Introduction
For our Junior Documentary Project, we had to portray an intriguing person, group, place, idea, or issue, gathering both primary and secondary research sources to develop a distinct perspective about their subject’s significance in the community and/or world. The research based paper written in our English class served as the basis for a magazine article in Digital Media as well as a short animation. This unit emphasized journalism in a narrative style.
My Documentary Project
For my Documentary Project I chose to write about adoption because it is a very important topic to me. I felt like being adopted is something that many people are curious about, but are often hesitant to ask about. As an adoptee, I often get asked similar questions, so I decided to base my documentary around a few of those questions. I was able to interview three international adoptees from Korea and China.
Research Paper
In English, we wrote a research paper on a topic of our choice. We started by getting interviews from three people and gathering information from a few secondary sources. This part of the project felt the most like something I would do in a regular English class.
Magazine Article
Using the text from our research paper, we used Adobe InDesign to create a 6 page magazine article and a short “about the author” page.
Reflection
This project was the most challenging assignment for me in my Junior year at Freestyle. The increased end-of-year workload in my other classes combined with school being closed due to Covid-19 were two massive factors that I had working against me for the duration of the project. However I had a very solid idea of what I wanted to achieve, and I feel like this goal helped everything run more smoothly. I think that, overall, I was able to achieve what I had set out to do in the beginning. I found that, despite being a long writing assignment, I actually enjoyed most of the process. Unlike other English classes, I felt like I had full control over the project and had the ability to make it exactly how I wanted. Although I did find it quite challenging to make my writing interesting.
Animation
In animation class, we created a short animation based off of our first interviewee’s responses. Similarly to my Narrative Project, I used Adobe Photoshop to draw various frames and lay the foundation for my animation, and then used After Effects to assemble them and make everything flow.
Behind the Scenes
Reflection
I think that my animation could have been a bit better, but I was unable to go to school for most of the Project and did not have access to any of the normal tools. Despite this, I was able to
Interviewee Bios
- Name: Laura Chin
- Age: 29
- Adopted from China
- Name: Paula Smith
- Age: 44
- Adopted from Korea
- Name: Jay West
- Age: 54
- Adopted from Korea