Introduction

In our Junior Documentary Projects, we were asked to portray an intriguing person, group, place, idea, or issue. We were told to research primary and secondary sources, primary being interviews, so that we could portray our subjects importance to community or world. We started in English with a research-based, narrative-style article to create a magazine, and an intro for in Digital Media.

Given that, I decided my focus would be Lori Moon, a self-employed Hairstylist. Throughout her time as a Hairstylist, things had been fairly easy to manage but then came along the pandemic and I thought her story on how she went about it was interesting. She also ended up being my main subject my documentary film in Film.

Profile Article

Lori moon has been a self-employed hairdresser for around 20-30 years. Having only faced difficulties of scheduling, she now has to face the pandemic. This brought her big financial problems as her business had to be put to a stop for safety. After months of thriving, Lori has adapted and found her own way through quarantine, while still being safe. She brought joy to her clients after not being able to see them and cut their hair for months on end. This Profile Article is all about her experiences and how she lived through them.

Film

In Film we were told to make a Documentary around a certain subject, and it could really be anything. My subject still being Lori Moon. In this unit, we were taught the essence of an interview, and the technicalities of it. When it came down to technicalities, there were a lot more than I thought there would be. Light had to be in the subjects eyes, the camera has to be at eye level, no distracting backgrounds, and setting the camera on the clock (6 or 7 from the subject). I really enjoyed learning these, because without knowing them, my interviews would definitely not look as good. To practice, we were given the MOCKumentary assignment, which is just a mock documentary.

With this Mockumentary, I was able to learn through feedback about where to sit the subject when there’s a top-down light. Top down lights are ones you should probably avoid because they won’t really bring light into the subjects eyes.

In this Documentary, we needed a total of 3 interviews, so I decided to interview Michael Moon and Lori Moon, along with my Mom Regina Florian. My format for interviews was basically, Lori’s son and a Client of hers. I asked them questions surrounding Lori and the pandemic, and I also staged Lori and Michael in places relating to her work. After this I went and started filming my documentary!

Putting the documentary was a bit rough because I had to select what I really wanted to be in it, and I had a lot of footage to work with. I ended up condeming it to my profile content plus 2 more interviews.