{"id":308,"date":"2026-02-16T06:17:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T06:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~DariusM\/?page_id=308"},"modified":"2026-06-10T06:41:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T06:41:06","slug":"documentary","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~DariusM\/documentary\/","title":{"rendered":"Documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Section<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What is the Documentary Project?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In Freestyle Academy, all Junior students need to create an original Documentary in their second semester. Our task is to go out and interview someone’s untold story, and then create a full-fledged article about it. This documentary project spans almost the entire second semester in English class, and also encompasses the majority of the fourth quarter in Digital Media and Animation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, while there were tedious parts, I loved doing it. Meeting with my interviewee, Dr. Beth Aarhus, to talk about her experience in the chiropractic world was incredibly inspiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s difficult to describe the experience I went through when crafting the documentary. The process of filming Dr. Beth, setting up dates, crafting an article, creating graphical elements, and other necessary tasks was an adventure. Let me take you through my journey as I learn newfound creative skills through creating my documentary about Dr. Beth and her escape from a chiropractic industry that emphasizes quick treatments over patient well-being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Section<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Crafting the Documentary Essay<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We did most of the Documentary process in English class, including planning who we would want to interview. Originally, I wanted to interview my therapist, since he has a unique approach to the discussion of emotions and “parts”, but unfortunately Los Angeles was too far away to interview him in person. I knew that my parents occasionally visited a chiropractor they really like named Dr. Beth Aarhus, so after learning a bit more about her, I scheduled an interview date with her. The interview went really smoothly, and she is such a great storyteller. Before the interview, I wasn’t really sure what I would want the Documentary to be about in relation to chiropractic work, but after the interview was done, I felt a new door had opened for me. I knew exactly what I wanted to write about.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Picture<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In my article writing process, I wrote about Dr. Beth’s experience living in an industrialized chiropractic firm and how she escaped that retail-style practice and forged her own path. Firstly, I created a “zero draft”, in which one just puts ideas onto the page with no attention to structuring. Later, I moved onto making a rough draft of the article. I used the Graphic Organizer and parts of my zero draft to create something coherent. Through the process, I researched lawsuits, articles, scientific studies, and other information relating to chiropractic work, and it was all fascinating. After compiling everything into a rough draft, I went through many revisions, forming a final draft. I am grateful that I managed to find such a good interviewee to give myself insight into her perspective, because this made the process comforting to delve into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Crafting the Documentary Article<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In Digital Media, we learned Adobe InDesign to create a full-fledged article. In my opinion, InDesign is similar to Adobe Illustrator in that they are both heavily vector-based, but InDesign has a higher focus on text formatting while Illustrator focuses on graphic elements. The process of creating my article wasn’t too difficult; I used Illustrator to create some graphic design elements, such as a few spine illustrations, and the rest of the graphic elements I did in InDesign because they were then just blobs. I also used Photoshop to brighten the pictures I took of my interviewee. For the overall color scheme, I chose a pre-made Adobe medical-related color scheme. I used this color scheme throughout all my illustrations and backgrounds. The Documentary article was an absolute blast to make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, things don’t always go as planned. In the middle of Sunday night, the date of publication, my parents woke me up because it turns out the final exported package had an error on the publication side. Strangely though, I had no error. I spent an hour trying to figure out what the issue was, and it turned out there was some corruption in one of my fonts. I managed to fix the issue and submitted it to be published just in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without that little blemish in the end, this Documentary article process would have been a perfectly wonderful experience. But in any case, those little imperfections make something memorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\""Research<\/a>
Click to view Research Paper PDF<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Click to view Documentary Article<\/div>