This has
been one of my favorite projects thus far. In this program, I want to focus on
making documentaries, so any chance to make a documentary is always good with
me. After several other plans fell through, Hannah and I decided to film my
aunt who lives in rural Idaho when I went up for a little vacation this
weekend. For this project, I was very much inspired by some of the videos that
we watched for class, but most especially the "stoop sitters" video.
This video was integral in the creation of this project for me, as I wanted to
create something that was both visually engaging, as well as interesting to
view. This video also influenced me to choose a topic that was really quite
narrow. The person that we chose to interview is not travelling the world,
giving polio vaccines to malnourished children. Instead, she is teaching rural
high school students the art of good cooking, and is encouraging rural children
to eat healthy, and to eat with their families. I thought that this topic was
too small until we viewed the “stoop sitters” video. After viewing this piece,
I realized that all efforts to make our communities a better place should be
lauded, no matter how small those efforts might seem in the grand scheme of the
world. While filming this video, I really wanted to portray that these efforts
to increase the quality of life of rural high school students is not a small
thing at all, really, and that this is a truly noble effort. I also wanted to
portray the fact that this goal is her life right now, and that she lives in
the same way that she is encouraging her students to live. She plants a garden
every year that provides produce for both her students and her family, and she
is always working to live simply, naturally, and in a wholesome way. The things
that she is teaching her students are things that she really believes in, and
are things that she lives, and I think that that is a noble thing. From outside
media, I was influenced by a video that we watched for class about a month ago.
This short video portrayed a man that was committed to wholesome living, and
who made intense efforts everyday to live in a natural way. This was quite
influential to me, as I thought about wholesome living as a concept, and how
hard that must be to accomplish. This was instrumental in the realization that
wholesome living is noble, and the desire to spread wholesome living to other
people, particularly young people, is significant, and important, and should be
celebrated.
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