Zenith

The final project for seniors at Freestyle Academy is the Zenith project: a culmination of all our skills into one final product. It can be whatever we want it to be, within reason and the guidelines of our elective. The Google definition of Zenith is “the time at which something is most powerful or successful.” This is the purpose of our project: one final show of all our skills. Though the Corona Virus screwed around with our projects a little bit, in the end, we were all able to create successful and interesting projects to share with the world.

My final Zenith product ended up being a poetic documentary about my feelings towards the quarantine, and what my life was like stuck inside with my family. I was excited, as I enjoyed the documentary project and I like writing essays and poetry. Writing has always been a passion of mine. Though I had never made a poetic documentary before, I was eager to learn about what it was and how to create one.

I don’t have much to show about process. It was mostly filming, and then editing at the end. No exciting production, just observation. In the end, however, I think it made a fantastic project. So please enjoy!

After this project, I was tasked with writing a Zenith reflection in English, which summarized all the feelings I had about this project and how it came to be. You can listen to and read it below

Quarantine has not been easy. Even more difficult when a large project is resting on my shoulders, as well as papers, homework, tests, and more. It was hard enough to get out of bed sometimes, much less to film an entire project. In the end, I did. How? Well, it was a journey.

My original idea was to make videos that went along with lyrical essays I wrote in English. I was very proud of the writing, and I was excited! I had actors, locations, over 100 storyboards, it was great.

Of course, then covid came and bit me in the ass.

So, I had to switch gears. A previous idea I had was a poetic documentary. Something simple, just following someone around or something. Now, it became my real project. I decided to focus on my life with my family in quarantine, and how I felt. Something great about a poetic documentary is the ability to convey feelings. Being able to convey myself through film felt like a great idea. So, I got started on my research.

My research wasn’t super complicated. I started with the basic information of what a poetic documentary was. The basics of it was an experimental sort of documentary that focuses on emotion rather than stories and facts. It’s something sort of elegant and powerful, almost never using interviews and raw footage with shaky cam intact being common. I liked the style a lot, and went on to watch many of the available poetic documentaries on Youtube.

Watching the videos on Youtube really helped me to understand exactly what I wanted out of my own Zenith project. I took note of what worked and what didn’t, what I admired and what I wanted to avoid. Something that especially struck me was narration. I loved the videos that had poetry in the background. They stuck with me. Writing is something I’ve always loved, so adding a piece of myself into my Zenith using writing seemed obvious. Research really helped me to understand not just the possibilities, but what I wanted for myself. 

Next came filming. I was very much a lone wolf in this project, but filming actually brought with it some sort of collaboration. I had to film my family. So I had to work with them in some ways. Strangely enough, it worked out. I gained confidence having to constantly explain and assert myself as someone filming. My family also helped out, playing to the camera sometimes or giving me some ideas about what to film. Eventually, I had all the footage I wanted.

I then looked through all my footage to give me a better idea of what kind of narration I wanted. In Junior year, the most important thing I learned about documentaries was that you would discover the story after you filmed. So I went on a quest to discover the story. Watching everything, I was struck with inspiration and wrote a poem I called “Aimless.” I then was able to edit the clips to a recorded version of the poem, and ended up with my final result.

I like to think that if I could do this project over, I would do it better. I’d spend more time editing and less time being stressed and depressed. Maybe I would have chosen something more ambitious, or something more interesting. But I’m also pretty happy with the way things turned out. Especially in creative pursuits, I find that it’s never perfect. You always want to change something, fix something. There’s no right answer. So, maybe I wished that I worked a little harder, or something. But really, I’m fine with what I did.

For 21st century skills, I would say I improved the most in visual literacy. I was using a lot of abstract imagery and I had to do a lot of camera work. I think being the sole cinematographer forced me to think about what I was filming, how I was filming it, shot composition, etc., which helped me improve visual literacy.

In the future, I hope I can use my skills to create more. It was really nice to edit again, to have a finished project, to get my ideas and feelings out into the world. It’s hard to be creative right now, what with mental health issues and school taking up so much time. But I want to do more. I also want to use the skills I learned in motivation. Setting deadlines for myself, planning things out, and forcing myself to work was definitely something I learned during this project.

In the end, this was not my most successful Freestyle project. However, I didn’t come into this thinking it would be. With the months of time and work spent on narrative, I found that my senior narrative was my favorite project. However, I did ignite my passion. This project helped motivate me to write more, to take photos, to edit, to create again. I think any creative project is worthwhile, even if it isn’t the best thing you can make.

So, this was a journey. Not my best project, but not my worst. A project made through quarantine. A challenge, a struggle, a process involving throwing out a lot of hard work and making something new. Hopefully, what is remembered about my Zenith is what it represents, and the way it makes you feel. This experience has been hard on the whole world. I hope I could capture a small snippet of the conflicting feelings I think we’re all having at this time.