During our last class, when we shot our interviews my group ran into some trouble shooting. Our sound was not working. The worst part about this is that we did not realize this mistake until half through our interviews. This meant that we had to go back and shoot all of the interviews again. That was after we fixed our mistake. Our mistake turned out to be that we never even turned on our receiver. This was such as simple error that could easily have been avoided, but non the less it happened with 6 people watching. This goes to show that just because it looks set up doesn’t mean that it is set up. Now I have learned, that before recording one should test all of the materials that they are working with to make sure that all systems are green.

For my interview I plan on interviewing Ben Cohen. He is a professor at Lafayette who is very active in environmental movements on campus. He is on the sustainability committee, he is one of the two environmental studies capstone professors and he is the faculty advisor for LaFarm. He has recently done a lot of work with LaFarm and the Easton Community. He has bridged these two through his work with Vegetables in the Community (VIC). VIC is a program that has been running for the past few years where two students work over the summer harvesting vegetables at LaFarm and then give them away for free at a community farmers market. This work has given out thousands of meals over the past few years and has given poorer families a more nutritional diet. I plan on filming him in his office and using B-roll from the past year of gleamings and farmers market that I have already taken.

The F-Word documents something so obvious but so subtly that it is brilliant. They follow a gay couple. Now I know it is obvious. No duh they are gay they are two girls who live together, but they barely ever talk about it. They reference it through animation and quick interjections, but rarely do they ever talk about it. The most attention they give the topic is at the beginning of the last episode where they talk about the law changing about same sex couple adopting a baby. The few references is the brilliance of the film, because it breaks down the notion of the nuclear family. The nuclear family is a wealthy white suburban family. For more of a visual: they are the families that own golden retrievers and matching fall sweaters. Nicole and Kristan are nothing like a nuclear family; they are gay.

This documentary however portrays them as a nuclear family.  They show their home and stable and sound life style. They show their dog, their kitchen, their scouter, and their friends. By showing their life in a normal way they are normalizing something that is so distant and different. They are making them a contemporary nuclear family. This point is driven home by attaching their relationship to an understandable emotion love. They show their search for the love of a child, which is something a nuclear family can sympathize with.

The attack on the nuclear family is expanded by showing inner racial families and other semi nuclear families. For example Jillian and Scott are shown together with two kids. They are a very wealthy couple, but there is something unique about their family; Jill and Scott are white, but their children are black. This adds another layer to the new contemporary family, because it normalizes yet another different family. This film even attacks gender roles in the family in subtle ways too. In the nuclear family, the dad is usually the voice of authority and the bread winner in the family. But in the contemporary nuclear family the woman is the power figure. The film says this in a subtle way by first introducing Scott as “Jillian’s husband.” This is introduction implies that Jillian is more important than him. The F-Word attacks nuclear families in a very subtle way by normalizing different families. Hopefully more films like this one will be made.

I will be interviewing Tina Yerdon, a close friend and a cancer survivor, for my next project. Tina had parosteal osteosarcoma. I didn’t ever know what this meant until I had a few heart to heart conversations with Tina and did my research. It is a type of bone tumor cancer which arises from the outer layer of the periosteum. Tina was an extremely active person before she was diagnosed and cured of this cancer. She was an athlete – a marathon runner, a volleyball player, and a soccer player. Now the only place where Tina can be active is her brain. She is using all the skills she has learned throughout her 21 years in her head. It is a mental battle before a physical one. Tina’s lower leg is replaced by a metal rod and she is still healing from her two surgeries. Through this interview, I hope to inform my audience about this type of cancer and how she’s fighting to remain hopeful through this journey, hopeful to just walk and be able to do basic things like drive. Tina tears up as she says, “I never knew words would have this impact on me but now I can say I have cancer to I had cancer. That’s huge.”

Concern/struggle : How to show her in totality without stirring pity from the audience.

Lauren, Mekhi, DT,

Originally our documentary was Gifted Youngins, but we have now decided to go into a different direction. We will still be focusing on kids in the Lehigh Valley, but we’ve decided to look serious health issues in children, lead poisoning. Young children are extremely vulnerable to the toxic effects of lead and can suffer both profound and permanent health effects, including damage to the brain and nervous system.

Over the past two years, a great deal of national attention has been focused towards lead poisoning in cities like Flint Michigian. But Flint isn’t the only place this happening. Recent studies have shown that 1 in 4 kids under the age of 7 in Allentown unsafe levels oflead in their blood. High enough to be considered a risk by CDC (Center for Disease Control).

We hope to undercover the issues surrounding lead poisoning in the Lehigh Valley, why it is the issue so severe and what is being done to combat it.

Our sentence:

We are researching the high levels of lead in the neighborhood and how it’s impacting the community and it’s children.

I will be interviewing Isabella Fiorita, president of Alpha Phi, a Greek chapter of around 70 women at Lafayette College. As a member of Alpha Phi, I know Bella as president, but I also knew Bella before either of us joined Alpha Phi. Isabella is only 21, and has a great deal of responsibility. In her position, she at times is held responsible for the actions of collective group of 80 or so of her peers. No matter the age being the authority figure for that many people is difficult.

Isabella’s term as president is coming to an end and within the next two months a new president of the chapter will be elected. This makes it a perfect time to talk to Isabella about her experience in the position. I have always wondered what inspired her to run for the position in the first place, and over the course of the past year how has she think the position has changed her.

Some potential questions:

What characteristics do you think a good leader requires?

What characteristics do you think a good leader should have?

What is the greatest challenge you face regarding be an authority figure, for both your friends and peers?

Do you think young people can make good leaders?

Over the course of the last year how does she think the position has impacted you?

Would do it all again if you could?

Adapting to a new culture is never easy, especially if it does not happen at a very young age. Even though it is not easy, if the person is able to adapt, it can bring so many positive outcomes by understanding two completely different cultures and being able to appreciate them in different ways. This is the story of someone who was able to embrace both cultures and countries, while both being very different.

Azing Chin moved to the United States when she was 11 years old.  Stories of people adapting to a new culture are common now but not necessarily here at Lafayette. While those stories are common, we often hear stories of people coming from Europe for example. While moving from Europe to the United States is a change, it is not a drastic change to say that the person’s world changes completely and is overwhelmed. Azing did not move from Europe. She was born in Burma and lived in a town called Hakha, with a population of around 35,000 people. We do not often hear stories about people from Burma, a country with a rich and complex history. The two countries are very different in many aspects that adapting to a new culture and way of living can never be easy. I personally had to adapt to a new culture as well but I came from France therefore it was not that hard. I did not struggle much because even living in the United States I went to a french school and therefore had an easier way of adapting. On the other hand, Azing had to go right away to an american school without speaking any word of English. I think it would be interesting to really explore how she was able to adapt so well without losing touch of the culture she had grown up in.

Through this interview, my goal is to bring light to both cultures and what both have to offer and to show how someone is able to embrace cultures who are very different and not forgetting one of them. I also think that it would be interesting to bring light to a country we might not know a lot about and the best way is through someone who was born there and lived there. By asking questions such as Azing’s favorite memory about growing up in Burma and what a typical day is in Burma compared to the United States, I hope those questions lead to understanding how she sees both cultures and what they have to offer. I also hope that through those questions we understand how she came to adapt to a new shocking culture. Through b-roll of pictures with her family in the United States and in Burma, we might learn that is through her family that she is able to still keep close to the culture she was born in.

vimeo.com/240592763

Our B-Roll so far is an abstraction of how life as an opioid user, or as a family member of an opioid user, resembles the up and downs of a roller coaster.