Documentary

Introduction to Documentary

In the documentary unit, our goal was to depict an idea, person, place, group, or issue and convey how our subject is significant to the world while also utilizing information from the primary and secondary research sources that we gathered. This unit highlighted journalism in order to bring interesting information to the public with our projects.

For my documentary subject, I chose anxiety, specifically in high pressure situations. Although not everyone has an anxiety disorder, I hoped that my documentary could at least inform people on techniques to manage stress. Since stress and anxiety affect many people, I wanted to create projects that hopefully help others understand and manage it a little better.

I believe I learned a lot about how to research, compile, and share information from this unit. Although my passion is fictional narrative style storytelling, I’m glad I was able to have the experience of researching a topic and presenting it as objectively as possible. While this was not a planned part of the unit, I feel like I also learned a lot about how to improvise and overcome difficulties due to the outbreak of COVID-19 keeping us quarantined for a large portion of this unit. Even though I could not get all the primary sources I had hoped for, I learned to work with what I had and do my best to complete the project during a very unstable time in all of our lives.

Animated Documentary Production

Animated Documentary

Documentary

Storyboards

Early Storyboards
Storyboards Revised

Concept Design

Documentary Type: Reflexive – portraying ideas/message 

Anxiety isn’t something that you can point a camera at and film or take a picture of. If you want to represent it visually, you’d have to draw it out. So this documentary had to be animated because of that. 

Color Pallet: Dark backgrounds with bright accents, staying mostly in the warm color range

Behind the Scenes

Editing (Adobe After Effects)
Animating/Background work (Adobe Photoshop)

Magazine Article

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Photogallery

Interviewee Bios

Christa Pauly

Christa Pauly is currently a Junior at Mountain View High School. She likes doing art, designing characters, and socializing with her friends.

Gilda Page is a Supervising Attorney for the felony team at Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office. She hopes to make a difference in the lives of her clients by making sure they receive the help that they require for their mental illnesses instead of being incarcerated without the treatment they need to get better. She likes knitting and spending time with her family at home.