Introduction
For the Documentary unit, we were focused on our Documentary projects, which was about conducting of someone’s perspective and getting to know about who they are based on their personal experience in life. Throughout this unit, we were challenging our creative skills while writing our documentary papers, as we had to take about two months to get it all done. Depending on which our elective class is, we had to use the paper and interview recordings to turn it into an animation, a book, or a film.
My documentary subject was Sweet Tomatoes/Souplantation and my topic was the decline in buffet restaurants. I chose Sweet Tomatoes because it was my favorite restaurant during my childhood, where my family and I would go there for lunch or dinner all the time. I also chose the latter because I wanted to learn more about Sweet Tomatoes’ closure and what happened with their business prior.
English & Digital Media
We first started this project in English, where they would be the base for our other classes to work on. During this process, we had to choose a topic for our respective papers, reference information based on whatever source online, and finding someone that relates to the topic. In addition, we also had to create transcripts of our audio recordings of our interviewees. Writing the entire paper was the roughest spot when it comes to finding sources because it was getting in the way of other assignments I had. But during this process, I’ve putted a lot of effort to make the paper feel perfect by rising up to the challenge, resulting a product that I’m relieved I got done in the end. While there are some sentences that need improvement, I’ve learned so much on how to write a documentary paper, and fighting my sense of perfection along with it.
Next, the project carries over to Digital Media, where we had to use our projects to turn them into Magazine Articles. Before this, we learned on how to use the tools in Adobe InDesign by using a template of a placeholder magazine during our practice session a while back. After learning the basics of the software, we used our skills to create the magazine article by using sentences from our papers and creating graphics using Adobe Illustrator.
I enjoyed working hard on the article. During the process, I’ve created graphics by using the pen tool that would fit the theme of my subject and using images from online to use for the pages. The front cover of my article was even inspired by the one made by Nadine Sheridan.. While I was trying to understand the techniques of InDesign, it’s very useful to create longer books and other magazine articles.
I’m glad that I was able to finish my composition of my magazine article without trying to take so long. I also hope that my article ends up into the collection of other Freestyle Magazine articles.
Animation
The project is also carried over to our elective classes. In my elective, Animation, we had to create a short animated video of our interviews we recorded and documentary papers from our other classes. I chose to do the interview with my sister because I thought her shared memories of going to Sweet Tomatoes were sweet and special. But of course, I didn’t include everything into the final video because I didn’t want my video to go on too long.
On the right, there are my three storyboards of my documentary animation, which shows two characters with a leaf and flower on their heads, representing me and my sister. I drew other characters and scenes matching my sister’s aforementioned memories. During the process, it took me about several weeks to get three storyboards finished during, and it also took me two months to get all of the scenes animated. It was pretty rough for me while working on the animation because I was taking such a long time trying to finish it, but I worked really hard on it, and I’m relieved I got it done.
Here is my animated documentary.
Interviewee Bios
Abby (Abby Clark) was my first and primary interview subject for my documentary of Sweet Tomatoes. She’s an aspiring actress who loves theater and takes several rehearsals during the week. She remembers Sweet Tomatoes very fondly, as she loved eating the food there, especially the ice cream. Outside of that, she loves baking pastries and other desserts.
Carlos Corlay was my second interview subject for the documentary as well.