Introduction
“How do you creatively and truthfully portray a significant person, group, place, idea, or issue in the community?”
For the Junior Documentary Project, we learned how to portray a persons story in a distinct perspective about their significance in the community or world. We found primary and secondary sources to back up our topic. We were challenged to go out of our comfort zone and interview people that we didn’t know very well in our community. In English, I were tasked to write a 7 page research paper containing our two interview sources as well as online secondary sources. In Digital Media, I created a magazine article on Adobe InDesign with contents of our English Paper. In Film, I created a documentary film with my partners Zoe and Beverlyn on a completely different topic. We learned all the rules of documentary films as well as the 6 different modes. I’ve learned so much this unit, and now when I read a documentary paper or watch a documentary film, I understand the thought process of the producer.
Research Paper
As for interviewing my subjects for my documentary paper in English, I used a Tascam Audio Recorder. My two subjects were Luke Barrett, a young boy whose a professional dancer, and Lauren Kato, the dance teacher at Mountain View High School. I then used Adobe Premiere Pro to transcribe the audio so that when I was writing my research paper, I had a physical transcript that I could refer to and find direct quotes to support my claim. I also read many many articles about boys in dance and the negative stigma around it so I had many secondary sources. With all this new knowledge, I started the journey of writing my English documentary paper.
I really wanted to shed a light on gender stereotypes in society. One in particular that isn’t very spoken about is boys in dance. I interviewed two subjects, a male dancer and a dance teacher. Although gender norms are a lot less harsh than they were 50 years ago, people still judge and hold old stereotypes. Luke Barrett is a professional dancer at Mountain View High School. He’s always had a passion or dance, it’s helped build him into the person he is today and give him a sense of purpose. Unfortunately, he is one of the few boys in his profession, he dances with girls for the most part.
Here is my final documentary:
Film
In Film class, we filmed a completely different topic than in English. We learned a lot about the rules of documentaries, like rule of thirds, lighting in the eyes, blurred background, close up shot and medium shot, and more. My partners for this project were Zoe and Beverlyn. At first, we had no idea what to do. I wrote a list of some random topics, and we ended up liking the idea of tarot cards. It was something none of us had any knowledge of, and the spirituality aspect was something we really took an interest in. We researched and asked around to find people who used the cards either professionally or for fun. Below are our 4 amazing interviewees we found:
Here’s our final documentary!
Here is what our editing process looked like on Premiere Pro:
Click on the image to expand!
We put all the interview clips in and cut them all up, adding a lot of b-roll over the interviews and music over their voices. My partner color coded each subject’s interview to make it way more manageable as well as aesthetically pleasing. The editing process was the most strenuous part, we read through all our transcripts and tried to structure what the interviewees said as a story structure.
I want to say a huge thank you to:
- Luke Barrett
- Lauren Kato
- Grey Mijares
- Carol Boclin
- Bonnie Ho Gabaeff
- Pam Curry
- Zoe Parker
- Bev Balgasso
I want to thank my interview subjects from both my English paper about dance, my interview subjects from my Film project about tarot cards, and my Film project partners. I’ve learned a lot this unit thanks to these people. They helped me create what I’ve put on this page and have taught me so much about their passions.