Introduction
“How do you creatively and truthfully portray a significant person, group, place, idea, or issue in the community?”
Throughout this unit, I learned how to connect with new people and effectively interview them to portray their stories in both an accurate and compelling way. My documentary subject was different in Film than in English, so I got additional experience in interviewing and researching multiple subjects. In English, I chose to investigate the cases of sexual assault at my former ballet studio through interviewing one of the victims, and I connected this to research I had gathered about sexual assault in the ballet industry. In Film, my partner Natalie and I produced a documentary about the Winter Lodge, a local, community-based ice skating rink. We created our final articles and films by utilizing Adobe Premiere Pro, InDesign, and our Tascam audio recorders.
Documentary Intro Vid
In Digital Media, we learned the basics of Adobe After Effects in order to produce a short introductory video for our documentary paper subjects. We focused on utilizing keyframes in After Effects to create the Ken Burns effect. I decided to add ballet class music in the background because it’s relevant to my subject matter and reminiscent of a real ballet studio.
My research paper is titled “Under The Rug” in reference to literal rug at my former ballet studio, as well as to the proverbial rug under which the studio and entire ballet industry have swept allegations of sexual abuse. I interviewed one of the victims of sexual assault who formerly attended the same ballet school that I did, and I also interviewed one of my friends who like me, left said ballet studio after cases of sexual assault surfaced. My research primarily consisted of studies on the psychological effects of sexual abuse on young children, and I additionally gathered statistics about the prevalence of sexual assault cases in the ballet industry.
In Digital Media, we learned how to use Adobe InDesign to create a final article portraying the content from our English paper. We made the article visually pleasing by following the C.R.A.P. design principles, which is an acronym for contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. One of the most important elements we practiced was the incorporation of photographs into the text though text wrapping.
Interviewee Bios
Jane Doe (anonymous) is an 18 year old student at the Dallas Conservatory’s Classical Training Program. She has been practicing ballet since she was a child, and now she is pursuing a career as a professional ballerina in a company. Along with this, she is working on confronting the trauma of being sexually assaulted at her former ballet studio by sharing her story with her family and friends.
Gabriella Fourkas is a junior at Homestead High School where she has been involved in multiple school sports, such as field hockey and basketball. She danced for seven years at the ballet studio where Jane (above) and a female teacher were sexually abused, and she consequently left the studio. Although she is no longer a ballet dancer, she misses performing with her friends.
Film
Mockumentary
As an introduction to documentary filmmaking, we were tasked with creating a mockumentary. A mockumentary is a fictional video that takes the form of a serious documentary in order to satirize its subject. I specifically learned how to incorporate b-roll, use my Tascam audio recorder with an external lavalier microphone, and to manually sync audio with video in Premiere Pro. My friends and I chose to portray the comedic struggles of a Marvel fan, a pretentious filmmaker, and an impressively boring person sharing a house.
Documentary Film
Reflection
Although these projects were vastly different, they were also similar in that both helped me get more involved in my community. I’m grateful for the experience I gained from the Winter Lodge documentary because documentary filming is fairly profitable and applicable to the professional world. On a different note, writing my English paper and producing the article in Digital Media was a deeply personal experience for me and my interviewees because we re-visited many past traumas and passions. I’m very proud of my work because I was able to tell my interviewee’s story, which after researching sexual assault in ballet, I know many ballerinas and young girls can relate to. Furthermore, I believe that I was able to portray the depth and truth of my subject through creative photos I took of my old ballet shoes and costumes. The visual element was initially a challenge because my main interviewee was anonymous (for her safety) therefore I couldn’t actually photograph her. Overall, I found that the Documentary unit was the most rewarding because it made me realize that I have the power to raise awareness for the negative and positive aspects of the society that I live in through sharing others’ stories.