Introduction
The purpose of this project was to study and tell the story of a place or person in our community that we felt was worth sharing. Because of my passion for dance and love for my own dance studio, i felt this was something worth documenting. Bay Area Dance School and Leyla Boissonnade were great Subjects for this project in which I felt had a great influential and unique story to share.
For this project, I combined my English and design skills in order to create my documentary book and documentary website in Adobe InDesign.
Leyla Boissonade: The Face of the Bay Area Dance School
Research Paper
The Documentary process truly began in English, where we were to write a research paper about our documentary subject, which would later become my multi chapter book. The first step to this process was interviews. Personally, the interview process was not that heard, because I knew all of my interviewees personally and I see them all, at least weekly. My first interviewee was Leyla Boissonnade, my main documentary subject. This probably my longest interview just because it was where I had to rehear the most information in order to begin drafting my paper. My other interviewees included Bay Area Dance School student and faculty, Katies Baik and Mariana Sobral. I tried to keep most of my interviews focused more around their relationship with Leyla personally and professionally. My goal for this paper was to tell the reader how Leyla has created a space where dancers go for great relationships and support but also great professional training and preparation.
Interviewees
Leyla Boissonnade
Leyla Boissonnade – Bay Area Dance School Owner and Director; Dance teacher
Katie Baik
Katie Baik – Bay Area Dance School Senior Acuity team member; Sophomore at Presentation High School
Design Production
Creating my documentary book involved many different pieces, such as graphic design elements and illustrations, photographs, and my multi-chapter Documentary paper – all of which took a great deal of time. In design, the firsts step was to create our book template. This was created in adobe InDesign using the Blurb Book Creator (seen below).
After the template was created, my next step was taking photos for my book. This was actually one of the bigest challenges I faced during this project. Not only was it difficult to find time in my dance and school schedule to take pictures but also the conditions and setting in which the pictures were to be taken were not ideal. Part of our assignment was to try and use speed lights, and as you can imagine, using a speed light in a room full of mirrors can be pretty difficult. In addition to the speed light, the rom was also very dark and my subject were moving most of the time. Trying to focus my camera while still making sure the photos are not over exposed and not allowing to be blurry was really abc allege for me, though I did eventually get into the groove of things. In the end I was very happy with the way my pictures turned out and I think this was a good learning experience for me. Below, I featured some of my documentary photos. (click on photo to go to gallery)
While I was in the process of drafting my book in English, I began to design and assemble my book in Adobe InDesign. A big part fo the visual appeal was the illustrations. I decided to make almost all of my graphic design elements in Adobe Illustrator. First, actually in InDesign, I added the three squares at the bottom of every page to give the book a bit more of a cohesive feeling. My next idea was to create silhouettes of different dance poses to place behind text and throughout the rest of my book. In Adobe Illustrator, I ended up creating about five different poses juts using the pen tool and filling in my shapes with color. I eventually created different version software each in different colors from my color scheme. Another on elf graphic design elements that I used a few time throughout my book was the ballet shoes. I also used Adobe Illustrator to create this piece and also used the pen tool as well. In addition to this, I created the ballet barre (featured in chapter three) in Adobe Illustrator. Below are pictures of my graphic design elements.
After all fo these different pieces were done, it was time to assemble my complete book. I used the skills that we hav practice throughout the year in design to figure how to play things in each spread. I used the same colors and design elements consistently in different ways throughout my book in efforts to keep the reader interested and on track with story and with the visuals. I placed many of my design elements behind some of my text or pull quotes and lowered the opacity. This way they could still be featured bu not take up too much space in m book. One of the main features in my book were actually pictures that were not taken by me. Since my book was about a very specific type of environment, that as supposed to make the reader feel welcome, I waned to feature pictures taken by and/or with my subject and her dancers. After my book as assembled, I designed my cover and exported. Below is a picture of one my spreads after I was finished designing it. Below is also a link to a digital version of my completed book (click on picture to open link).
