Project Reflection

How does Lineage represent social groups/issues?

My film, Lineage, aimed to show how a community, that would otherwise never exist, forms around the "intergenerational shows" that the local theatre company, Inside Out Theatre Company, produces. My group had decided we wanted to use interviewees of two completely different ages to achieve this goal and properly represent two sides of the topic. 

Since me and Mariana are heavily involved with this company, and the show we focused on, we decided to also pick two very different actors that came from two very different acting backgrounds. Lito, is older, and has been working with gymnastics for a very long time, but has been doing theatre for shorter, whereas Brandon is still a teenager, and he has been participating in theatre since slightly before high school. The show itself is also heavily about Jewish culture and how hard it was to live in Russia during the time it takes place, and while we do not directly explain this story, it heavily implies that the show should be watched eventually.
How does Lineage engage with audiences?
Lineage strives to invest the audience in the concept of intergenerational shows, especially since they are open to anyone. That also means that you can be any age, with no experience whatsoever, such the aspiration and want to participate in the show. Our main target audience is all ages and genders, as long as they are invested slightly in musical theatre. It is slightly annoying since we were given specific instructions to not focus on how the arts effects our lives, but I wanted this specifically to be a sit-down lunch with all of the friends in the group.
To specifically engage with the younger audience, we decided to make it clear how the cast has many silly moments without knowing the camera is on them. A large thing I noticed about younger audiences is that they become too ashamed to admit that they love their passions. The talk of Fiddler on the Roof being like a large family definitely also convinces audience members that this is probably the type of documentary that they would like.
How did research inform Lineage and the way it uses or challenges conventions?
A very important thing I focuses on during both my research and the project itself was B-Roll. I wanted to capture perfect moments that represented exactly what my interviews would say. That being said, I used this plan as a reason to have the b-roll filming be after the filming of the interviews. Filming b-roll definitely would have been easy, but my group's cinematographer got sick the day we had planned to film this. This is when I had to challenge the conventions of a regular documentary, as our entire film only consists of b-roll that was archived footage. This, of course, didn't look bad, but it didn't have the same look as we had initially planned.
A convention that we did follow, though, was our particular USE of the b-roll. We had tried our hardest to make the b-roll directly relate to what the interviewees were saying (for example, when Lito talks about the man playing the Rabbi, we showed a video of the Rabbi on stage, or when he says it was a super fun environment and a video of the cast playing just dance is shown.) 

Link to Lineage :)