For the documentary project we were tasked with portraying anything we wanted within our local community. This freedom came with many questions. How do I portray this local subject in a light that would be respected by the community? Will the narrative be positive or negative? Who/what do I document. With all of these questions in mind I chose two subjects; a local police officer for my English class and local owned historical pizza place for my Film class.
English
My English documentary magazine was on Officer James Guevarra, a SRO at the Mountain View schools. I initially wanted to push against the narrative of police doing horrendous things and make a pro-police piece. However, after more research and finishing the interview I realized that adding a mental health aspect would really add a lot to the narrative.
Creating this documentary was extremely taxing and difficult. Particularly writing a seven page magazine article. However, I did learn a ton about creating a narrative based on whatever you get from the interviews. What I mean by this is that making a documentary is like being a detective going from lead to lead. This first documentary I wrote taught me how to follow only the most important lead.
Film
To first learn the rules of making a documentary we made a mockumentary. This was meant to be light hearted and show that we know the rules of a standard expository documentary.
Final Film Documentary
For the final film documentary I wanted to do a locally owned historic business. After only 3 rejections we got a local pizza shop to agree. Maldonado’s Pizza in Mountain View, California has been a spot that I had gone to for years and was thrilled to do a documentary on them. They were incredibly helpful with finding times to film, so my team and I got to have 4 filming days and get 6 interviews. Once filming was done we spent hours and hours editing, trying to get the perfect pacing and create a story out of all of the interviews. At the end of my junior year this is the Freestyle project that I am most proud of so far!