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Welcome to my Documentary Website. For my research paper, I had to write a 3,500 word essay exploring the documentary subject I chose. The essay was also supposed to explore a specific question we formulated which related to our topic and would keep our readers interested. The topic I chose was circus performers. The essential question that I tried to answer with my research paper was are the circus arts, something that is usually looked down upon as juvenile and silly, a real artistic medium and outlet for self-expression? To answer this question, I went up to San Francisco to visit one of the country’s most prestigious circus schools, Circus Center, and learned about the dedication and drive it takes to become a circus performer. The reason I chose this topic was because ever since I was a little girl, I have been in love with the circus because it seemed like such a vibrant and beautiful place to be. It’s where I learned to love the eccentric and bizarre and the weird and fanciful. And because I was never flexible or talented enough to make it through circus school, I thought it would be a good idea to explore the inner workings of the circus by pursuing this topic as my documentary project.

My audio slideshow, a compilation of interviews and photographs I took of the circus performers, employees, and recreational practitioners at Circus Center. It is basically a slideshow of photographs with audio interviews and narration about why these people work with the circus and pursue this kind of thing. I hope you enjoy the show.

My photo book is a compilation of all the photographs I took and the research paper I wrote about the topic. My photo book is very special to me because the photographs I took for this project definitely show how much I’ve grown as a photographer from the beginning of this year. Be sure to look for my photographs as well as how it connects with the writing I placed by it. It was definitely a challenge creating an entire book by myself, but I learned so much. And while it was a lot of work, I loved the subject I was covering and looked forward to connecting with all these wonderful people by interviews and photographs. I can only hope that this translates into my book and shows all of you how truly great the circus is.

This music was created by myself in Garageband. I used some samples from “A Cautionary Tale” by the Decemberists to mirror the themes of my photo book and audio slideshow. I hope you like it.

I learned so much artistically and technically from the Documentary Unit. In English, I learned how to connect with others to tell their story, how to research for a topic, and how to package it all together into an interesting story. In Design, I l earned how to make my photographs better with experimentation. I had a difficult time at the beginning taking photos of all the performers because they moved so fast, but figured out how to work around that problem using techniques and tricks I learned in Design. From Design, I also learned what looked good and how to layout and structure pages to create both an informative and aesthetically pleasing book. In Web, I learned how to record, cut, and edit quality audio bits and how to pair them up with narration and photographs to tell a story. Overall, I learned many things from the Freestyle Documentary Unit and am so happy I had the opportunity to both learn so much and explore a topic I’ve been in love with since childhood.