For one of our first big projects of the year, we were assigned to create a short documentary in groups/partners. I joined forces with my friend and classmate Mateo, who I often work with for our AICE Media assignments now that we're in the same class.
Brainstorming was a struggle for us, we couldn't find a topic that really stuck out.
We bounced ideas around, discussed the mental health of first responders (which I especially take interest in, as I want to become a firefighter), and even created an outline, but it didn't feel right. We already had a solid foundation since we researched it for a podcast assignment.
Mateo suggested doing a piece on furries or a homeless person, as it would be interesting to create a piece around a group/person who has such an intense image created by society, but there was no way for us to do it safely as high school students.
The night before the outline was due, Mateo clutched up and decided we could do a piece discussing the ongoing war between Israel and Palestine. While it seemed interesting, I was a bit nervous that I wasn't educated enough on the subject. But, when our pitch got approved and we decided to continue, I knew I'd have to research more.
Directions
In the assignment, we had to submit:
- pre-doc planning outline
Unfortunately, since Mateo and I had already done one for our other topic, we never completed a final outline for our final subject. We should have gone back to check we had everything before the due date.
- A production log
To keep track of when we completed steps in our project (ex. interviewing, editing)
- And the documentary itself
Research
A big reason why this subject was a great call, was because we already had an interviewee lined up. Yousef Safa, a Palestinian student at our school, who Mateo was pretty good friends with.
A major conversation between Mateo and I was about how we wanted this documentary to come across - it wasn't going to be made to be political in the sense that we try and persuade viewers' opinions. The purpose would be to show how the effects of a war can affect somebody so close to our own lives, and how it has influence even when you aren't living on an active battlefield. That's why we went with the title "A War at Home." Funny story, I was skeptical of this at first. Mateo came up with it, because it has the double meaning of the war AT HOME (the criticism and pressure Yousef faces here in the USA), and at home (Palestine). I didn't think other people would get this, so we asked our classmate and she immediately understood it.... yeah I just bowed my head in defeat after that one. I GUESS he was right.
Anyways, in terms of research, since it is such a controversial topic, we watched a LOT of content.
Here's my watch history on YouTube.
But the video I found most helpful in giving me a general background was The Israel-Palestine conflict: a brief, simple history This video explained how the conflict started long ago, over territory disputes involving Europe, Israel, and of course Palestine. It had a lot of graphics that helped me understand the changes in territory lines and whatnot. I also appreciated the specific explanation of what Hamas was.
The video is linked in the text, but here it is embedded below (we liked this so much that we even included a short clip of the graphic that was helpful in our documentary).
Another source that personally helped me better understand how to draft questions for Yousef, and to better understanding of the subject, was an interview I read. It was called "Interview with Amal Amireh–a Palestinian immigrant to America–by Michael Benisek." (I have embedded the link within the title) This helped me draft questions for our interview with Yousef and it was honestly just an interesting read.
I think it's important to comment that there was a bit of content that was hard to watch or read, but I am glad that I got an opportunity to learn about this.
As we each had done our own research and felt confident in understanding, we began to draft questions. The next post will discuss the production of our documentary.
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