Introduction & Reflection

For our Junior Documentary Project, we were challenged with the question,

“How do you creatively and truthfully portray a significant person, group, place, idea, or issue in the community?”

By portraying a topic of interest whose group, location, ideas, or concerns were relevant in the context of our society and the world today, we learned how to write and create narrative-style journalism. We used both primary and secondary research materials, including in-person interviews and credible web articles, in order to properly convey a unique vision of our subject. The in-depth English research piece that we wrote was then translated into a variety of visual communication arts, such as a short documentary intro video and a magazine article that we created to effectively communicate the voice of our subject.

For my Documentary Project, I chose to highlight my wonderful dance teacher, Lauren Kato, and how her teaching style has positively impacted the lives of her students throughout the years. I chose to focus my documentary on Ms. Kato because dance is one of my greatest passions, and it was interesting to see how she views the dance world as a former dancer and now a dance teacher. Her views of society today help to inform others that teaching dance isn’t only about dance but is also about nurturing the humanities of the students.

During the production of this Documentary Project, I really valued being able to learn more about Ms. Kato’s background, and how and what she went through to be able to become the Dance Spectrum teacher at Mountain View High School. She inspires her students every day with her bubbly personality and helps create a fun and safe environment where student leaders can feel comfortable sharing their creations with their peers, eventually reaching the stage at the end of the year.

Completing this project has given me new skills such as conducting in-person interviews, generating interview questions, and writing a research-based documentary paper. In the end, I am very proud of the outcome of this project because it took me multiple weeks, with many revisions along the way but I was able to communicate the message that I wanted and I hope whoever reads this thinks the same way too.

Leap to Success

We used interview transcripts and secondary source materials to create a well-developed and publication-ready research paper in English. We learned how to use a profile structure that featured an anecdotal lead, nut graf, scenes, chronology, what lies ahead, and a closing statement in order to successfully profile our topics and their relevance. We also learned how to properly cite our outside sources to ensure that our publication is professional.

The Making of an Article

After completing my profile-based paper in English, we transferred our work into a full magazine article with elements such as images, headings, and background colors. I chose to stick to one color scheme of earthy neutral colors that give a calm and minimalist sense. I worked really hard to produce this and am very happy with the outcome.

Interviewee Profile

For my Documentary Project, I interviewed my wonderful dance teacher at MVHS, Lauren Kato, who shared her experience about teaching her students in a unique and special way. She positively impacts the lives of her students every day and has helped many of them grow both as dancers and humans in general. She is now the teacher/director of Dance Spectrum and hopes to leave a legacy in the future.

Documentary in Film

Mockumentary

Before creating our real documentary films, we were assigned to create a mockumentary – mock documentary, where we learned about camera placement for interviews, the professional use of audio recorders, as well as learning to gather b-roll – footage that isn’t the main action, for our final mockumentary product.

Documentary Film

Now this was the real documentary. This was a collaborative production between me and my partner, Alex Sharp. I am very proud of our final product, and we hope you enjoy it too!

This was my first time conducting interviews for a documentary, and I really value all the skills that I have picked up since the start of the unit. The unit has allowed me to become more professional with my communication, as well as taught me how to collaborate with others. Deciding on a topic that I was less familiar with, I was able to learn a multitude of facts about the trans and queer community in the Bay Area. With our documentary, I hope to spread knowledge about this truly wonderful community, so everyone can know how special they are.

It took considerable time and effort to put this documentary together. We began by writing the chronology of our documentary while also considering how to cut the clips, sync the audio, and use b-roll to make the video more aesthetically appealing, and then began putting footage together in Premiere Pro. We feel that by balancing talking-head interviews with b-roll, we were able to make an effective documentary to educate people about the Bay Area’s trans and queer community.

Thank You!

I want to thank Mr. Greco and Mr. Taylor, as well as Alex Sharp for their assistance during the unit. My work wouldn’t have been as nicely produced if it wasn’t for their help. I grew as an artist with the skills I have picked up from them.