blog #8 - final :)

    When first thinking about what to do for a Hawken project it was troubling to think if I wanted to do something related to government/ modern events or something more laid back. I then realized that I would never really have the chance to do something so meaningful in such a short amount of time so I decided to go for something more powerful. Rishita Lena and I have never really had classes together in high school and always knew we wanted to do projects together. They had the same thought process as me about wanting to do something meaningful and what is more meaningful than expanding upon the politics of our youth and coming of age through high school.

We immediately clicked and worked really well together and made sure that everyone’s ideas came through and that each person was being heard. We knew that we wanted to do something with politics but didn’t want to make it boring and not interesting for viewers or future students at Hawken to watch. We then decided on a documentary and knew that it was going to be a fun new immersion and something that we have never really done before. Not only did we want to learn a lot about the presidency in our high school experience but we wanted to learn about the presidency and our middle school days and elementary school days as well. We also wanted to learn a lot about feminism and what it means to everyone in our community and the communities around us and how they contribute directly towards activism and feminism in general.

Something that may have been lacking in our project was the professionalism side of our documentary. It is very difficult to make a documentary so I think that we three did extremely well for what we had to work with and in the timeframe that we had to work it in but if there was something that I could change it would be to make our documentary a little bit crisper and look more professional. Something I learned during projects was a newfound appreciation for all filmmakers. I did not realize how difficult it was to make a film and how difficult it would be to piece it together. Specifically, with our media release forms, we had to have everyone that was in the documentary sign a piece of paper by their parents if they were under 18 or by them if they were over 18 saying that they would allow themselves to be published to the world with what they said in the documentary. We took about 40 interviews and we only got maybe 20 to 25 responses back. Something that also was difficult about making a documentary was the technology piece of it and how difficult it was to edit a documentary in Premier. Premier is a filming app that none of us were familiar with yet our mentors recommended we use. It was a very professional app so it was difficult for amateurs like us to get a groove on it and figure out what was going on but once we did it was pretty easy to make a routine and finalize our film.

Some advice I would have for rising juniors and seniors about planning a project is that you should do something that you are passionate about. If you are not passionate about something then everything that you are doing seems like a waste and you will not be motivated. Also, I would advise them to make a project that actually matters and you can use in the future. Especially with going to college and starting a new academic life, it is nice to have some experience in any sort of interest you have behind your back. 

Overall my biggest takeaway from this project was patience. Not just patience with filming apps but patience with my group members. Even though they are my two closest friends, patience was still something that all of us had to deal with one. None of us wanted to hurt the other one's feelings so we made sure to collaborate effectively and kindly. 

Hawken could continue to partner with the Cleveland Film Factory by connecting it to an intensive about film or connecting it to HPS. This would give it another opportunity to people in HPS that like behind the scenes type of things and or people in the Mac lab that do film courses and intensives partnered with them. They were wonderful mentors to us as they let us use their computers in their workspace downtown and they always were there for quick questions we had and or large fixes we needed help with. They treated us like colleagues and even though we were definitely naive and inexperienced in the film world they acted as though we were one with them and treated us with kindness and respect. I cannot wait to show my future colleges, professors, and friends this film - it is something I will never forget!