Directed Study Journal - February 21, 2018

This was a particularly productive week in terms of moving my thesis project forward. I had a couple of days where I was left alone and caught up with reading and dug deeply into the video material I had collected so far. First, I watched most of the content I saved to a playlist in YouTube, which includes long-form and short-form docs, TED Talks, some video from the World Economic Forum (specifically, a long interview with the CEO of Google which will factor directly into the film) and some short animations. In addition, I watched an episode of "WormWood" on Netflix to see what Errol Morris is up to with intertwining narrative with documentary. I think it's pretty interesting but I'm not certain I can employ anything like it in my own work. It did get me to think about how to formulate my questions for the interviews so, ultimately, it was time well spent. 

Beyond just informing and expanding my argument, the video material has been a great source of inspiration for storytelling and aesthetics.  I've been trying to develop a language for the film that informs and engages but delivers the information in a way that's somewhat different from the way we generally experience documentary film. I don't think it should feel too disconnected from a traditional doc but it would be great if I could layer the info so I could get it all out there without it feeling dry. The project needs to resonate and I think that I can do that with an interesting design.  One of the videos I watched was produced by the BBC and is very traditional in its structure but features some interesting ways to use graphics. I'm going to attempt to design a graphic toolkit to introduce in the piece and I'll try to deliver that in Lina's studio class. The graphics float over the images on the screen to expand the amount of information and really adds something to the "data visualization." 

I continued to collect footage this weekend, too, and started to piece together a timeline in Premiere from which to start building the film. The goal is to have a rough cut of the first 5 or so minutes in the next few weeks so I can show it at the next presentation after Spring Break. I'd like something polished so I can get feedback on it and start to add the interview footage I collect. If I could get that far, I'd be well on the way to completing that part of the project.

While I've been pushing on, the project has not been without its difficulties. One place where I had been concerned and challenged was in identifying a community partner, but it was decided this week that the project features enough of a variety of inputs from organizations, academics, researchers, etc. that it wouldn't be necessary for me to narrow the focus to just one. This is a great leap forward because I had been waiting to send out emails to request interviews which I can now send out and start to schedule. I'm going to spend some time through this week and the weekend to write and send several of those letters (mainly to those that are local to Boston and New York) and try to get some of the interviews completed in the next few weeks.