Professional News Story - Growing up Transgender
I watched a News Story on a young transgender girl Malisa and how she transitioned at the age of 8, with the support of her family and grandfather. The news piece starts off with a standup piece of a man in a studio who introduces to the audience what we are about to see and then segways into the piece. It opens with a b-roll of Malisa and her grandfather picking oranges from a tree, and we hear a voice-over of a woman in the background. This voice over lasts throughout the entire story. We learn about how Malisa’s story first gets introduced. Her grandfather is a congressman in California named Mike Honda who tweeted about Malisa which spread nationally. The audience is introduced to Honda through a lovely interview of him, briefly in the beginning. He opens up the piece. It then transitions to going back in time and showing Malisa’s story from when she was young. We see b-roll of Malisa as a young child; ken-burns photos and old videos of her and drawings she drew to show us what she was like growing up. We then get to meet Malisa’s parents who're interviews play as we view the b-roll from when Malisa was a youngster. Malisa’s interview is dispersed throughout this b-roll of her as a kid as well. We then learn about how on Halloween, when a family friend gave Malisa a wig to wear with her costume, she knew, deep down, that she was a girl. The interview shots of her parents slightly zoom in, when the tone of the piece becomes more emotional. This captivated me. Towards the end of the interview, we also see the back and forth discussion between the interviewer and the parents. The interviewer is on screen, which I thought was interesting and it certainly elevated the piece.
Our News Story - 9/11
Creating the 9/11 News Story with Ken Stefanak was an extremely enjoyable process. I came up with the idea of making this piece after I heard Mr. Stefanak talk about assembly about his experience being a firefighter/working for the FDNY during the attacks on September 11th. I pitched my ideas to my good friend Carson Cutler, and as soon as we got Logan on board as well, we immediately emailed Ken and set up a time to discuss with him our ideas and get his approval to do the interview. Once we did this, we knew we had to site scout locations. This was definitely a bit challenging. We went down to the Manchester Fire House probably 5 times over the course of a single week during class and 4 out of the 5 times the building was locked. This was a rookie mistake. We knew it was a volunteer fire station and that nobody was going to be there. Carson contacted someone he knows that works there and we set up a time to go check out the firehouse (not from the outside this time) and locate a good spot to shoot the interview of Ken. We tried several different spots (in front of the fire truck, near the fire jackets, in front of the fire trucks door), but in the end, we found an ideal location against the control panel of the truck. The following way we gathered a crew to head down and shoot. Carson was our Assistant Director and Interviewer for this project. He contacted the different people we needed to get involved and set up times, and also interviewed Mr. Stefanak. Logan helped with editing, lighting, and helped Carson with the Interview. Tate was also in charge of lights. Mary and Jordan were our sound people and did a wonderful job, the sound is amazing! I was the Director, DP and main editor on this project. I made sure we needed to be where we had to be, I made sure everyone was ready to go, I filmed the interview, and edited it as well. For the overall shot, I knew it had to be in focus and had to be in the rule of thirds. We used two lights and it was the perfect amount of exposure, I didn’t even need to color correct in post. Logan and I worked together to make sure the cuts and b-roll for the interview looked clean and sharp. Carson gathered almost all of the amazing b-roll shots, some of them were simply hidden gems that blew my mind. Overall, the process of making this piece was very fun. This is only the very first step on this project. We hope to make this story much bigger, and longer and hopefully, take Mr. Stefanaks and several others story, all the way to the big screen of the 10th Annual Gawlik Awards!