“How do you creatively and truthfully portray a significant person, group, place, idea, or issue in the community?”

For the Junior Documentary Project, we would portray an exciting person, organization, place, idea, or issue, gathering research sources to produce a distinct viewpoint on their subject’s significance in the community and world. The English study paper serves as the copy for the magazine article in Digital Media, as well as a commercial and website. In Film, we made a completely different documentary from scratch. This unit focuses on narrative journalism.

Introduction

For my personal Documentary, I wanted to create something very meaningful. This short introduction below talks about one of my biggest inspirations, my grandfather, Rajvir Singh. This video was made in After Effects which was difficult but rewarding.

Click on the image to see the article version of my documentary that was created in Adobe InDesign.

Interviewees

Rajvir Singh, my grandfather, was born in India and now lives in Silicon Valley as a founder of many companies. He has also worked in the Indian Navy, published books, and travelled to almost 100 different countries.

Mona Singh is one of three daughters of Rajvir Singh. She is also my mom. She was born in India, moved all around the world up until 10 years old, when she moved to the USA.

This project combined the research paper of English and the digital publication of Digital Media. This project was not easy. I spent so much time creating each piece making sure it was my best. This motivation also came from the fact that this project is about my grandfather, I wanted to make sure he was shown in a positive light. I valued being able to use the softwares and writing techniques to make all of this possible. If I had one “take away” from this project it would be being able to creatively show my inspirations using digital and writing skills.

This is the full research paper of the
previous Intro Video and Article. You
will find the works cited and many more
important details about my subject.

FILM

Mockumentary

We started our documentary section in Film by making Mockumentaries (mock documentary). This project was designed to teach us the technical aspects of making a documentary without focusing on the substance or story. Our group decided to make our mockumentary similar to a reality TV show while making it extra dramatic. We used light music and sound effects to make it feel like a “Mock.”

Actual documentary

After the Mockumentary, we used our skills and made a real documentary about a subject matter with depth. After my partner and I decided on what we were going to do, we started interviewing.

During this process, we interviewed 6 different people. While editing, we faced great challenges making our final film shorter than 15 minutes. We had so much information and interviews which made it difficult to decide on what parts to cut out and what parts are important to keep in.

We ended up with a documentary that summarizes our story and subject and goes in-depth of the most important topics and perspectives. Having to shorten a documentary that was originally 30 minutes into 10 minutes actually gave me a lot of experience in not only the software (Premiere Pro), but also in being able to take the most important and impactful parts of my project and create something out of them. Overall, this project let me use many skills ranging from gathering interviewees, digital software techniques, and critical thinking.

Interviewees

Special Thanks

There are a lot of people to thank throughout this unit and year, but sadly the list would be too long.

Alex Sharp – My partner for many projects and friend in Freestyle.
Alex has been extremely helpful to me and was my first friend
in Freestyle.

Mr. Taylor – My Film teacher throughout my junior year. Mr. Taylor is one
the best teachers I have ever had. I have never had a class
as intriguing and interesting as Film, and the only person
who can make make it like that is Mr. Taylor.

Eva H, CJ H,
& Natalie E – My classmates that brought me into their conversations
and groups. As someone who didn’t actively socialize in
the beginning of the year, I am thankful for them and they
are currently my friends.

Ethan F – Ethan was my partner for my Film documentary project. Without
him, our documentary wouldn’t have been possible and my editing
skills wouldn’t have expanded.