“How do you creatively and truthfully portray a significant person, group, place, idea, or issue in the community?”
For the Junior Documentary Project, students were assigned to depict an intriguing person, group, place, idea, or issue, gathering interviews and research to develop an angle about their subject’s significance. The research-based paper from English serves as the copy for the magazine article in Design, the Intro video, and article for Digital Media. This was far by my favorite project so far at Freestyle Academy and I am grateful for the opportunity to learning how to be a journalist. For my documentary, I investigated tourism and housing in the neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury and the hippie movement overall, as I have visited the area frequently prior to the documentary project and was curious about it.
Design
In Design, we learnt the basics of Adobe InDesign and worked on using the Principles of Art and Design in our work with color schemes, repetition, and contrast. Our main project was to create a book using our writing in English, making graphic design elements, formatting the book, and getting photos of our subject(s). In addition to InDesign, we also used Adobe Photoshop to edit the photos taken then inserting it in the book. The biggest issue I came across was the timeline with managing my time well in order to make the deadline, and another issue was with the photos. I ended up having to go back to Haight-Ashbury to get more photos as I did not anticipate how many photos would be needed for the book.
One of my biggest challenges with the book was figuring out how to take up the space with not having the book look bare. In the end, I filled up the space well with GDEs and furthering my essay writing in english.
My interface in AdobeIndesign when making the book, and the progress that occurred from going to a blank interface to editing the photos in Photoshop, designing the GDEs in Illustrator, and putting it all together in InDesign.
Click on the image above to read my article!
Below is a gallery of images from my article and the Haight-Ashbury area. Click on each one to view them larger!
Interviewees/English Research Paper
For the Voices of Haight-Ashbury Documentary, I sought to interview locals. My interviewees were Bruce and Pam Brennan, siblings, long-time residents, and hippies/activists heavily involved during the hippie movement. I also interviewed Tara Monks, a current senior at the Urban school of SF, and Naomi Silverman, owner of the business Mendel’s Crafts. Talking to them was very insightful, as all of my interviewees have significantly different perspectives on Haight-Ashbury of which I enjoyed hearing about.
Through this project, I valued the ability to explore diverse aspects of storytelling and communication, utilizing my knowledge of English to craft a compelling narrative, my understanding of Digital Media to incorporate Photoshop editing of the photos, and InDesign to delve deeper and combine all of those elements in the book. One of the challenges in this project for me was how far away the location was. The first time I went to Haight-Ashbury to get pictures and interviews I thought I would be done, but I underestimated how many photos the book required and a lot of my photos did not turn out right, so I ended up having to cram another trip before the book was due to get photos.