The past weeks have been crazy with trying to finish this documentary, that I haven’t really had the time to reflect on the class as a whole and everything we have learned this semester. I am glad the Professor Smith recapped the class and all the amazing piece of work and film makers we have meet this year, on Wednesday night. I was really shocked when Andy said that it has been five years since the shooting at sandy hook, and talked about how we were able to meet Kim Synder the director of the documentary “Newtown” and discuss the process of making her film. I realized that I never blogged about the Newtown film. I think it honestly was a lot to process. Making a such a serious film on such a deeply upsetting topic is no simple challenge. I was really moved by not only the accounts of the parents and teachers, but how the memories of these children were encapsulated within the film. The photos and the home footage, the video of kids running to the bus, the marks on the wall, that is what is still ingrained in my memory. Without this in depth and personal images I feel as though the film would not be as moving. When you hear about a tragedy like this you immediately want to try to detach yourself to cope with it. When you see these children’s faces you really can’t detach.
For PB N LV I found that this was the biggest things missing in our film. If you are a parent with a child below the age of two in the Lehigh Valley, I think it would be easier to sympathize. But what about everyone else students and residents of the Lehigh Valley without young children. This is something we struggled with, how could the film get people who don’t have children below the age of two in the Lehigh valley to really feel the effects that lead has on children and care about it.
In our film, you can hear Doctor Walty talk about the negative health and you can see the stock image of an infant, but I believe the audience would have had a deeper connection if they were able to see or hear from a real child that is suffering from lead poisoning. They wouldn’t have been able to detach from the issue.
For multiple reasons, we weren’t able to get any parents of children or children that had suffer from lead poisoning to be in our film. At certain points my group thought about incorporating film of random children. I didn’t feel like it was ethically sound for us to film random kids and imply they had lead poisoning. That was something that was constantly up for debate within my group. If faces weren’t showed was it okay? I just felt like it was an invasion of these children privacy for us to film them without them knowing. And in the end, I am thankful that my group respected the decision to not incorporate something that I felt was ethically wrong in our film.
Overall, I am still extremely happy with the film. We did it. It was difficult and exhausting. It was not an easy topic to do. But even if I had the opportunity to go back and change the topic, I wouldn’t. I wanted to do this film to bring attention to an issue that is important. No child should still be suffering from lead poisoning, when education, proactive screening and awareness can’t help prevent prolonged exposure.