家,不家 = Home?

Abstract

This report documents the process which four final-year students at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information went through in the production of their final-year project, a video documentary titled Home? The documentary focuses on the rebuilding process of the May 12 Sichuan earthquake victims in the town of Jiulong, located in Sichuan. The May 12 Sichuan earthquake caused massive destruction to many homes and affected the lives of many families. This report includes the details of the pre-production, production and post-production process of the team in uncovering their three main interviewees, and the obstacles they overcame to complete the project. The intensive research that the team had to do and the difficulties that they met prior to the shoot, such as the obtaining of permission to shoot in China, as well as the problems met during the production shoot are also detailed in this report. Throughout the production process, the team’s focus for the documentary changed continually, due to unforeseen circumstances. These were all discussed and reflected upon. As post-production began, more problems were encountered during scripting. In addition, problems such as the lack of cutaways surfaced during editing. The report examined how the team dealt with the problems and eventually overcame them. Ultimately, the team hopes that this report would be useful to future groups that intend to produce a video documentary overseas.