Introduction
The Documentary project includes three main aspects for each of our Freestyle classes: the interviews and research paper written in English, adaption of this paper into a professional magazine article in Digital Media, and a mini animated documentary in my Animation elective. I was extremely intimidated going into the various projects involved in the Documentary unit, from the formally conducted interviews, to animating my own mini documentary over the course of multiple months. Despite my initial hesitation, I was able to tie all of these different pieces together to create a variety of different documentary works that I’m very proud of. A big part of this was because of the subject I chose: paleontology at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. I hesitated adding this to my list of potential subjects because of the distance; I knew I’d need to take several trips there, and I wasn’t sure if timing would work. Still, I decided to reach out. I was extremely interested in the topic of natural history, especially paleontology. It’s something I’ve always been interested in, but was generally overshadowed by other interests throughout my life. In my mind, it didn’t hurt to reach out; if timing or other aspects didn’t work out, then I could always reach out to my multiple back ups. Thankfully, timing, distance, and most parts of the interview process worked out smoothly. I used the interviews to flesh out a solid topic about the important role museums play in educating the public about natural history, especially paleontology which is an often overlooked field of science. The amazing staff and associates at the museum were extremely helpful during this process, for not only allowing me to interview them and take photos around the museum, but also providing great information and being kind throughout the entire process. Thanks to them, I was able to create works of art and media that I’m so proud of and had an amazing time creating.
The Interviewees!
Wayne Thompson
Wayne Thompson is the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History’s Paleontology Collections Advisor. He’s been working in the field of paleontology for nearly 50 years and got involved with the museum in 1976. Growing up in the Santa Cruz area, paleontology has been something Thompson’s been interested in his entire life and now he gets to work in the field as a career. Not only does he work extensively with the paleontology department at the museum, but he also runs his own small business, Pacific Paleontology. From teaching in the Bay Area, to working with the museum, he’s done it all when it comes to paleontology.
Ross Johnston
Ross Johnston is the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History’s Public Programs Manager. He oversees adult public engagement programs, workshops, lectures, and more, making him an essential part of the museum staff. Through his “edutainment” lens, he makes education for the local community fun and engaging for all ages. He had experience in the education department of many different areas, not just museums, but also aquariums, zoos, botanical gardens, and more.
Special Shoutout to: Kathleen Aston
Huge thanks to Collections Manager Ms. Aston for helping me coordinate this entire project in relation to the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. I didn’t get a chance to personally interview her, but she really allowed me to get this project done, start from finish.
Digital Media+English
The process began in English, where we explored short documentaries on a variety of different subjects in order to get an idea of what we were creating. After a long holiday break, we jumped into the project swinging. We began brainstorming subjects and topics, reaching out to local organizations, and beginning to outline our research paper. This served as a basis for all of our other Documentary projects. It set the tone for our magazine article format and shaped what our elective assignment would be about; in my case, a short animated documentary. During English, I began researching about topics related to my subject: paleontology, museums, and natural history. After my initial interview with Wayne Thompson, I gained significance insight on how I could narrow my focus. This helped me decide to focus on the education provided by museums and it’s connection to paleontological research. After establishing this connection, I came up with my angle statement:
The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History plays a vital role in educating their local community about natural history and paleontology, which provides a gateway into the importance of the field to people of all ages.
The angle statement served as a basis for the entire paper, the most simplified version of what our entire piece would be. In this simple statement, I clarified my intended audience and the connection between my topic, paleontology and natural history, and my subject, the SCMNH. After this is when the work really began: outlining. In my outline, I established different topics that would be split up into different sections. This drastically helped me during the writing process itself. I figured out what parts were working and what parts I needed to conduct more research on. After I interviewed Ross Johnston, I better structured the section about the SCMNH’s role in the community and the education they provide. Through all this outlining, interviewing, and research, it was finally time to draft. Thanks to all of the outlining, this process was fairly simple. I put everything in my outline into comprehensive sentences and paragraphs as opposed to my brief bullet points and added more imagery and paragraph breaks to set the scene and tell a story. It was a different style for me, but still so much fun to write in this experimental way.
Over in Digital Media, we began working on the format of our magazine article adaption of our research paper. I used Adobe InDesign to create and format our articles, while n Adobe Illustrator, I created my graphic design elements, or GDEs. I struggled with designing my GDEs at first; I had an overall vibe I was going for thanks to the written article and a chosen color palette I borrowed from the SCMNH’s official logo, however, getting my designs to match the vague idea in my head was tricky. Eventually, I decided to borrow one of the my sketches from the animated version of the documentary to create the mastodon GDE which helped me develop a clear style for the rest of my GDEs. in order to include all elements, including photos and pull quotes, I did have to cut down parts of the written research paper. Thankfully, the main ideas and bulk of the text remain untouched. The main ideas of the article are still there, just briefer and with visual elements to help tell the story.
Animation
By far, I was the most anxious about going into the animation portion of this project. It’s also the last piece we began working on because of previous animations we worked on during the semester. Our assignment was to create an animation using an audio clip from one of the interviews we conducted. I debated a lot in my head what I should use for this. I wanted a clear story to be present, meaning it needed to be long enough for the tale to be told, but also short enough to be fully animated in the limited time we had to work. Storyboarding was essential for this work because of timing. I went through multiple drafts to ensure the timing worked out and the timeline would be clear, and the final one is shown below.
Click To View Storyboards
Generally, the animation process was very long. This was the longest animation project of the year, but the time we put into definitely paid off. I’m happy with how the final media came out; I’m glad I put the time and effort into making this quality of an animation and am also proud that I was able to pull of completion in the limited time we had. I admit, I was short on time for parts of the animation process due to some mistakes at the beginning of the project. Still, I simplified some portions and
Final Thoughts and Thank You’s
Even though I highly enjoyed this project, there were still many bumps along the way. Initially, I had no idea how to incorporate my chosen subject into a meaningful story and article with a clear theme. However, after my initial meet up and formal interview my my first interviewee, paleontologist Wayne Thompson, I began gaining a clearer image of what I wanted to focus on. My second interviewee, Public Programs Manager Ross Johnston, helped me establish a solid idea of what my main topic would be with out interview. Another road block was finding a tangible story to animate that was easy to follow and related to my main theme. I struggled to choose a specific audio clip that told a specific and narrow story. In the end, I decided to combine different parts of my interview with Mr. Thompson to create a cohesive story focused on the mastodon skull discovered in Santa Cruz and housed at the museum.
This was the first major assignment that incorporated skills and projects from all three classes at Freestyle. Through this, I learned a lot about connecting different forms of art and media. In the research paper, I combine two different writing styles of a typical research paper and a creative story. The writing process was hard, but also an enjoyable challenge for me. I absolutely love writing and want to pursue the topic in the future, so the writing portion of this project really helped me expand on how I write. Adapting this writing into a magazine article was a first for me, and helped me express my writing artistically. Adding graphic design elements and formatting the piece into a much more visually appealing way allowed me to gain a new perspective on digital media as a whole. It was a fun challenge to do this and try it for the first time. The animated documentary was new for me as well. Previously, we had primarily animated stories, especially coming out of the Narrative 1 unit for that class. With this, we had to find others stories throughout our interviews that was simple and still comprehensible in a short amount of time. I learned a lot about how to turn something like an interview into an engaging animated video. There was a lot of trial an error during the storyboarding process, and I still had to workshop some things during the animation process. Even so, I’m happy with and proud of how the animation turned out.
Of course, this wouldn’t be possible without the help of those from the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. Paleontologist Wayne Thompson, Public Programs Manager Ross Johnston, and Collections Manager Kathleen Aston were all a huge help and the rest of the museum staff I met were all so kind. I’d also like to mention my English teacher, Mr. Greco, for getting us started with the Documentary projects and guiding us through the entire unit, and my dad for driving me to Santa Cruz early in the morning several times.