This is a picture of some dry tea leaves.

Intro

" I grew up with tea, I grew up in the UK, tea had been part of everyone’s, and my own life. From morning till evening, almost. "
~Patrick Robertson

Hello, and welcome to my documentary webpage! In this assignment, we were asked to choose a subject to investigate, which would be the subject of our project. I chose tea, and the local tea community, due to my passion for the subject, and the impressive list of health benefits that tea offers. In English, we wrote an expository essay and research paper. In Design, we designed a book or magazine article in InDesign, with visual elements, and the text from our research paper. A link to my book, as well as a screenshot of my work in InDesign is visible below. Lastly, in Digital Media, we created a video in Adobe After Effects, to introduce our audience to the topic, as well as a website. My video, as well as a screenshot of my work in Adobe After Effects is visible below. Looking back on the documentary project, I am so glad I chose a subject that I am passionate about, because it took a tremendous amount of time, thought and effort to complete. I had to be pragmatic, and thoughtful about my actions, as a lot of times unexpected obstacles would pop up. In the end though, I am satisfied with how it turned out. I am happy I was able to practice real world problem solving skills, and independent work. I also greatly value this opprotunity to flex my creativity.

 

This is a screenshot of Adobe After Effects.

This is a screenshot of my work in Adobe After Effects. In this assignment, I used kinetic typography, motion graphics, and original photos to indroduce my documentary subject. This was a particularly fun project, because of all the creative possibilities. However, for every effect I wanted to do, I had to figure out a way to do it, so I was learning about After Effects as I was using it.

 

This is a screenshot of Pro Tools.

This is a screenshot of my work in Pro Tools, where I recorded and edited audio for my IntroVid.

 

Book

Book Thumbnail
" [Tea] has that right balance of bitter and sweet. But at the same time, they’re not separate. "
~June Scarlett

In this assignment, we started by writing a research paper in English. I wrote mine about the local tea community, and the artistic potential of tea. I gravitated towards this subject, because I enjoy flexing my creativity with different flavor combinations. I have found that tea has a wonderful, and wholly unique flavor that works well with, and enhances so many other flavors. I also love being a hostess, and in those ventures, I have seen that tea drinks almost never fail to impress. The tea community has an abundance of innovative flavor combinations, that I appreciate not only as a consumer and tea lover, but also someone who hopes to enter the service industry in the future. Hosting friends and family is all very well, but in the future I hope to expand my skills to work in restaurants, hotels, resorts or events, such as weddings. After the writing and editing process was finished, I compiled my paper into a book using InDesign. I staged, took, and edited a series of photographs in Photoshop, to make my book more visually informative and interesting. For titles and headers, I chose elegant, but not overly formal fonts. This is because tea is beautiful, and elegant, but not elite. For a color scheme I used pastel colors, because I felt like the warmth of the colors was indicative of the warmth of tea. I then created several graphic design elements using the color scheme, such as teapots, teacups, and sugar bowls. All of these elements went into the structure of my book. My goal was to make it simple and elegant, with a bit of femininity, so that the book wouldn’t look cluttered, but would retain a bit of Mad Hatter’s tea party-esque whimsy.

This project was a fascinating challenge. Making a project like this with a bare bones writing prompt, and only a broad subject to go off of was somewhat difficult. This lead to a lot of trial and error. Eventually, once I got the skeleton of my project in place, the path towards a cohesive project was fairly linear. This was a very long endeavor, and all of the structuring, restructuring, editing, and technical restraints forced me to be pragmatic. For example, some of my images that were meant to take up an entire page, weren’t the same size as the pages of my book. When this happened, I experimented with the sides of the image cropping, borders, backgrounds, rotation, fading and mesh gradients, until I found something that worked. In the end, I think my hard work really paid off.

 

This is a screenshot of InDesign.

This is a screenshot of my work in InDesign. Through my work in InDesign, I learned a lot about design through experimentation. I tried a variety of layouts on each individual page, before I found a design that worked well.

Bios

Patrick Robertson

Patrick Robertson

The Adventurers

The Adventurers

The Family

The Family

In the interview portion of this project, we were required to leave the Freestyle community, and interview someone who had something to say about our documentary subject. We wrote our questions in English based off of our research, and gaps in our knowledge. Using a portable recording device, we recorded the interview, and transcribed the it afterwards.

About Patrick Robertson
Patrick grew up in the UK, where tea was a massive part of the culture around him. As a result, it has always been a huge part of his life, and he had a lot to say on the subject. Patrick invited me to his house, and even served me tea while I was interviewing him. He had several tea related artifacts that he had collected throughout his life, as well as an endless fountain of tea related stories. Patrick’s feedback was invaluable, and I never would have been able to create this project without him.
About The Adventurers
For this interview, I invited four tea drinkers to my house, to try a variety of tea drinks and give their thoughts. I invited a group, so that I could get a broader range of tastes and preferences, meaning that each interviewee represents a different demographic of tea drinkers. In order to distinguish them more clearly, I referred to them by their character’s name in Dungeons and Dragons, because those names are unique, and reflect their personalities. Linnor Gladomain of the Morning Sun (Katrina Garcia) likes mangos, kiwis, sweet things, and oolong tea. Rowena Ravendor (Layla Carrington) likes green tea, mangos, and all kinds of boba. Mars Capone the Barbarian (Venus Li) loves milk tea and boba, and has a very distinguishing palette. Lady Panda Holographia (Prahita Magal) is very tea wise, and had a lot of experience with tea to pull from during the interview. June Scarlett (Amber Conley), who I interviewed separately, is extremely picky with tea, so she provided a very distinguishing eye during her interview. These brave dungeon explorers lended their charming personalities, which made this project extremely fun to produce, and hopefully read.
About The Family
In this interview, I interviewed a family, consisting of Diane Tom, Jerry Wright, and Kailani Wright, during a dinner party at my house. Ms. Tom cannot drink alcohol, so tea drinks with a similar finesse to that of a cocktail are of great interest to her. She loves chocolate, but also fruity drinks, although she cannot have mango. Mr. Wright and Kailani also took interest in the elaborate presentation, and contributed to the interview as well. They provided very interesting analysis of all the drinks I offered them, which helped me add more depth to my project.