In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.”
For our subject we chose an acquaintance with whom we disagree politically. Melissa Kaufler is a young adult that has spent many years being actively involved with the democratic political party, and plans to continue doing so for many more.
Since Melissa lives in Santa Clarita, California, an in person look into her life was out of the question. We were able to connect with her over memories of campaigns and through sites like facebook, the Signal (our hometown newspaper), and good ole’ google we were able to pull together a reflectional documentary on different backgrounds of people that grew up in a similar environment. We also reconstructed some events through filming desk work here in Utah.
While there were so many things that we could have focused on to illustrate that Melissa was a concerned citizen, her desire to encourage others to register to vote was her way of bettering her community. Just because she works for an opposing political party does not discredit her service to her community in promoting the need to vote and have empathy for others.
When editing together this short documentary, we quickly realized that we had much more footage than was needed. We decided to focus our attention on actions she took towards a specific goal, and not so much on her political philosophies.
We also capitalized on Bryce’s personal knowledge of her personality. While conveying her pleasant message that promotes democracy and empathy (which our particular audience would likely see as admirable traits) we complicated her character by showing pictures of her “bleeding liberal heart”. In short, we used the audio from the interview to shine a bright light on her, and used the images to give her a gradient.
In the article that we read for this project, entitled “Human Rights and Culture: From Datastan to Storyland”, it argues that paying attention to the art pieces in certain communities is a way to become aware of societal issues that aren’t necessarily showing up in the stats. Art is a beneficiary to society, for the world cannot be run by those who only know math and science. We should pay attention to the artists we have now, for they are more attune to the social issues around them due to their seeking for inspiration in all corners of the world, and we should not limit the creativity of our young people. For someone to become a well-rounded citizen it takes exposure to multiple aspects of our complicated world: science, math, art, issues, etc.
Many create documentaries, such as the one we created, about someone who shows their desire to change something in their community that they see as an issue, or someone who simply participates in something they see as beneficial. In this way does art raise awareness to a particular aspect of society that many should be aware about. Even though we, the filmmakers, vary in political views from Melissa, she did share some powerful statements about the importance of voting. It was a healthy experience for us. Hopefully others, will get to know their political opponents a little better, and exercise their right to vote as a result of watching this film.
No comments:
Post a Comment