Documentary Critical Reflection

"I Wish I Had Your Class For Lunch" was made to show the effects and benefits that music education provides for students with special needs. Music had allowed these students to comunicate and express themselves better than before.

In class documentaries were a major part of the research for both Ryan and I. The documentaries we analyzed in class really benefitted the inclusion of certain techniques and conventions. Ryan told me about the op-doc "Oasis" he had watched, and how he derived a lot of inspiration from it, with some of that inspiration making its way into our documentary through the heavy focus on diegetic sound, or the soft calm tone originating from that. I watched it shortly after and I can definitely see how he drew inspiration. The titles are very similar, as well as the feeling they both give off. Everything felt very raw in both films, but I think our documentary strayed away from the op doc in that case, as it felt more raw.

Our target audience being people with special needs individuals in their lives or around them, wether it be a student, teacher, friend, or complete stranger, meaning all the conventions we chose to follow or not were there fro a reason. Some segments included no interview to put the focus on the students and their exitement, as well as Dr. Laz, the teacher of said students. These decisions helped to emphasize the importance surrounding the impact of music with special needs students.  

The piece was structured in a way that stylized an average day for the special needs students in that music class. This was formulated to be engaging in a sense that it would feel somewhat intimate, which was followed up with the questions asked to Dr. Laz. All of this was done to replicate a feeling of trust that could be felt through the bond between Dr. Laz and his students.

However, there were a few blunders we made. The intro felt out of place due to its voiceover, since it never really appeared after the first time. Also, the animated sequence I had made felt incomplete, and we recieved feedback that it could've been better if we had simply added another nearing the end of the documentary to tie it back together. The overall point is the documentary could've been more spread out, and tweaked to fit the theme and topic a bit better. If we had made these changes, the documentary would've been stronger in the sense of engagement.

Representation is tough in the media. Dominant ideologies usually focus on the disability of a person rather than the person themselves. I viewed an Op-doc called "View From the Floor" that spoke of how the media will prefer to paint a picture of disabled people constantly being under hardship. It ignores any skill, or personality and simply provides the idea that a person is their disablity, and any accomplishment they make is "against all odds".

Our documentary ignores that dominant ideology and represents these special needs students as themselves. People who have personality, who are motivated, and passionate. This is something that is reflected off of the B-roll incorporated, preferring to have diagetic audio and raw footage, showing a more independent person, over something close to an essay. In challenging these ideologies, we get to toss out sympathy and feeling of misfortune, and bring in inclusion and multiple perspectives.