Introduction
This project had us step away from representing ourselves, and instead represent others in the community through unique ways. In English we were told to make a profile documentary; essentially a documentary about a single person and their lives, and then write about it. In Film, we had a bit more liberty in what we wanted to document, as it could really be anything.
Reflection
Out of everything we did this year, this project was probably the most impactful out of them because it managed to allow others to be seen and known. I’m really happy that in both English and Film I managed to make meaningful stories out of people’s lives, especially with the Film documentary. Simply the process of getting out there and meeting new people and their lives really gave me a new perspective on how different people live and experience their lives depending on what they do.
English Paper
In English we did a lot of prep work in order to figure out who our subject for our profile would be. After thinking for a while, I decided I would do a profile on an elementary school teacher I knew, who had been teaching for almost 40 years. I felt like she was profile worthy because she had so much expertise in teaching and had been through a lot of time periods.
Film Documentary
In Film, we learned about a lot of different types of documentaries that we could do, and to practice doing one of them, we were assigned to make a mockumentary; essentially a fake documentary about something made up.
After that, we started on the real deal. We all had pitches for initial documentary ideas that we shared around, and although I liked my original idea of interviewing professional skiers, I settled for a documentary about an organization that gave financial aid to struggling immigrants. That’s what the project was originally going to be, but as more interviews got done and we interviewed one of the families that got aid, we quickly realized that the story of the mother who got aid was a much more compelling and touching story than the one of the organization, so we quickly pivoted the subject and did our best with it. Overall I think it came out well and represented the heartbreaking story of Rosalia, the mother who fought her health to come out on top.
Thanks to:
Rosalia and her family for being vulnerable and letting us hear and document her story. Her entire family was super supportive and welcoming throughout the whole process, and had some of the nicest hospitality I’ve ever had the pleasure of having.
Mr. Taylor for sticking through it with us and putting up with the missed deadlines while still giving really useful feedback, especially when we pivoted our documentary completely.