SENIOR YEAR
New Hampshire Primaries
This year, I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of the students to travel with Muench to go to the New Hampshire primaries and do interviews with voters. I was DP for Finley's group, and our interviewer was Katelyn. I was kind of disappointed with this trip because I wish we could have done more interviews. Between the two groups, we did quite a bit, but I wanted to interview more younger people as well as more old people. The two different groups would have given us a wide variety of opinions and information. I might edit this into a "day in the life of a BBA cinema student" type of thing, or an overall look at the New Hampshire Primaries (although Muench seems to not want me to do it, because I have so much on my plate already. But if it's good then I'll have 3/4 of the possible nominations for the documentary category, so!!). I'm really excited for next years students to go because they'll be working with the presidential election! There they will be able to interview voters from multiple political parties.
Finley will send me the news story when she is done editing
News Story
This year I was DP for Finley's news story, which was on the new Chinese class that is coming in 2021. I think that the lighting is gorgeous, though I wish that we had a more interesting background for Cheryl to be on. Also, I apparently forgot how to set up a tascam, so we had to use the Røde mic audio (good thing I've learned to double up on the audio though!). However, tascam won't be a problem anymore since we have the new adapter that goes straight from lav mic to the camera (then, I also won't have to sync sound anymore!). I wish I had been able to help Maddie with her news story (or work on more news stories) but thats just the way it is! I'm really excited to be able to host this semester's BBA News alongside Johnny.
Documentaries
I've also worked on my two documentaries, "Loss" (about children with deceased parents) as well as Maddie's documentary about anti-Semitism. This Sunday I am doing my interview with Jason Caggiano for my documentary, and I'll hopefully have Oscar and Finley come over one day during break and do my interview. Then I'll only have 1 more to do (Bek Davis). Today (Friday) I was DP for Maddie while we interviewed Rabbi Cohen. I looked over the footage, and it looks pretty good! Hopefully, we can get some nice clips out of it, as he is our "expert" on this subject. We also have plans to interview Netanel and Jakob Bombas.
I know I have a lot on my plate already, but I was thinking about doing either a documentary or PSA on self-harm. I think that a documentary might be difficult to do, in terms of having people to interview (though I could interview Marcy (my old therapist) and perhaps do some anonymous interviews with students who would be comfortable speaking to me about this subject. A PSA might be easier to do, but I want to go more in-depth on why people self-harm and why it is more than just a coping mechanism, why it is an addiction. It is, again, something that people never talk about but we NEED to. There isn't enough representation for both kids who have lost parents, and teens/adults who self-harm.
FIRST SEMESTER
NEWS
This semester I didn't have my own news story, because I was focused on the fall film and working on my plan for the documentary. However, I did help out a couple of groups with theirs. I taught Oscar how to use the Tascam, as well as jumping onto their interview with Ashley. I also taught Jake how to use the Tascam and the 7D, and filmed his standup (twice, because we wanted to redo it with no walking and a mic attached to the BBA News mic). I do want to have a news story second semester because I think they're fun and I missed filming/editing.
ANALYZING
A NEWS STORY
This isn't a typical "news story", but was published on BBC Three's youtube channel. In this video, they interviewed 8 young adults who had all lost one of their parents. They began with a powerful quote, "life literally was never the same again, and never has been since". After this, they introduced all of the interviewees, not by name but which of their parents died and when/how. They used a statistic, which is something that I want to do as well. They used both pathos (having the viewers connect with the other humans they're seeing) and logos (the statistic) to sort of persuade and inform the viewers. They also used multiple cameras, one for the general standard shot, and another for closeups of the interviewee's eyes when they were crying or when they need a transition from one person to the next (it acted as b-roll in a sense). One other thing they did to cover transitions was adding art. For example, when one of the women was talking about wishing her dad could have walked her down the aisle, they had a piece of art of a father walking his daughter down the aisle. In another part, they used it to explain what question they asked, "Why don't people talk about it", which is also a question I want to ask. Personally, I thought the music was too overpowering at some points during this story; it took my attention more than the actual speaking.
Throughout the whole piece, I was trying to think of what the question might have been that the interviewees were responding to because they got a variety of answers but also got strong quotes that made up an impactful piece. I want my documentary to be even more impactful, so I want to make sure that I'm asking questions that will give me powerful moments for my documentary.
I also want to try different lighting than this piece. For this video, they definitely had a key light and a fill light, and probably a hair light. I want to play with shadows and create a more complex and visually striking image, something that represents the deepness and darkness of the topic being discussed.
MY DOCUMENTARY
LOSS
(a working title)
title
These are possible titles for the documentary. I want something that works in the loss of parents, as well as the age factor.
opener
I want to have a personal opener and closer from me, where I discuss my own experience and explain why I made this film. I think it will add a really important touch, I want to ask people personally to talk about this. I'm hoping to film this at GNAT using their teleprompter. I need to talk to Muench more about cutting it down and making it more concise, working on wording, and adding a transition from this to the actual interviews.
interviewees
This is my list of people that I want to interview, labeled with what parent they lost. I want to have an even amount of moms or dads lost because it is important to me that both are represented. However, I'm worried that I won't have enough kids to interview. Marcy is also going to act as the therapist, the person who knows a lot of information on the topic rather than feelings. I have a different set of questions for her.
questions
I have two separate sets of questions, one for the people who have lost a parent and then one set for the therapist I'm going to be talking to.
For the interviewees, I'm asking, what I feel, are pretty basic questions about their parent, how they died, and what they would like to tell other kids who have lost a parent. I want this documentary to be a wake-up call for people, that this stuff happens and we need to talk about it.
With Marcy, I want to ask her how losing a parent impacts someone psychologically. We see all the people talking about their lost parent and yes, we know they're sad- but there's so much more to it than that. I want to find out if there's a deeper impact, whether kids become more standoffish, have trust issues, have difficulties reassimilating into normal life after losing a parent. This actually inspired me and I was thinking that in college, if I have to make a final film, I want to continue with this film. I want to create a full-fledged documentary about the loss of a parent and talk to researchers about studies they may have done and discuss the impacts of loss with therapists.