Introduction
The Documentary unit was one of the hardest units this year. Each of our classes either connected to one documentary or we had to create something entirely new. It was very difficult for me to do because I really struggled with organization and staying in track. But, I still managed to do it. It was based on researching and getting interviews on a topic that we are interested in knowing about. This project was the most challenging and even the teachers have said that past students struggled with this unit as well.
In English class, I decided to interview someone at WestWind Community Barn. She is a trainer there and her name is Kate Richardson. My goal by interviewing er was to learn more about how the community effects others, but mostly on children and if horseback riding was good for them and why. Aside from my main topic o the community, I was able to learn about my trainer in general, I got to hear about the newest plans for Westwind and what Kate plans to do when she takes over the program.
English
At the beginning of this unit, what out teacher had us do was conduct research and write an essay about it that was 5-7 pages long with evidence and quotes from when we conducted the in person interviewers with the people from our topic. We had to create transcripts and many different sources from research.
Writing this paper was one of the hardest things I had done. I struggled a lot with it and at some points I really wanted to give up. But, with feedback from my teacher, peers as well as parents, I was able to muscle through and actually create something readable and something that I am actually pretty happy about.
Digital Media
For my digital media part of the Documentary unit, we were told that we had to make a magazine article. The platform we used was adobe InDesign. First, we had to practice getting used to how the program worked. We did this by copying a seniors magazine project file when they were Juniors and learning in the process. We learned the basics and the rest was up to us to decide!
Thinking back, this was still not my favorite project, but I certainly did learn a new program and I’m happy I did so. Although eve If I was not qualified for being on the actual magazine, which I was sort of disappointed about, I realize that sometimes my best is not always enough and that is okay.
Film
In Film, we had watched many different documentaries and the first time we tried it, we made a mockumentary. The reason we did this exercise was to practice editing in a documentary style for when we actually start the documentary.
Mockumentary
Our first small project was a mockumentary which I did with Estelle and Mark. We did this to practice the techniques of making a documentary and getting critiques on how to make it better. Overall, I really enjoyed making this because it was actually fun and we moistly joked around with what the topic was.I think it would be fun to do tis again in the future but to show the improvement.