Introduction

The Documentary Project required me and my peers to interview a person of our choice and tie their story to a larger world issue or movement. We started this project in English class, working on contacting our potential profile subjects (we had to have three options) and finding additional resources to support the point we were using their stories to make. After contacting the subjects, we interviewed them, asking questions we had written prior to and taking pictures of an environment they lived/worked in. Then, we wrote an essay using the information we had gathered. That essay was then used to create a magazine article about our subject, and to support us in our work on the documentary unit in our elective classes.

My initial ideas for a profile subject were my anatomy teacher, the manager and sensei of the dojo I practice martial arts at, and a police officer my mom knew. I reached out to the police captain, and he said yes! So, I did my documentary project with the help of Saul Jaeger, a Captain in the Mountain View Police Department. After interviewing Saul and hearing about some of the hardships the station had endured in recent years, I decided that my essay would focus on telling the other side of the story of some of those hardships and emphasize the importance of having a good community-to-local police relationship.

English Production

In English class, students focused on gathering materials and developing ideas for writing our profile essays. The online research was much easier for me than the in-person interview. Despite the crash course on the dos and don’ts of interviewing someone we were given, I was still nervous when going to meet Saul Jeager. However, when I was at the station, all of the staff there were incredibly kind and helped me find my way to his office. During the interview, what Saul had to say about how the station worked was extremely interesting, and my anxiousness faded quickly. We were required to do a second interview with someone who knew our profile subject, which was much easier for me because it was with someone I knew quite well; my mom. She had participated in a community outreach program hosted by the MVPD a couple years ago, which is how she had met Saul Jeager in the first place. I used her interview to fill in more information on the program and comment on Jeager’s character. After supporting my points with online research, I was ready to write my essay.

When writing essays, I have consistently struggled with pulling details together to form a cohesive bigger picture. So, my initial brainstorming was not all that great. However, by collaborating with my teacher, doing peer reviews with my classmates, and even sitting down with my dad for some help, I was able to pull together a clearer idea of what I wanted my final product to look like. Then, all that was left to do was to write the essay and put it in MLA format.

Please click on the image below to view my full essay:

Digital Media Production

After finishing our profile essays in English, we were tasked with designing a 5-page magazine article about our profiles. We used the same text from our essays, but inserted photos we had taken ourselves and custom made graphics to make the design more interesting. I chose a color scheme of red and blue to reflect patriotism, due to the nature of my profile subject’s (a policemen) job. Most of the photos were taken on the tour I did of the police station after interviewing Saul Jaeger, but the flag picture on the first page was actually taken right outside mountain view high school at a much later date. After being reviewed by my English and Digital Media teachers, my article was approved to go into an actual magazine alongside some of my peers’. I was later given a physical copy of the magazine with a cover I designed on it. Designing a cover for the magazine issue was optional, but I had fun doing it, and benefitted from the extra credit I got from doing so.

Below is the cover I made for the article:

Click below to read my Magazine Article:

This is a screenshot of my project in a software called Adobe Indesign. Indesign was something I had not used before, so there were a couple of things I had to get used to. However, Indesign is optimized for creating projects like this, and I am glad I had the opportunity to work with it more.

Animation Production

In animation, the Documentary project took the form of a short two minute audio clip from our interview synced to an animated video. I had an interview recording that was almost an hour long, so I had a lot of trouble cutting it down into something cohesive during the initial stages of the project. However, after I was done editing the sound, I was able to move on with my project much quicker. I began by deciding what I wanted the art style to look like. I wanted something that would fit an informative/nonfiction topic while still using color and movement effectively. I took inspiration from some videos on YouTube from creators like TED-Ed and Kurzesagt (In a Nutshell). With those ideas in mind, I began storyboarding and designing characters.

Character Design for Saul Jaeger:

Storyboard:

A storyboard is a rough outline of how the story of your animation is going to appear visually. It starts as a stationary comic-like set of drawings and develops into a rough video that gives you a rough idea of what the actual movement will look like. Below are my storyboards for the documentary project:

After finishing the storyboard, I began to color and line the final animation, filling in frames as I went. I animate in procreate dreams, and was able to use a feature of it to incorporate some smoother movement into my animation as well, like zoom-ins and zoom-outs. I am happy with the final animation, except for one small thing. Some of my audio corrupted, and started causing this glitching noise during certain parts of the video. Unfortunately, I ran out of time to fix this, as the end of the school year was approaching fairly fast. I do regret that I wasn’t able to fix the audio, but I learned a lot during this project and am grateful to it for what it taught me.

Below is a screenshot of the documentary project in Adobe Premiere Pro, a software that allows users to combine audio and video and then export them as a completed product.

Interviewee Bios

Saul Jaeger is one of three captains in the Mountain View Police Department. After coming out of the military, he was successful in a job as a manager in Silicon Valley. However, after 9/11, Jaeger was inspired to pursue a career in policing. Now, he works with his fellow officers to make sure that Mountain View remains a safe place for its denizens.

Karin Dillon is a resident of Mountain View City, where she lives with her husband and 2 daughters. She has been involved in making her community a better place for many years, whether by supporting/joining organizations like Parent Teacher Associations or the Girl Scouts of America, and by participating in community events/programs. She met Saul Jaeger through one such program, MVPDx, a community outreach program designed to help rebuild police-community relations in Mountain View after movements like ACAB and Defund the Police gained traction in the city.

Below is the full transcript of my interview with Saul Jaeger:

Finally, I would like to say a huge thank you to Saul Jaeger and Karin Dillon for helping me make this project. I had fun doing it, and I really appreciate the fact that they were willing to sacrifice their time for me, in addition to answering each of my questions thoughtfully and truthfully.

Reflection

All in all, the Documentary Project really gave me a glimpse into what it takes to make a film. In this project, I experienced having full control and responsibility for every step of the production for the first time. I needed to think about what I was creating, what I wanted it to look like, and how I would achieve that final result. The importance of research really stuck out to me, both in terms of finding additional or missing information and in terms of finding references on inspiration for the final product.

I think this project gave me an idea of what skills people in the entertainment industry really need to have. To be able to stay on track with your film, you need to plan ahead, often giving yourself more time than you think you need. You need to know where to go for resources or help with your tools. You need a level of independence, of solving your own problems, that this project helped me become aware of, and practice to some extent.