Documentary

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Introduction

For my Junior Documentary Project, I was instructed to answer the central question of how to authentically and creatively portray a member and conflict within my community. I went went one step further by deciding to represent my friend, Sara.

Sara is a nonbinary classmate of mine, who I’ve been friends with since elementary school. At first, I was determined not to be cliché in my storytelling. I refused to create a sob story about my queer friend, nor a fluff piece. The world has enough of these already, I figured. But focusing on what I wasn’t making made it a lot harder to create anything without mentally critiquing it into oblivion. It clicked that it’s okay to be mainstream when I heard Tame Impala talk about his album, “Currents”. He was finally able to make his best work when he embraced the “pop-y” sound he had been avoiding, in order to preserve his ego and identity as an indie, alternative artist. When I realized that Sara’s story is allowed to be fluffy and dramatic and cliché– all qualities cisgender pieces are given without a second thought as to the political climate or social environment of the piece– I was able to make my best work.

Sara hadn’t come out to their parents throughout this whole production. The struggle to remain ethical in gendering them around others gave me a sliver of insight into the daily tightrope they have to walk. They have to remember who they can be their authentic self around, and who can do them. Who might support them, how risky a person is to come out to. There’s a chance that Sara’s parents will see this production and Sara will have to come out, but Sara laughed when I mentioned the option to leave them anonymous. They constantly leave me in awe with their ability to find the humor in a situation. “Imagine if our English teacher recognizes my voice from the interview assignment!” they once joked.

Elective Class Production

In Design class, I made an advertisement related to the subject of the documentary created in English. I chose an advertisement for horse saddles because my interviewee, Sara, works with horses. Their stable is a safe space for them to explore their identity. I thought that the saddle, which acts as the support for a rider, was an apt metaphor for the way in which Sara’s community supports them. “Appa” is an endearing term for “father” in multiple cultures, as I wanted to stress the comfort and trust involved in purchasing and relying on a saddle.

To create my advertisement, I first put together a mood board, which included my color scheme, headline font, and relevant images and design elements. The color scheme was made in Adobe Color using a split complementary method. I created the saddle outlines in Adobe Illustrator and compiled the images and text into a poster through Adobe Indesign. One of the problems I encountered was with the gradient background, as the angle of the gradient reset automatically from left to right every time I edited its colors. Since I wanted the gradient to be vertical instead, this was very frustrating. Overall, though, I am satisfied with the poster. I think it conveys its message concisely.

Magazine Article

I created a magazine article in Digital Media using Indesign and the article I wrote in English. The process included formatting the article with pull quotes, writing an author bio, and photographing Sara. I had to edit my first attempt at the magazine (samples of which can be found in the photo gallery) to include more graphic design elements and have more negative space around the pull quotes.

Photo Gallery

Here are the images for my processes on all parts of the project.

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Reflection

Overall, this project had a great learning curve for me! It consisted of plenty of challenging parts. I appreciated my teachers’ feedback for all parts of the Junior Documentary Project. I did my best to adapt to expectations and suggestions.

When dealing with issues of human rights, it can be emotionally taxing to realize just how far we have to go. I hope that this project has impacted Sara and the nonbinary community in a positive way. If you’re a member of the alphabet mafia, remember that you are loved!