After 11 weeks of working on post-production, our documentary is getting closer and closer to being finished. At the time of this writing, all of the animations and photos for the narrative portion of the project are on track, with the interview sections and background music nearly complete as well. Our instructor, Brandon Berman, has turned into a zombie after spending most of his waking hours teaching, working on the finishing touches for this project, and gearing up for the FRCC Multimedia Graphic Design Student Video Expo. This semester has been a blur, as we have all been extremely busy trying to meet our deadlines.
Different dynamics, same passion and enthusiasm
This semester has been very different from the first. Not only did we almost triple our number of classmates, but we went from working as one big team for interviews to working individually or in small groups to get all the elements for the script’s b-roll together.
The script, essentially the history lesson that follows women’s involvement in each war, was broken down into manageable chunks that were distributed among the class for animating, supporting with photos and videos, or both. We created the best work environment anyone could ask for: positive, fun, and supportive. Everyone knew it was okay to ask for help or feedback when needed. Communication has been encouraged so that everyone could stay on top of their workload or, if they felt overloaded, there weren’t any bad feelings about having to pass off some of their work to someone else. We’ve been pushing ourselves to learn more about a particular skill area or learn a new skill to create something better than ever.
Not your average history lesson
We signed up for an multimedia graphic design class. We got that combined with an ongoing history lesson and a bit of copyright law sprinkled in the mix. This way of learning about this part of our history has been incredibly interesting for a few reasons. Between learning about what was going on (a lot of which had never been covered in our schooling) and hunting down photos, documents, or videos to illustrate the script, it’s been very interactive.
History comes to life
For some students, it’s opened a dialogue with family members that have served or love history and want to share their knowledge. History has also come alive for us. We found out about what it was like for women serving 70+ years ago in WWII from two of our interviewees. We learned how that changed over the years from veterans that served during the Korean and Vietnam wars, both of which happened before most of my classmates were born. Probably the most important thing was how much we could relate when we were talking with women that have served in the recent wars that we have heard so much about. We are at an age when any of the women in our class could have been one of our interviewees.
A great accomplishment
At the beginning of the year we were told that this was going to be a memorable adventure. That may have been an understatement. We’ve spent countless hours working on probably the greatest project of our time here at FRCC. For those of us graduating in May, it’s safe to say we’re going out with a bang. It’s been an incredible journey for all of us. Big thank you to Brandon for choosing us to be part of it. He’s been instrumental in making this class an outstanding experience for all of us.
Women Warriors: A Vision of Valor premieres on May 16th at the Westminster campus.
