My
documentary, called “Passing the Test” is a short documentary on
the educational system in the United States, and what the President
of the United States should do to improve it. I worked with Max
Scribner and Sam Howells on the project. We submitted the documentary
to the C-SPAN Student Cam documentary competition, and won an
Honorable Mention. In the competition, there were over 1,800 entries,
with 75 winners.
I
found the topic of education very interesting. We had a section of
our documentary dedicated to the impact of standardized testing,
which I found particularly interesting. I am currently continuing to
research this topic and how it affects teacher evaluations in the
state of Maryland for my feature story for Journalism. At the very
beginning of the project, I enjoyed that we were able to pick our
topics and form our own groups. I think that letting students pick
their own topics is good because that way the student will be
genuinely interested in the topic, will produce better work than if
they didn't enjoy the topic, and are less likely to regret picking
that topic.
As I
said above, learning about the entire topic of education in the
United States was very interesting to me, especially about
standardized testing. One specific thing I came to realize during the
filmmaking process was that standardized tests really don't exist in
the real world. The skills that are valuable are being able to
produce a product, be able to answer other's questions and
communicate effectively; not filling out bubbles on a scantron.
Throughout
the process of making the documentary, we had a few problems. One was
that about halfway through the project, our group lost the drive to
finish the project because the deadline seemed so close. That week
was also the week of midterm exams, which compounded the stress put
on our group. To get past this problem, I tried to lead our group by
putting in extra time to pick up what others were putting off.
Another problem that our group faced was that when we went to edit,
we planned on using a brand new computer I had built the week before.
The computer ended up having some problems with displaying graphics,
but by staying up till 2 in the morning 3 days in a row to fix the
problems, I got the computer running and caught up on editing, which
put us back on track.
There
were many things in my project that I would like to change if I could
do it again. I would probably do the project by myself next time,
because there is really no need for more than one person, unlike
other projects in which you need actors, cameramen, and directors.
Additionally, I would have liked to shoot the video with a nicer
camera. But we had a pretty sweet one to begin with. (Problems of
being a camera addict).
I
think that our teacher, Mr. Mayo, did a fine job guiding us through
the documentary. It was nice because he wasn't that involved, which
let us create what we wanted. Also, as I said before, because we got
to pick our own topics, we were all invested in our project, and
really needed no outside motivation to do our projects.
In
conclusion, I think our project went great, and I don't think that
much should be changed about the assignment, except for that we
should be given a little more time at the very beginning of the
project to more thoroughly research a few topics before deciding on
one final one.
"This post is too boring for a poem"
-Zephyr
"This post is too boring for a poem"
-Zephyr
