Documentary, History, Non-Fiction
A hypothetical documentary film teaser & trailer - 'Factual Film' module, second year of university
A still from the trailer
For this module, we were tasked with creating trailers and teasers for hypothetical documentaries on topics of our choosing.
I, being of Hungarian heritage, opted to explore what significant events followed Hungary's divorce from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918.
However, due to limitations set by my lecturer, I could only focus on one specific event. Thus, I did my research on the 1956 Revolution.
Documentary Initial Trailer
I recorded the voice-over for this myself (badly). Don't think voice-over work is in my future!
To gain more insight into this time period I asked my mother what she knew about this revolution. She told me that my grandfather would likely have stories of personal experiences from that time as he would have been a young man then, and that we should ask him for an interview.
Being a man of many stories he did indeed have many recollections from the peak of the revolutionary days after it had migrated south from Budapest.
I was thrilled to be able to obtain personal perspective for my documentary! After our impromptu call, however, I realised there was some issue with the recording. It wasn't a technical one but much worse...
'The One With The Two Versions'
When it came to filming my call with my grandfather we did not have a very professional set-up. It was just mother holding her phone and a little lapel mic, and me filming it with my camera on a tripod.
Since grandpa's stories were so fascinating, and news to my mother as well, she couldn't help but appear shocked and was at times unable to contain her excitement.
In the initial cut of the interview teaser she moves around a lot and I was given (fair, understandable) feedback that her faces were "too distracting".
To circumnavigate this issue, I zoomed in on the phone as much as I could in the final edit.
While not exactly the optimum outcome it still worked better than having another person making distracting faces in the background.
In editing the trailer AND the teaser, I translated and manually subtitled all of the Hungarian dialogue in Adobe Premiere Pro.
The Final Documentary Teaser
The final teaser submission - WITH the zoom
