Introduction
“How do you creatively and truthfully portray a significant person, group, place, idea, or issue in the community?”
During our documentary unit, we were challenged to learn and create multiple creative pieces to represent a person, group, place, idea, or issue in our community that we believed was important. The key to producing a captivating documentary piece is to find something worth representing. For English, I wrote a profile article on my two identical twin cousins who were born months before their due date. For Digital Media, I took my profile article and made a magazine page to go with it using Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator. For Film, I worked with my friend Brad to make a documentary on our lacrosse coach, Greg Hoberg, who has been a key figure in the Mountain View Lacrosse program for many years. Throughout this process, I learned about how to represent a documentary subject in a multitude of ways, ultimately getting to share the incredible stories of my cousins and Coach Greg along the way.
Interviewee Bios
I interview the family on the right are my interviewees, but they are also my family! On the far right is my Uncle Vic, and on the far left is my Aunt Anna. Anna is holding Weston and Vic is holding Bennett, the identical twins who were the focus of my profile article. Lincoln is in the middle and he is the oldest of the three boys. The three boys all attend Oak Elementary School; Lincoln is in the fifth grade and Bennett and Weston are in first grade.
Profile Article: Miracles
The goal in English was to create a profile article based on someone in our community who is important in some way. To do this, we found people in who we believe are important figures in our community, learned from other profile articles (shout out Lindsay McKinley), gathered research surrounding the profile’s importance, reached out to the subject, conducted interviews, and most importantly, wrote the paper. For my profile article, as mentioned in the intro, I decided to write about my premature, identical twin cousins, Weston and Bennett. Having an opportunity to learn more about what the twins and my aunt and uncle went through because of their prematurity really opened my eyes to how much of a blessing it is that they are doing so well now. I did lots of research on the extensive care they received and continue to receive, interviewed both the kids and parents, transcribed the interviews, and ultimately wrote the article. In the end, I am so glad that I get to write a happy story thanks to the work of so many people who allowed Weston and Bennett to live healthy lives. I would also like to thank my Uncle Vic and Aunt Anna for all the help, information, and photos they provided and a thanks to Mr. Greco for working with me to get the profile to its best possible state.
Film Documentary: Spartans
For film, we took our story telling skills we developed in English paired with the interview techniques Mr. Taylor taught and made a film documentary. As mentioned in the introduction, we did our documentary our on lacrosse coach, Greg Hoberg. He has had a lot of experience playing and coaching the game, and we thought it would be a good idea to put all of the wisdom he has in the form of our documentary. Most of our films content comes from Greg’s interview and player interviews, but we have b-roll (related footage) throughout that limits the amount the audience is just watching people talk. I was pleased with the story we built in the documentary, but I wish we had fixed our audio before conducting the interviews. Our problem with Greg’s interview was that we had the wrong mic, and then switching the from the wrong mic to the right mic messed up the rest of the interviews. Overall, I am happy with the final product, but I just wish the audio was better.
Before making our documentary, we practiced the interview rules we learned with a mockumentary. We worked on the mockumentary in groups of four, and considering we only had a week to make it, I think it came out pretty good.
Reflection
My takeaways from the documentary unit is that I learned how to represent and tell a story of someone else through writing, filmmaking, and a magazine article. Making a profile article in English helped me develop my research and storytelling skills as I felt pressure to be well-educated and represent the remarkable story of my twin cousins. The film documentary was an application of the skills I learned in English in combination with the interview skills we had developed. And while I was proud of the outcome, I learned about audio distortion the hard way and I will be careful about that going forward. In the end, this unit was very fulfilling as it feels good to share the miraculous experiences and stories that people go through that would otherwise not be spread.