JAGGN research, planning, and production process

 I had known about this assignment since the beginning of the year, and after I saw JaggN’s first performance I knew I wanted them to be my subject. When the project was officially assigned, I decided to work with 2 of my good friends who I thought would be a good help to work on it. We just knew we wanted to give an inside look at what being in JaggN was like, so that's what we did. We had a really hard time coming up with the name of the doc but eventually landed on just the band name itself: “JAGGN” being it was simple and easy to remember. We prepared ourselves by planning most of our b-rolls and creating a brief summary prior to any production. The biggest problem was time, and we wanted to film ASAP, so we planned all of our shots and interview questions in about 2 class periods.

We then immediately got to filming. Jack Sussman and I went to the lead guitarists Justin’s house to film them having a jam sesh, and film all of the interviews. After filming everything, we wanted to incorporate footage from past shows, and luckily the three of us had been to their past performances and had clips from their shows. Editing took a VERY long time. We had so much footage and had to cut down so much, it took about a week to fully edit the piece. We edited the entire piece on i-movie which had its own set of issues, but we managed to get it done. Overall, I think we planned out this project very well and I am very happy with the result.

JAGGN CCR

For my group documentary project “JAGGN” we really wanted to give an inside look on what the band is like. Being a group of  adolescent teen rockers, this band has some characters, which really made this piece shine. In this piece we wanted to include everything, from the funny responses, to the heartfelt ones. We really wanted to give our viewers a glimpse of this high school band.

To ensure that our doc would be well received by our audiences we did some research on documentary conventions. We really like the idea of having an intro to our doc, but really didn’t know what to do. After watching examples such as “Abstract”, we found that a montage of the band playing would be a great intro to our doc, and would really establish the vibe of our piece. To form a deeper connection between the audience and the band, we decided to use a recording of the band playing a cover of “Enter Sandman” to not only set the rock n’ roll tone, but to show that these guys are here to rock! We thought that putting this cover over the montage would be the perfect recipe to grab the viewer's attention and set the tone for the rest of the film.

From the get-go, we knew what our target audience would be. This doc is about a group of teen rockers, so what better audience than other teen rockers! This would include teens from around the ages 14-18 who either play music, or feel as if they have a connection with music. This piece is also more adhered to a male audience being that all the members in the band are male. We wanted to keep this piece lighthearted and fun, and a great way to do this was to add humor in this piece. I am friendly with the guys in this band, so I already knew there are some characters in this bunch. I knew a great way to add some comedic bits in this piece was for them to explain where the name of the band came from (being the origin is hilarious), and from that, we essentially hit comedy gold. All the interviewees has great responses and made a perfect comedic moment in the piece. Other things such as showing clips from parties and homecoming were also ways we formed a connection with our target audience.

“JAGGN” being about a group of high school students is of course representing high schoolers as a social group. The topic of this piece made representing high schoolers very easy being the subject was 5 of them. We really wanted to capture the fun and memorable moments about being in high school and seeing how close these guys were really showed that. Whether it was clips of them just hanging out, or them talking about how much they mean to each other, you really get to see what a close knit group of high school friends is like. We wanted this piece to feel just fun, so we didn’t want this piece to feel super professional. We accomplished this by handheld shots for b-roll and just allowing the band members to be themselves with no limitations. We included shots from parties, dances, and just teens being teens to really show this. I think that this documentary very well displayed representation of high schoolers. 

I think we offered our audience a clear view of what life is like in a high school band. Our project reflected and suited our target demographic by providing clips and videos of high schoolers themselves. We wanted to show the public who these band members are on a deeper level than what they appear to be and how their personalities shape the band JAGGN.