Introduction
Our hardest and third major unit at Freestyle was our Documentary unit. This unit required us to write a documentary paper, conduct in-person interviews with various interviewee’s, create a magazine article, and depending on our elective class create either a film documentary, an animated documentary, or a documentary book. This project challenged us to employ all of our built up creative skills and move them outward towards finding an important story within our community and highlighting them. While in previous projects we had complete creative control and input in how we would present our work, this project posed a new challenge of capturing someone else through various creative means.
My documentary subject was a group of Neurosurgeons at Stanford University. My documentary topic and angle was about the intersectionality between health and art. I chose this topic because I have noticed the overlap between the two before and I wanted to learn more from people who were on the opposite side of the spectrum of this idea, since I was coming at it from an artist exclusive perspective. I learned a lot not only about the subject of my paper, but also how to conduct myself during research projects, how to organize large projects such as a whole documentary and how to create good work on time without beating myself too much up about it being perfect.
English
The beginning of the documentary project started in English where we built what would be the base for our projects in our other classes. This project would be the creation of a documentary research paper. Throughout our process of creating this paper, we referenced other documentaries, conducted educated research for various sources, and went out to find our interview subjects in person to interview them. Additionally, we created interview transcripts and used them as primary resources in our papers.
Writing my documentary paper was one of the harshest aspects of the documentary process because it was just so fundamental to the rest of the projects I would be doing in this unit. I struggled a lot with the actual process of writing my paper, but in the end I was able to wrangle through it and come through with a product I’m relatively happy with. I challenged myself by stepping into completely new territory, and even though there are aspects that can always be improved on, I have learned a lot about battling my own sense of perfectionism by going through the process of creating my documentary paper.
Digital Media
The next part of our documentary project was carried into Digital Media via a Magazine Article. We initially learned how to build an article in Adobe Indesign by using a Nadine Sheridan’s (a soon-to-be graduated Freestyle Student) Magazine Article Indesign file from last year. After we had learned the basics of Adobe Indesign, we used our previous skills we learned to make graphic design elements in Adobe Illustrator.
Looking back, I really enjoyed working with Adobe Indesign, even if it was a bit finicky to understand at first. I think it is overall an incredibly powerful tool for organizing compositions especially those that’d be used in magazine articles or even longer books. I also feel quite happy with my overall Magazine Article composition and was extremely relieved to see that my hard work was seen since I ended up getting into the official Freestyle Magazine Article collection (on the first page no less!). I did my best with the article and I’m glad to see it payed off.
Animation
Our documentary project continued into our elective classes. For my elective class, animation, we had to do a short animation of one of our interviews we recorded and transcribed for our English paper. I chose to use my interview with my interviewee, Majo. I thought her story would fit the most in a visual context and had the most defined story that could be cut down into a short documentary animation. Beside this block of text are various works I created during pre-production. I created multiple character and background concepts using various ideas I gathered from making a moodboard on Pinterest and then made 3 sets of storyboards to conceptualize what would take place within my animation.
Below is my finished documentary animation. It took me about 4 weeks to complete and it features around 2 minutes of my transcribed audio synced to animation that helps tell the story of Majo’s journey as an artist and a neurosurgeon and how the two have overlapped multiple times in her life.
Interviewee Bios
Majo (Maria Jose) was my first and primary interview subject. Majo is from Argentina originally and came to Stanford University to study medicine but specifically neurosurgery. She was specifically a spine surgeon before pursuing neurosurgery. Majo has had many artistic overlap with her work as she used to be a painter before pursuing medicine and also uses calming artistic methods such as music to help her patients wind down before an intense surgery.
Vera was my second interview subject. She is originally from Italy and similar to Majo came to Stanford to study neurosurgery. Vera however is less hands on and instead works in various 3D programs to aid surgery. Vera helps out a lot with the various VR and 3D imaging projects done to study and understand the brain for surgery. Vera’s very profession, while more technical, carries a lot of overlap with what it means to be an artist.
Reflection
My takeaway from this project overall is that good work takes hard work, and that nothing comes easy. I had to work really hard to get all aspects of my project in order in time. My documentary paper and animation especially felt challenging to me, because I had to fight my fear of imperfection in order to get a finished product. This project taught me a lot about letting go of fear and trucking on despite it. It also taught me that the creative process isn’t always smooth or easy, and that working on a deadline sometimes requires making sacrifices. Overall, I think the documentary project helped me learn a lot as both a creative and an academic individual.
Thank You!
A special thank you to the following people:
- You, the reader, for getting all the way through this webpage and looking through my website.
- Darian, for always believing in me and helping me when I needed it most. You are the best.
- My various Freestyle Friends for being there for me and giving feedback throughout this unit and all of Freestyle this year.
- Mr. Greco, Mr. Cho, and Mr. Flo for teaching me such valuable skills and most importantly, making this year absolutely unforgettable and welcoming.