Reflection Essay

                My biggest struggle for this project was probably just figuring out how everything would fit together and make sense. The editing was a bit of a struggle because we had really strong parts but it was hard to put them all together to make it fit into one documentary. One part that was very strong was Taylor Cunningham’s story. It was such an intense story that we really couldn’t break it up anyway even though it was a big part of our whole documentary, so it was a struggle trying to keep the viewer interested but also not chopping up his story.  Another part that was difficult was once we decided on the CSF as our group we didn’t really know where to go from there. We didn’t know how/what we would make an entire documentary on by just using one organization on campus. Once we figured out our thesis and were on a path to figuring it all out, it went relatively smoothly.

                The part that I am most proud of is that we found Taylor and were able to include his incredible story into the documentary. I feel it added a whole new emotional connection to the viewer and would get people’s attention rather than some of the other stories we came across. If we had more time to do this documentary then I feel we could improve the overall quality of the documentary. We could also have gotten more shots of different CSF events or even taped some of the bigger group events that they put on. It also would be neat if we could find other people that may also have incredible personal stories and how they have found CSF.

 I was in charge of all of the editing and piecing all the clips together. Once the clips were uploaded onto dropbox then I was in charge of editing them down and then fitting them into the documentary. The part that was most challenging of my job was trying to trim our video down so we could get it under 15 min. We had so many great parts that we didn’t want to cut out, so trying to make it in the time requirement while also making sure not to lose any aspects of the documentary was found to be very challenging.

                Usually I’m not a huge fan of group work, but I really enjoyed my group. I feel we all worked very well together and we all put in equal input. Everyone did their part and when we said that we would have a certain part done by next class; we always had it ready to go. I tried to be very flexible when finding a time to meet outside of class and I also wanted to stay positive within the group. I honestly think I did a lot for the group and I don’t think I could have done much more, since I did most of the editing, which is a big part of the final product.