Documentary

For this unit, all of our learning and projects revolved around one story. For me, this was the story of my Grandparents who immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico and have raised a loving family in the Bay Area. At the start of the unit, I interviewed my Grandparents, Irma & David, and everything we did built on the interview and the stories they told. It was really special for me to be able to get to know my Grandparents better and to share their story with others, because they are beautiful people who have done so much for me and I love them with all my heart. In a way this was a chance for me to do something for my Grandparents who have done so much for me.

After hearing their story, we were tasked with writing a documentary focused essay about our interviews. I decided to focus the research portion of my work on Latino immigration, in particular the negative stereotypes aimed towards Latinos who move to the U.S. and how these ideas do not match reality. I also narrated the story of my Grandparents to show a meaningful example of a real immigration story. After we made our essay and various revisions, we created a magazine article in Digital Media, using our words and what we had learned so far about the application Adobe InDesign. Finally, in Animation we created a documentary animation. Unfortunately I was not able to animate very much of my Grandparents story, so I had to focus on an individual story that my Grandpa David told me. These projects made sure these stories will not be forgotten.

Introduction Video:

This video was created using AfterEffects with the skills we learned in Digital Media. The audio is the first paragraph of our Documentary Essays, and it is paired with images related to the topic.

My essay combines the story told by my Grandparents with the research I did regarding Latino immigration. This project took several months, with each stage spanning over a week. First we figured out our topic and conducted the interview, and then we gathered various research sources to support our argument. Then we created a rough outline of what the essay would come to look like in accordance with Mr. Greco’s plan, and finally we drafted the essay itself. After writing the essay we needed to make a works cited, and my essay went through a complete revision after Mr. Greco gave feedback. This is the final documentary-style essay:

For the documentary unit in animation, we were tasked with producing a single animation of at least 90 seconds that could use some actual photographs and footage as long as at least half of the content had some animation. My initial idea was to create a documentary over six minutes long with some parts just being footage of the interview and others being sequences of images with animated transitions. The main animation was going to be a two minute long narrative animation of a story my Grandfather David told me about his family. However, after starting to work on this story I realized it was going to take all of my time, and I ended up fully dedicating my Documentary Animation to this story.

These are screenshots of the Photoshop Interfaces for each section of the animation. I animated at 12 frames per second, so thirty seconds of animation is 360 frames.

Although in my final animation this was less than a second, drawing the lines to form the Mexico outline took a very long time. The cracks/lines form from more than ten spots, and each one has to grow a certain amount in multiple directions during each frame, as well as other lines in the middle to show the cracking effect.

This sequence last only around six seconds in the final animation, but resulted in over 900 layers used in photoshop. This was because each piece (there are around thirty) that falls is its own object that I manually moved down at an accelerating speed each frame.

After a lot of drawing, composing, and editing, I finally had my two minute documentary animation telling one of my Grandfathers stories about his family. This story was really personal and emotional for my Grandpa, so I wanted to really do it justice. Here is my Documentary Animation:

In Digital Media we took our documentary essays that we developed in English and we used this to create a magazine article. We did this using Adobe InDesign, which we learned how to use in class. It was really cool to watch the article come together and adding our personal creative touches. This was sort of the final project of the unit as it combined our interview story at its core with our essay and our learning from Digital Media. In the beginning of the year I never would have believed I would be able to make a quality magazine article with a complete essay and custom design, but thanks to all that I’ve learned at Freestyle Academy this project was possible.

Reflection

This project spanned several months and all three classes at Freestyle. It was probably the largest project I have worked on, and also the most fulfilling to complete. And do to the magnitude and time spent, there were a lot of really valuable takeaways for me. To begin with, the story of my Grandparents being told. Irma & David, (or Abuelita and Papa, as I call them) have always fully dedicated themselves to me and the rest of my family. They give me so much love and support and I could not imagine better Grandparents. Because of this, the opportunity to tell their story felt truly special to me. I think that be telling and preserving the stories of our loved ones they can live forever, at least in our hearts. And being able to know more about them and share their story with others was something I will cherish forever.

Moreover, the skills I learned while completing this project feel really tangible and valuable. First we had to research about our topic and then gather the information we needed. After this we needed to compile our findings and develop them into a focused work. This gradually developed into a full-fledged essay, which was also the first essay I have written that was over five pages. We then combined all of this with what we had learned throughout the year in Animation and Digital Media to create the Documentary Animation and six-page flyer, which felt like a culmination of all that we had learned. Overall, setting off on such a layered and extensive project and the commitment and time-management needed to complete it helped me learn. It was also super satisfying to finally finish, and felt like a huge accomplishment.