For our documentary project, we were assigned something a
bit out of the ordinary, and different than the project that the other students
and groups were expected to do. Originally, our plan was to do a documentary
about homelessness in D.C., including street artists, musicians and to
interview people that made their living on the streets by performing. The plan
was to get interviews of these people, and hopefully be able to share their
stories with the world.
Unfortunately,
that plan didn’t end up working out, and we realized that our subject matter
was a bit sensitive and impractical for the task we were trying to accomplish
due to privacy reasons, etc. We ended up creating a documentary to welcome the
British kids, who were part of a CAP foreign exchange program in which about 12
students from a school in England came and stayed with us for a week.
Our
documentary centered around Blair, and the different aspects of the school. We
interviewed a lot of different students, both in CAP and outside of CAP, and
asked them what their favorite parts about Blair were, whether or not they
enjoyed the school, etc. We filmed a lot of the building itself, and made sure
to include shots of all the different sports field- one of Blair’s most
prideful elements!
The overall
experiences of filming, editing and producing our own short documentary was
probably one of the most enjoyable things we’ve done in CAP thus far. The
creativity that we were able to channel to make this project worthwhile is
something that I think all of us in CAP are going to try and use with all the
projects to come. The biggest challenge our group faced was probably the
decision making, figuring out how we were going to change our topic/film and
how we would get it all finished in time.
If we were
able to make another, brand new documentary, I’d want to do one that revolves
around a more serious topic that I’m really interested in. It was a lot of fun
making the documentary for the British students, but I think we could’ve
probably benefitted and learned from the project more had we been able to
choose a different topic. Even though this was a challenge for a group, and we
were all pretty frustrated at first with the changing of our ideas and plans,
we were able to persevere and create the best thing we could, which, in the
end, turned out pretty well.
As the
teacher, I think Mr. Mayo did a phenomenal job encouraging and supporting us
through the experience. It was really helpful that he assisted us in choosing
our topic, etc. but he also allowed us to do the project ourselves, and I think
it would’ve been really frustrating had we not been able to do so. I think it’s
really important to find the balance between guiding a group, and doing the
project for them, and I really think Mr. Mayo did an excellent job balancing
that. Overall, this was a fun, interesting and wonderful project. I’m glad I
got to do it.
