Introduction & Reflection
For the Junior Documentary, we were challenged to choose a person and write a profile about something regarding their identity and in our Film we made a documentary about this person. These projects were dependent on each other so we needed to make sure that we were getting the best content possible so we could have good outcomes for both projects. This was my favorite unit we have done in Freestyle because I have always loved to watch documentaries and read profiles. Learning how to produce a profile and documentary wasn’t easy and I learned just how complex these projects are, watching our project grow from just an outline and an idea was very rewarding. For my project I decided to do it on Raj Mathai who is a local news anchor for NBC Bay Area. My partner and I decided to focus on how he got into the job and how his job effects his life and family.
English Profile
For our english project, In addition to interviewing our subjects we had to do research on a topic that related to their story and include that in our project. We did the research in order to get a more well-rounded view of our subjects and a deep understanding on how to use media to tell someone’s story. We needed to write about our subject in an engaging way and make our research relevant and informative. This was a challenge for me, I spent lots of time writing and rewriting until I came out with a draft that I thought flowed well. Here it is:
Film Production
In Film we made a documentary about our subject so in my case Raj Mathai. However, we didn’t go straight into this project we did a lot of lessons and short projects before this, we had many lessons on how to get a good interview visually, how to get good audio and, how to get good content from our interviews. The first thing we did to understand how to make our interviews look good was to make a Mockumentary. In our Mockumentary we decided to poke fun at our class.
Interviewees: Raj Mathai, Sonia Mathai & Janelle Wang
Raj Mathai is a news anchor at NBC Bay Area and a dedicated father. Raj has been reporting the news for 22 years. His job gives him a unique perspective on the Bay Area. As we interviewed Raj we learned about his family dynamic, some of his favorite interviews and how the news affects his life.
Sonia Mathai is Raj’s wife. She is the head of Human resources at Globality. Her interview gave us a lot of insight into how Raj’s job affects their family, her perception of his job and, a lot of fun anecdotes.
Janelle Wang is one of Raj’s coworkers at NBC Bay Area. She helped us get a feel of the dynamic in the news room and how it is to work with Raj.
Introduction Video
In Digital Media, we made Intro videos for our documentary on After Effects. Here is the After Effects Interface:
The editing phase:
I loved our subject of the documentary. Raj was someone who I saw on the news and heard about so it was really exciting for me to be able to make a documentary on his career and life, and get the inside scoop. Millions of people watch the news everyday and listen to the important news that television journalists report on but not a lot of people actually know the inner workings of the job. Through this documentary, I hope to give people a look into all the aspects of being a news reporter but also show people who Raj Mathai is behind the screen. Here is our documentary:
Making a documentary is extremely challenging. Going into it I thought that it would be easier than the narrative because we were working around someone else’s narrative and from their interviews we would right of passage. However, I was mistaken. Through making this documentary I learned that in a documentary you have to sculpt peoples interviews and stories into narratives that connect to your main message and is also entertaining for a person who doesn’t know the topic or person. Although this project was a difficult one, I learned a lot about how to edit and how to make a documentary flow. As an avid documentary viewer, I am very excited that I learned this skill and may want to pursue something in the realm of documentary filmmaking in the future. Overall, I am very proud with how this film turned out.
Digital Media Project: Profile Magazine Article
In Digital Media, our project was to make a magazine article out of our profile using Adobe’s Indesign. As a person who loves magazine this was a really fun project and gave me some insight into how people design professional magazines.
