Introduction
The Documentary Unit took up the majority of the Spring Semester in Digital Media and English, and a good portion of Film, but it was nonetheless a fun and interesting period. I did two different documentaries – one in Digital Media/English, and another unique story in Film. The whole point of the Documentary was to take our skills from the Narrative unit, and tell someone else’s story, rather than our own.
English
My topic for my written documentary was the debate between turf and grass in football. Ever since turf was implemented in the 1970s, there has been a lot of criticism and questions surrounding its usage in professional football. As a football player, I figured this would be a great time to dive deep into the debate. The workload for English consisted of reaching out to individuals we were interested in talking to about our selected topic, creating in-depth interview questions, and finding relevant and reliable news sources to support our topics and what our interviewees mentioned.
This entire process was a long but fulfilling one. I learned a lot of different skills while writing my Documentary, especially in terms of implementing new sources. Most of my time was spent on finding the right people to interview, and the writing portion was surprisingly simple and I didn’t hesitate to let my mind run and spit out whatever I thought. This was a very fun paper to work on, especially hearing the stories of two individuals I admire – Coaches Achilles Walker and Tim Lugo. You can read my documentary paper by clicking on the image below!
Digital media
In Digital Media, our task was to take our English documentarites, and turn them into magazine articles with the power of Adobe InDesign. The most difficult part was learning how to use InDesign, an app used for digital drawing and design – not videography. It took a lot of patience and thought into how I wanted my article to look, but I’m proud of how it looks and the hours I spent working on it.
Film
Now time for the fun part – the filmed Documentary! In Film, a documentary is essentially any film that has an educational aspect or angle, typically told through a subject and their interview. Our first exercise to get us ready for the Documentary: a Mockumentary
Mockumentary
The point of the Mockumentary project was to get a feel for how a filmed Documentary should feel and be, while having some fun with silly interview questions, or serious ones if that’s your cup of tea. I had a lot of fun making this, and although we didn’t quite follow all the rules of a sit-down interview, it was still good practice nonetheless.
Documentary:
Initially, Landon – my partner for this project and the Narrative unit – and I wanted to do a Documentary on the art and history of escape rooms. However, we had little success reaching out to local escape rooms… so we chose the next best and abstract topic: Our elementary school’s crossing guard! Unexpected, I know, but Bubbles is quite the character, as you’ll see in the final product.
Above is a photo of our subject, Bubbles, and the list of questions we asked her.
Bubbles, The Crossing Guard at Landels Elementary School
Bubbles is the Crossing Guard at Landels Elementary School – After being a community crossing guard in San Mateo county, she moved to Mountain View to be closer to family and keep all Landels students safe.
Thank You
I would like to thank Landon, my film partner for his resilience and constant effort to make this happen – you’re the man! Thank you to Mr. Taylor for also being flexible with our schedules so we could make a film we are proud of, and thank you to Bubbles and the Landels community for making this happen and welcoming us back with open arms!