Introduction
Welcome to my Documentary Project! This project is different from my previous projects so far because rather than this project being about myself and what I create, this one is about me connecting with my community! This was the longest but probably the project that I’m most proud of so far, as I got to write a research paper, create a book, and a magazine article. So without further due, let’s get into it!
When we were first introduced to this project, we were first asked: “How do you creatively and truthfully portray a significant person, group, place, idea, or issue in the community?” or in other words, how can you tell a compelling story of someone or a topic that intrigues you while keeping it accurate at the same time? The goal and steps of this project was to raise awareness on a particular person, a topic, or location through personal interviews and secondary research to learn more about the topic we picked. Using our research, we would then write a paper that tells the story of our topic and most importantly explains why the subject matters today.
Honestly, when I first heard to his project, I knew I had to step out of my comfort zone, as reaching out to an organization or just a community is not something I usually do. Before we started this project, our English teacher Mr. Greco showed us many examples of documentary projects that students had made in the past, such as films, animations, and books on a variety of topics like parkour, surfing, mental health as well as a larger documentary book called “Seeing Silicon Valley” to help us gain inspiration. After exploring these documentary subjects done by past students, I had a few subjects in mind, like mental health and environmental issues. The topic of mental health was my first idea I had in mind, as I knew a lot of people struggle with it, and as a board member of the mental health club in my school, I wanted to see if I could do my documentary on that topic. The club president of that mental health club that I’m in tried to help me reach out to Bring Change to Mind, a nationwide non-profit mental health organization, as she has a close connection with them, however they weren’t able to respond in time before I had to move on. Then, I turned my attention to environmental issues, so I tried to see if I could interview Recology, the company that effectively deals with waste and strives for environmental sustainability, but I wasn’t able to find their contact information. As the end of the brainstorming period became closer, I decided to focus my attention on organizations that I live closer to, and that I have a connection with. I figured that my options for that were CalColor Academy, Flying Fish Swim School, or the local YMCA.
My final decision for my documentary subject was Flying Fish Swim School. Flying Fish was where I learned how to swim when I was seven years old. The swim coaches there helped me blow my first bubbles, do my first kicks and my arm strokes in the pool, so that I could eventually improve my swimming technique. Now as a more proficient swimmer, I was curious about the process that swim coaches go through to help their students become successful swimmers. Upon choosing this subject, I introduced this project to Coach Edgar Mendoza, my swim coach, and Coach Jennifer Hatch, the manager of the swim school, before eventually interviewing them and taking photos.
Coach Edgar is one of the many swim instructors at Flying Fish Swim School. He teaches varying levels, from beginner to advanced where he teaches different types of swim strokes and trains his students to build stamina in swimming. Before he joined Flying Fish Swim School, he participated in professional swimming competitions to chase his passion in swimming.
Coach Jennifer is both the manager and a swim instructor of Flying Fish Swim School. She arranges all of the swim classes, runs the swim tests, help swimmers who are new to the water, and answers the students’ parent’s questions at the front desk. Besides having taught young swimmers, she also has helped adult and disabled swimmers too, and continues to strive to offer lessons to anyone regardless of their ability.
The Process
The documentary process in English class started off with analyzing published documentaries such as “Seeing Silicon Valley” by noting what the subject is, why it matters, and what kind of language and expression the author uses to bring out the message. Then, after I picked out my documentary subject, which is my swim school, I introduced them to my interviewees, as well as taking some observational notes and photos in order to have a better sense of what my interview questions and my research should be about.
The next step was to then find reliable secondary sources, annotate them, and jot down additional questions, along with drafting out the interview questions. On my topic of swimming, the research I found was about the approach to teaching young students how to swim, the challenges people face when swimming, and how the disabled are taught to swim. I also filled out a chart about the different aspects of my topic, such as how they changed over time, the different sub-topics of my topic, and my topic in a larger context. This secondary research helped me polish my interview questions in a way that I could get firsthand perspectives on the different aspects of swimming.
After I finalized my questions, I prepared for my first interview, where I was going to interview my swim coach, Coach Edgar. But before that, we were given a task to do a mock interview, where each student interviews their parents on a topic, such as their high school life, holiday traditions, or even about how they would react if their child goes missing, which can help you practice showing empathy when your interviewee needs emotional support. For this mock interview, we practiced using the Tascam audio recorders to record the audio and configure the settings. Then we took the audio file from the mock interview and put it into Adobe Premiere Pro to have it generate a transcript of the audio, so that we could do the same after our actual interview on our interviewees.
From practicing through a mock interview and finalizing my interview questions, I was ready to carry out my first interview. I interviewed Coach Edgar where I got to learn more about him, like when he got into swimming because he accidentally fell into a pool and went onto learning how to swim afterwards, as well as his journey through professional swimming and teaching. At the end of the interview, I processed the audio recording through turning it into a transcript, putting it into a Google Doc, and listening along with the audio to correct any mistakes in the transcript. I used different colors to highlight and annotate different parts of the transcript, like personal anecdotes, research backed questions, and any areas that spark further research.
After annotating the transcript, I did my expanded research where I found even more secondary sources related to swimming, so that I could generate more research questions for my second interviewee Coach Jennifer, the manager of the swim school. This also allowed me to update my research statement: “My current documentary subject is about Flying Fish Swim School and their journey to helping students learn how to swim. I am studying the process the swim coaches at Flying Fish Swim School go through in order to help students learn how to swim because I want to explore the different techniques swim coaches use to encourage swimmers of any level, whether it is beginners or advanced. I also want to explore the journey that my swim coach went through as a swimmer. This will help my audience understand how Flying Fish Swim School encourages the youth of any ability to accomplish a challenging sport: Swimming.”
After enough brainstorming, I interviewed my second interviewee, Coach Jennifer to learn more about her journey in aquatics. I learned about how she really enjoyed lifeguarding, working and teaching students, and helping the disabled at a therapeutic swimming center before coming to Flying Fish Swim School. I was also fascinated by the daily procedures that she follows as both the manager and a swim coach in Flying Fish, like answering the parents questions, teaching the students, and coordinating the classes. This helped me gain more insight about how to increase accessibility to swimming to more people such as the adults and the disabled who never learned how to swim, and the process to help them learn.
Finally, after gathering all these sources and conducting the interviews, I had enough resources to start writing out my paper. I began my paper with an introduction on why my subject matters today, along with some sensory details of the swim school environment. I had my body paragraphs be organized into three sections based on the research sources I got, which was motivation, process, and benefits.
Digital Media
After continuously revising and eventually completing my documentary paper, I learned how to use Adobe InDesign to create a magazine article that holds the majority of my research paper, along with graphic design elements and photos that I took. I made the graphic design elements in Adobe Illustrator by making use of the pen tool, live paint, and texture effects. Then I edited the photos that I took in Adobe Photoshop before adding them to my magazine.
In using Adobe InDesign, I learned important techniques such as paragraph styles and text wrapping. For the background, I created swimming pool water patterns through Illustrator (Thank you Mr. Greco for this idea) to add onto the swimming pool feel. In the process of creating the magazine article, I had a lot of fun arranging everything together through the process of placing the photos, the graphic design elements, and playing around with custom fonts.
Design
In Design class, I made a whole book on our documentary subject through learning the principles of Design, which is Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity (or C.R.A.P for short). These were the building blocks that I learned for professional publication design, and I practiced these skills through drawing simple illustrations on paper and designing a poster for practice. After becoming more proficient in these skills, I began to create a mood board for my book, where I went online to find good color schemes, graphic design elements, book covers, fonts, and different layout designs as a source of inspiration for my book. Then I got to creating the actual book in Adobe InDesign where I learned to download plugins, set up the text layers, margins, paragraph styles, and just getting more familiar with Adobe InDesign in general.
Similar to the magazine article I made in Digital Media, I also drew water patterns for my book in Adobe Illustrator with slightly different texture variations and colors. A major challenge that I faced when creating the book was taking all the photos, mainly because I had to take the photos of pool room in Flying Fish Swim School, where there were classes in session, which meant that I had to do my best to not capture the front faces of any students in order to protect their privacy. Other challenges I faced was experimenting with different layouts of my book as well as fitting in all of the text from my English paper, because the text often overflowed out of the textbox, meaning I had to add pages or move my photos around very frequently. With enough perseverance and passion through this four month project, I’m proud to have finished this project and I can’t wait to see the outcome!
Reflection
After this project, it inspires me to make a personal project similar to this style about my passions and values, like Science, Mental Health, school clubs and of course, my community. The English paper encouraged me to explore different ways of expressing and presenting a story through methods like starting a paragraph with a narrative before going into backed up research, along with employing a creative style through adding tone and sensory details. In my Digital Media and Design class, I really valued the different aspects of publication design like writing the additional Dedication, Acknowledgements, Preface, and the Author Bio sections just like a real book, as well as the elements of Design.
Acknowledgements
Wrapping this project up, I want to show my appreciation to those who helped make this project possible. Thank you Mr. Greco for guiding me through every step of the documentary writing process and giving me feedback to help me improve. Thank you Mr. Florendo and Ms. Parkinson for teaching me how to use Adobe InDesign and always giving me tips on how I can improve my work. In addition to the teachers, I also want to thank my classmates for providing me the encouragement, and also allowing me to help them back.
Of course, I also want to give a huge shout out to Flying Fish Swim School, specifically Coach Edgar and Coach Jennifer for allowing me to conduct interviews and take photos to raise awareness about the topic of swimming. I learned a lot about their experiences through this process as well as their unique approach towards engaging with new swimmers.