Intro and Reflection
For the Junior Documentary project we committed five months of our time to answer the question: How do you creatively and truthfully portray a significant person, group, place, idea, or issue in the community? We were tasked with gathering primary and secondary research by conducting interviews and throughly investigating our topic to develop a specific angle about our subject and the significant role it plays in our community.
For my documentary subject I chose the Mavericks Surf Contest located in Half Moon Bay, specifically how Mavericks has evolved and survived through struggles in the past few years. I selected this topic because I’ve spend a great deal of time at the beach and have always been fascinated with surfers who ride big waves. I personally don’t surf myself but it has been a lifetime goal of mine to become proficient at the sport. I have however, grown up on the beach coming nearly every weekend since I was born and now live in Aptos, California part time with my mom. The beach has always been my peaceful place where I can sit and be left to my thoughts. Half Moon Bay was a frequently traveled place for me as a child and I remember being told about the Mavericks Surf Contest with surfers who ride 50 foot waves, but never dived deep into the subject anymore than that before this.
I value this project a lot and I am proud of what I produced. This project was hyped up all year by the Freestyle teachers and I knew it would be a monster of a project to complete. There were several points where I really just wanted to give up and turn in an incomplete project because I had been working on it for 8 hours straight, but I am proud of how I persevered through and came out the other side satisfied with what I created. It was a long process and an experience I’m happy I went through.
Introduction Video
Research Paper
A large portion of the Documentary Project is the research paper. This paper focuses on how to skillfully and expertly write a paper based on the extensive research I did looking into this topic. This assignment required my peers and I to each write an 8-10 page paper on our each individual subject incorporating annotated articles and personal interviews with people related to our topics. There was a lot of necessary planning that went into this paper including a graphic organizer, drafts, contact records, and interview transcriptions. Here is the final product:
Animation
Process and Production
I animated and drew everything on Procreate using my iPad Pro with my apple pencil as a stylus. This was a portable way to animate since COVID-19 hit and I can’t go into class, but I have been using this app for a while now and find it much easier than trying to animate on Adobe Photoshop. Down below you can see the frames at the bottom and in this specific scene there are 59 frames which gives about 5 seconds of video at 12 frames per second. The red are the previous frames and the green are the next few frames.
Animated Documentary Video
Photo Gallery
Here is one of my interviewees, Jeff Clark. He was such a big help on this project. I truly can not thank him enough. Jeff Clark is the man who started it all. You can find more about him in my paper I wrote, linked above.
Here is my other interviewee, Luca Padua. Luca is an 18 year old pro big wave surfer and a local to Half Moon Bay growing up with Mavericks in his backyard. He helped me out with this project so much and I am really grateful to have been given that opportunity. There is also ,ore about Luca in my paper linked above.
Below are a few photos I captured when taking a trip to Half Moon Bay looking for inspiration on my project. Pillar Point Harbor where many surfers come to ride smaller waves, but about half a mile out lie the massive Mavericks waves.
Looking down, are some photos I took of the Mavericks Surf Company shop which is just a 2 minute drive down the street from Pillar Point in El Granada. This shop was started by Jeff Clark who became famous for discovering Mavericks and who now designs tailor-made custom surfboards.
