Week 8

Monday, 10.28.2019

Journal Entry

Successfully interviewed Dr. Roberts, Dr. Son, AND Skylar today all before noon! All three interviews went really well and I'm excited to start crackin' down on my project. Also, with the added 11/8 deadline per Dr. Son, that'll give me something to work towards. I'm still not sure how to approach the writing/narrative-construction piece of my documentary but we'll figure it out lmao.

I finished pairing Frank Lin's letters with Sung Nam's interview. I've been sorting through the other three interviews today.

Tuesday, 10.29.2019

Journal Entry

Went after class to work until dinnertime. Convinced Uanne to come with me since I took her headshots for her Brace Scholar poster. She agreed with me that Polk feels like a jail and will give you a headache if you stay there for prolonged periods of time. I've been color grading the interviews and combing through them to try and piece together some kind of narrative.

Journal Entry (Part 2)

Came back after dinner because I literally live in Polk and I got so much done! I finished sorting/cleaning up/organizing all of the interviews. I'm starting to put together a basic structure now, really pairing pieces that mirror each other or echo each other together. I have so much content (almost an hour's worth!) but I can see the narrative falling together which I'm so excited about. I'm still not super sure how I'm going to link memory & nostalgia with the HSS511 class, but the archives are clearly a defining factor of both. Yay! And my whole sequence is color-coded which is really satisfying!

Chapter 7 Planning

1. Archival memory, historical memory, and collective memory

- the presence of the archives

- the historical perception of Andover

- whose histories do we hear when we think of Andover’s history?

- whose histories do we listen to?

- silences and gaps

- background knowledge and theory-based

- nostalgia for an understanding of Andover’s past

2. Expectations vs. reality

- expectations of the archives, of the “completeness” of memory

- expectations of the archive subjects

- changing realities among different generations and comparison

3. The past deciding the present deciding the future

- common threads between varying experiences

- the past of record-keeping, the future of the archives

- what are we missing? what should we look for?

- each generation influencing the next

Wednesday, 10.30.2019

Journal Entry

Went to Polk right after lunch again today. Jack, Derrick, Amy, and Uanne have all been so nice and supportive about Chapter 8 and their participation but I feel so bad because I've been focusing so much on Chapter 7 that I haven't even really had time to plan Chapter 8--really, I've been keeping them waiting and I know how busy they all are. I talked to my mom last night about the documentary and I managed to draft some kind of rough structure after our conversation, so I've been trying to make a "skeleton" from the interviews and stuff. I'm still having a hard time, still feeling overwhelmed by all the things I have, overwhelmed equally by all the stuff I didn't manage to get.

I've decided that I need a lot of "student life b-roll" so I'm going to pull from the footage I have from Phillipian and Andover Admissions work. I watched parts of Ken Burns: The Central Park Five on Kanopy and "These Divers Search For Slave Shipwrecks and Discover Their Ancestors" by National Geographic on YouTube for some documentary help (I also just haven't, like, watched a documentary in awhile).

Thursday, 10.31.2019

Journal Entry

Continued working on Chapter 7 before meeting with Mr. Kelman. I discovered a video by Isaiah Lee on Vimeo from 6 months ago called "China Comes to Andover"! Why didn't anyone tell me about that? Anyway.

I've decided for Chapter 8 that I want to interview Jack and Derrick together and Amy and Uanne together, like in their films. However, I'm going to flip their locations. AND, I'm going to have them interview each other. This will be like a subversion of what I did in my films, which was essentially writing a scripted-organic conversation. Now, I'm going to write questions and set a topic for a true-organic conversation. I've texted all of them and I'm planning to film on Saturday. Fingers crossed!

Saturday, 11.2.2019

Journal Entry

Filmed with Jack and Derrick this afternoon in Commons for Chapter 8. They did a great job! Looking forward to Amy and Uanne tomorrow.

Sunday, 11.3.2019

Journal Entry

Filmed with Amy and Uanne this morning on the Lawn. They also did a great job! I had the idea while I was filming to actually use the extra footage/bloopers from Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 in Chapter 8 as b-roll. That way, I'll have some natural scenes of them out of character or breaking character that I can use with their interviews.

Journal Entry (Part 2)

Spent all afternoon editing in Polk and trying to start making a dent in the piece I'm presenting to the Trustees on Friday. For the first hour or two, I was kind of just fiddling around, but now, as I'm about to go to dinner, I think I've found a good swing! Starting to get into the rhythm of documentary-ing.