we will be in strict editing mode! I am so excited that we are so far into our film. It's so easy to think about our first production meeting when Mariah was explaining this concept to us and now we can see her idea in real life! To get back to our final interview, we filmed it this past week on Tuesday at Working Films located downtown. It was a small space with limited seating, but it worked with our three subjects. The ladies were absolutely wonderful to film, telling us stories and great advice that fit into the theme of the film. I thought that they would tell us more old anecdotes to life, but they were very bright and vibrant and realistic. I know that I say this all the time, but I truly enjoy producing when it can connect me with people in the community, bringing greater connections and friends in film and in real life. It's nice to have a community supporting you and I am glad that that is happening here in Wilmington.

Week Ten: Our Teenage Interview

We finally got our teenager interview! I am so excited that we have this interview under our belt! This past Friday we drove up to Raleigh in order to film a group of teenagers connected to us through Mariah and her family. Unfortunately, our trusted sound mixer Matt couldn't be there but we were able to get a replacement sound guy for the trip: Alex Matthews. Hugh (with a small bit of help from me) packed up the equipment and headed to Raleigh. Alex, Mariah, and I drove separately up to the home of the family of one of our teenage subjects. We then set up, introduced ourselves to our subjects, and then began filming the interview. The teenagers were very nice and open and we think we got a good interview out of them. I also confirmed that we will be filming our grandma interview on Tuesday evening with three women in their early sixties downtown. I was able to confirm with them a time and a place that worked best with our subjects and my crew. We are working tonight in the edit lab to finish up the details of editing our rough cut. We are excited to see the outcome.

Week Nine: What's Cooking, Grandma?

I can't believe it's already week nine! Scheduling keeps proving to be a somewhat tricky thing but we are almost done with film! After a very productive meeting this prior week, we were ready to film the final narrative scene of our film: our wacky cooking show starring three older women. We had a really great location that was easily transformed into what looked like a cooking show studio kitchen. The actors were phenomenal to work with, excited about our project as well as about our lives. They're grandmas, so what did you expect? Thanks to great costumes, props, set dressing, and location, we were able to wrap our scene without our allotted time frame for filming and form a bond with new film enthusiasts of Wilmington. We didn't struck gold all weekend; our interview with one of our teenager groups (one of two) canceled at the last possible moment for tomorrow, making us put a lot of weight on our other interview. We are scheduled to go film them next Friday in Raleigh. Since Matt is busy, we are looking for a replacement sound recorder for the trip. I am also in contact with our grandma interviewee and we are setting our interview for next week.

Week Eight: Keeping On

This was a really good week! I had been working this week on securing our grandma subjects for our final interview. I sent out another announcement and I received three women interested in being interviewed. I also spoke with a former Film Studies student about reaching out to more women. She gave me some great advice that I am glad she was able to provide. We also touched base with our teenage subjects, who we feel will best represent their segment of the film. On Sunday, we reshot the teenager scene that will open the film. Our teenage actresses were gracious to come back and do the scene again. Don't worry, we paid them in pumpkin spice lattes and other Starbucks drinks. For this shoot, we changed to a ursa mini instead of using the sony a7s2, which our director of photography, Hugh, seemed to be a lot more comfortable with. We took our time on set, reviewing all footage. I'm glad that we reshot the scene and I am glad that my team is willing to work so hard for this documentary. This week, I will be finalizing details for next weekend's shoot. I have confirmed our location for our grandma scene and received location photos so I'm excited for that! Overall, good week!

Week Seven: Fall Break?

The end half of this week has been Fall Break, usually a time for students to relax and spend time with their family and friends. For filmmakers, Fall Break is just like any other weekend. With only a few weeks left in our Indiegogo campaign, I have spent my break talking to my immediate and extended family members, asking them to support the cause. I have also been following up with the teenage actors from our narrative scene about reshooting next weekend. We also have been getting connected with our mother and grandmother actors to bring us in contact with our grandma subjects. I reached out to a lady recommended to me by one of our grandma actors and I am currently waiting to hear back from her. I have confirmed our location for our grandma scene, which will be at my church. It has a kitchen in it that will work perfectly for the scene. Our facebook page has been getting a lot of attention, acquiring one hundred likes in the few weeks that we have launched it. All of October, the crew has been working hard on making the film the best that it can be. We will continue to work just as hard for the rest of October.

Week Six: The Weekend of the Moms!

Okay, the title of this week's blog post is a little misleading, especially since we started the weekend off with a meeting with our grandmother actresses. We talked to them in person about the project in more detail and they said that they really loved the concept of the film. Once we completed the meeting, we had a photo shoot with the grandma actresses for our poster, which we decided to use for the cover of our Indiegogo campaign as well. Mariah and I worked worked on the campaign this week as well and we launched our Indiegogo after our meeting on Oct 1st! We are really excited for the campaign's run!

Saturday afternoon we filmed our first interview: our mom subjects! We filmed three friends in one of their homes, which was beautifully decorated in greens, blues, and beige. They dressed in neutrals to contrast the colorful wardrobe of the mom narrative scene. The interview scene was great! We were so happy with the content they spoke among themselves in the casual group interview setting. Today we filmed the mom narrative scene. For this satirical scene, we had the moms look as if they were from the 80s, with colorful backdrops, retro home phones, and a wardrobe that scream 20th century. "brat pack" style! We are really happy with the way it turned out!

Week Five: Filming Begins!

This week began the start of our filming! But, to back up to earlier, Mariah and I met with our mother actresses on Friday at our new favorite coffee shop, Lucky Joe. The three women we met with were very excited about the subject once we went over it with them in person. We had a read through of the script with them and we tweaked some of the dialogue so that it flowed better when read by them. It was a very productive meeting that left us really excited for filming next weekend!

On Saturday, we began filming for our teenager narrative scene. We filmed in front of the Fisher Student Center, as it was a place with circular tables that we really wanted (specifically for our opening shot). Our three teenage actors were nothing but professional, providing us with great performances for our scene. This shoot turned out really well and almost completely smooth except for the fact that we had several people gather for a previously not scheduled ceremony in the area above where we were filming during our last shot. Literally our last shot! But after speaking with them, they got quieter and we were able to finish shooting. We wrapped within our scheduled time, which was really nice for our first scene. Overall, it was a good experience!

Week Four: Actor and Subject Meetings & Project Preparation

This week was really good for my group in regards to our actors! As you most likely know, our film covers three age groups of women: teenagers, mothers, and grandmothers. This weekend, we were able to secure a meeting with our teenage subjects and our teenage actors at Lucky Joe Coffee.

Before our meeting, we arranged to film a good chunk of our b-roll due in a few weeks on Saturday morning. We all met up at New Hanover High School and got b-roll of the school in relation to the teenager scenes. My group also determined at our meeting that week that we wanted to use crowd sourcing for some of our b-roll for our film. So with the combination of our b-roll at New Hanover High School and crowd sourcing, we feel confident that we have our b-roll covered.

During our meeting with our actors and subjects at the coffee shop, we met with the subject of our documentary first. She helped us secure an interview location (her house), and friends to talk to (our other subjects) and we developed a relationship with her where she feels comfortable with us. We left our teenage actors feeling the same way: excited to be a part of our project and comfortable working with us after having our meeting. We did a read through of the script and discussed the scene and their roles in it. Overall, it was a very successful meeting. We left them with the video/audio release forms so their parents could fill them out (because they are under 18).

Week Three: Casting Calls and Calendars

Casting Call
This week has been going really well, especially since one of my biggest concerns has been put to rest. After I posted our original casting call for Circles on Facebook and a few of its casting call pages, I only received one actress interested in being a part of the film. After noticing that the narrative crews were making visually striking casting call images, I decided to consult with my group on whether we would like to do this too (especially since we were looking for actresses for our narratives scenes on top of subjects). We all agreed that it was a great idea and Mariah worked on creating one! Once she finished it, I began posting the casting call on Facebook once again and on all of the appropriate casting call pages. Thanks to Mariah's suggestion, I also contacted a professor in the Theater Department to fin d out where would be the best place for me to post my casting call to reach the biggest range of actors in Wilmington. She suggested to post in the Wilmington Theater Community Facebook page. Thanks to her advice and Mariah's new casting call image, we have received several headshots and resumes! In our next meeting we will be narrowing down our choices to determine our cast.


Pre-Production Work
The Circles crew has been working hard these past few weeks, meeting with a screenwriter to write our short narrative scenes, discussing props, and looking into locations. With part of our cast locked down (our teenage category), we have also been putting our energy into our pre-production presentation. I gave my teammates a deadline to have all of their Google Calendars updated so I could make our shooting schedule. Since they have done that, I have been using the syllabus and the information of our project to get started on our shooting schedule. In our weekly meetings on Tuesday, we will be diving in deeper to our pre-production presentation.

Week Two: Interview Research

This week, the Circles crew sat down and discussed what we thought were the questions to ask our Expert Interviewees. In order to brainstorm these questions, we all worked together to come up with the bios our Expert Interviewees. As director and producer, Mariah and I came up with the bios and ten questions for two interviewees each and Matt and Hugh came up with 10 questions and the bios for one interviewee each.

The Expert Bios and Questions can be found here. You can also find it on the Google Drive. In summary, we decided to break up our Expert Interviewees into the three groups of women that we plan on interviewing: teenagers, mothers, and grandmothers. Within each group, we had experts who 1. talked behind her friend's back and 2. was talked about behind their back.

My group also spent some time working as a group to come up with 104 (that's right, 104!) things to schedule. This can also be found on the Google Drive, but you can also just click right here! Working as a team, it was a lot easier to get past 100 things on our list because we all brought in different perspectives

I also spent some time reading The Expert Interview. Something that I really liked out of the slides was the slide that mentioned the "softball" questions, which are questions to warm up the interviewee before getting into the hard questions. I think that using such warm up questions is a really good way to start off an interview in order for everyone to feel comfortable.


In the wise words of Alfred Hitchcock, "In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director."

Week One: Concept Research

In preparation for our documentary entitled Circles, which centers around women shaming each other throughout their life, I researched documentaries and articles on the subject. Through my research, I discovered that women shaming other women is closely tied in with "slut" shaming, which includes shaming women from women and men alike.






Filmmaker Emily Linden's 2016 documentary, Unslut: A Documentary Film, talks about what it means to slut shame, it's negative effects, and what we should do to stop it. In an interview with Girl Talk HQ, Linden explains how women of any age can experience the shame and bullying that comes with being labeled as a slut and how society and education aren't doing much to change such behavior. Linden also goes into detail about how the label of slut is closely linked with what women wear and it becomes the norm for it to be their fault that they are called sluts. The filmmaker even admits that she slut shamed other women for years before understanding that many of these women were victims. Unslut proves to be a film that can start a conversation.





Vera Papisova wrote an interesting article for Teen Vogue in order to educate fellow women on slut shaming. In "5 Things You Need to Know About Slut Shaming," Papisova gets straight to the point and writes that women slut shame each other in order to not be labeled a slut themselves. In quoting Dr. Ebony Utley, Ph.D and intimacy expert, the article states, "We live in a patriarchal society, and women are trying to find places where they can fit and be acceptable. The best way to do that is to put someone else down. As long as there are 'bitches' over there, as long as there are 'sluts' over there, then you’re safe because you’re not one of them. That’s what makes 'slut' so easy.” Many women are trying to fit into the society that they were placed into instead of changing a skewed society, which leaves many women unsympathetic towards each other.




In talking with my group about our film on women shaming, we did discuss that our project doesn't simply cover women calling each other 'sluts,' but the act of women talking behind each other's backs, especially those who are friends. Within our discussion in class and in our group meeting, however, we did agree that much of the shaming between women had to do with their appearance or their clothes. When the clothes are deemed "too sexy," the term 'slut' is typically thrown around, but when the clothes are "too cheap," "too different," or "the exact thing Emma is wearing," other hurtful terms are still used among girl groups. And typically behind someone's back.






In my research to find more documentaries on the subject, I met a large brick wall. Emily Linden's film seems to be the only documentary that I could find that addresses slut shaming, which doesn't completely deal with our film about women shaming women. In the narrative world, however, there are a few popular films that deal with this issue and can be viewed for research:

• Mean Girls (2004)
• Heathers (1988)
• Easy A (2010)
• The Duff (2015)
• 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Each of these films centers on females putting each other down for a higher social status or to simply fit in. Each antagonist uses their enemy's sexual history against them, either deeming them too "loose" or too "pure." Yet, the antagonist of the film usually isn't the protagonists strict mortal enemy. They tend to be or were once best friends.


In the articles below, women write of why they think women shame other women (or in more inclusive terms "why do we shame each other?") and how we are all conditioned by our media and culture to do so. Writer Charisse Thompson noted that she couldn't help but think Samantha was such a slut when she watch ed Sex and the City for the first time, despite believing that a woman participating in healthy intercourse is natural. In another article by Meg Gibson, studies are showing that women aren't just shaming each other in real life behind their friends' backs, but over social media. Women tweet the word "slut" or "whore" about each other more than men do about women! These article show just how much of a problem there is in women shaming:

• Why Do Women Slut-Shame Each Other
• Study: Women Slut-Shame Each Other On Twitter as Much as Men Do
• Attention: Females Stop Slut Shaming Other Women
• The Psychology Of Bitchiness: Women Use Slut-Shaming As A Defense Tactic

After all my research on women shaming, I am sad to say there isn't more information on the subject, especially in regards to friends talking behind each other's backs. I hope that our documentary is able to provide a platform for the issue and that we can start a much needed conversation.


In the wise words of Tina Fey (via Ms. Norbury in Mean Girls), "you all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it ok for guys to call you sluts and whores.”