Documentary

 

The Documentary Project

This was by far my favorite unit in Junior Year of Freestyle. It challenged me in so many ways but also incororated all of my passions into one complete project. The Documentary Unit was very much a combined arms unit. Every class worked and tied together to fullfill the end goal of the documentary project. Digital Media was critical for english which was critical for film which in return was critical for digital media. Every thing we learned had a role and important place. This unit was the longest unit which was a blessing and curse it was built with the goal of illustrating the potential of each of us try to share soemthign we felt was important and how to do it in a way which was profesional and got peoples attention.

The Beggining

At the start came brain stroming, in our english class Mr. Greco challenged us with a simple yet difficult question.

“How do you Creatively and truthfully potray asignificant person,group,place,idea or issue in the community?”

This is a difficult questions especially for film. A single shot can illustrate and change so much it can be difficult to not implement youself into a documentary. I did not make this easier by trying to tackle massive ideas and projects as well. In my About Me page I disscusedd my passions and interest and a huge part of my life is Politics,Philosophy and History all of which I adore. This made my documentary concepts a large. This ended up causing development issues as I got carried away on creating a revolutionary documentary. My topics where hugely ambitious, explaining the Political Divide in America, Illegal Immigration and Legal Immigration, the collapse of the american identity. All of these where dreams of mine but ended up being to large, with guidance of my peers and teachers I did something very difficult for me. I narrowed down my vission and my goals. I decided to Focus on an Issue important to me but possible to achive. Diversity of thought (or rather the lack their of) in California but specifically northern california. This is where I hit that question asked by Mr. Greco. Truthfull and creative, but also being clear about the point of the documentary. This would end up shapening the process and creation of the documentary but before we contnued with that came a side Project.

The Mockumentary

This was fun project that all film students did to learn documentary framing and filming but also just a fun wacky project before the serious one. For this we had many ideas but in the end my group, Hugo and Jordan decided that I would be the star of the Mockumentary. This of course was a mixed because I was allowed to have fun but I was the joke and had to do things that where kinda weird but still funny. I “acted” and stared as myself or rather a extremely exagerated characterization of myself. It was incredibly fun to shoot and came out looking good. What I valued most about the project however was how it taught us how to use the telephoto and kit lense together to create a prefesional looking documentary. Bellow is the final Product.

The Documentary Process

After the Mockumentary thanks to some help a narrowed focus was developed. A small documentary telling a much larger story about american politics. We foccused on the creation of a new club. The first of its ind in the history of Los Altos Highschool. It would be a perfect balacne of Truth and entertaining as it was a story following the students. Strugles,Thoguhts and Beliefs. With this came planning and logistics, the interviews where by far the hardest part as all of the people interviewed where fairly busy and some where even scared to appear on camera to discuss this but finally we had a focus. A story to tell. Characters to follow and a bigger theme. We filmed and edited on a time crunch but what we came up with is gold, by far one of the things i am most proud of ever creating and the Gem of my freestyle career (So Far 🙂   ).

The Grand Trimpherant

[Pictures and Descitptions of Nick,George and Sam]

The Research Paper-The not so easy part

One of the Hardest parts was the research paper we where asked to create for english to accompany our documentary. This proved to be extremely difficult for me as writting essay in general is difficult for me, nevermind conducting in depth research about a topic which i love but is filled with million upon millions of books and articles about. This by far was the most stressfull part of the project. In the end the Research paper i completed had visssion but devolved halfway throught as my mind and thoughts where not in the right place. I am not very proud of the Reseearch paper because to me it feels like a rough draft. It also reads as if its antagonizng the reader which was not my attention. I deffinatly want to Revise and revisit the Paper in the future as I do not belive it does the documentary Justice. The research is linked bellow for those who wish to read it. Documentary Research paper

It All Comes Together:A Nation Divided- A Big Documentary and a Little Story

It was a long ride of work but at the end the documentary was created. The story of a group of three students who feel isolated. Their views are not expressed oppenly and it seems like there is no place to challenge the status quo. They decided to take a chance and risk “exposing themselves” to their friends and teachers, they would “come out” as conservatives in the Northern California Silicon Valley. As laughable as that sounds it is a huge issue especially when we live in such polirizing times where no one is listening or trying to understand opposing viewpoints. California as a whole is dominated by Liberals. They make up a majority of the state population and even more so in Northern California. This creates fear as people have lost friend or been treated diffirently from their peers once they are identified as diffirent. This problem exist accros the whole countires and is faccilited by Liberals and Conservaives alike, but in such divided times it can appear that people no longer see the opposition as people veying for their perspective. This is there story and I am overjoyed at how it came out. You can watch it down bellow.

A Reflection on the Documentary Unit

This project was incredibly valuable. It was true combination and culmination of everything we have been learning in all classes along with the implementation in a project. This was the largest project I think I have ever worked on. It taught me alot about balancing a vission with phesability and what i know i can do. This unit was my favorite because the end product was something I geiungly feel proud of. That is rare for me and it continues to inspire me. The documentary was put together well and told a story effectively, it still has its bugs but it is a vast inprovement over earlier works ans serves as something to strive to achieve in all of the freestyle projects.

Personally this Project also was significant. As stated before I have a passion for politics, speaking, History and goverment. Creating something which connects with what I love and actually being proud of it is powerfull. It was also quiet difficult because it was a documentary not an opinion peace. I wanted to voice my mind or say things about certain topics but I had to limit myself and I belive I did. With any luck this will be the first of many projects like this 🙂