Introduction
This unit has taken up the last couple months of my semester with combination of assignments from Digital Media, Film, and English, all tying in together. Each class was intertwined with assignments that would be based off of one another. The section really taught me how to utilize the non-fiction form of displaying work, which I really like since I am in Journalism class which aligns with everything that we were being taught. For all my pieces of work I had to do interviews with so many interesting people, which I thought was very interesting.
I created two main documentary projects. The first one is a an article about Entrepreneur Lenny Hoschild. After hearing his story about his experience in the Enron energy scandal and his unique business, I was intrigued, so I interviewed him and talked to some of his friends who had amazing things to say about his character and leadership ability. From this article, I created a magazine page that consisted of a 6 page article designed in in design with photos and graphic elements. His story was truly peculiar to me, and I wanted to give other people the same chance to hear what he had to say.
Film
For or documentary unit, we were tasked with creating a short documentary on something that we thought was cool. I selected one about one of my family friends, Jeremy Bailensen, who is the head Stanford Professor for Virtual Reality. In this assignment, we dove into the history and relevance of VR today, and we gathered different interviews from consumers, cinematographers, and sound designers, all relating to VR. This has been one of my more favorite assignments because I was familiar with the documentary process previously, so being able to learn how to do it for real was super cool. I also really like how the project turned out overall.
This is our Mockumentary that we were tasked to make in the film class that helped us learn how to use the skills in documentary. These included out introduction to the usage of microphones and dialogue, placement of cameras, lighting, and other important interviewing skills. It was also just a fun assignment where we could make mistakes and have fun before our important interviews came with our actual documentary.
Interviewee Bio
Jeremy Bailensen is the Professor of VR at the Stanford Lab. He has been studying VR for over 25 years, and has a very unique point of view on the world of Virtual Reality. I interviewed him for my documentary film at his house, where he gave us lots of information on VR and where he thinks it is headed.
Don Hardy is a documentary film director and cinematographer who has visited the Las Vegas Sphere on multiple occasions, and who has been surrounded by VR his whole career. He was also a business partner with my mom, who have worked together for many years.
Dren is a music producer and sound designer for movies and videogames, and he has had lots of experience with Virtual and spatial audio, which gives him good insight on the future of VR.
Tyler is a friend and consumer of the VR product, and also a student at MVHS. He has had the Meta for a couple of years, and goes over his feelings about it.
Lenny Hoschild
Lenny is the main character in my documentary article, highlighting his business in clean energy and character and personality of the leader that he has become.
Dana Nachman
Dana Nachman is a long time friend to Lenny, who happens to be my mother. She has grown up with him for almost their whole lives, similar to me;)
Reflection
What I learned from this unit is that learning about someone life through visual interpretation can be unique. As a journalist for the school newspaper the Oracle, I was very familiar with the writing and design aspect of this, but going from a different way was pretty cool. Going into this project, I completely disregarded what I had learned in my journalism class to give myself a chance to learn from a new way, which I think will ultimately help me in my journey with journalism and the skills that I have acquired along the way. I also really enjoyed learning about what it is truly like to be a film maker for films that could be places in a competition or film festival, because all of the documentaries that were shown felt so professional even if certain rules were broken.
Thank You
I just want to thank all of my interviewees, my partner Evan, and all of the freestyle teachers for helping me through the whole documentary process.