To the entire Doc 150 class, especially you lovely humans at Muhlenberg and Lehigh whom I may never see again, I just want to tell you how impressed I was by all of the work y’all put in over the course of the semester that culminated into the beautiful showing last night.

Each and every documentary was powerful in its own way.

It was a pleasure getting to know and meet you all!
Good luck in life; I can’t wait to see what you will all do next!
Kenzie

Title: I Need Help

Logline: The number of deaths from Opioid Overdose is greatly on the rise and affecting EVERYONE. Is Opioid Addiction a choice, a disease, or does the distinction even matter?

Image:

Every time that we watch another documentary in this class, I feel like I have found a new favorite that has opened up my mind in an entirely different way! I am really grateful that we are able to go to these showings during class because in previous years I would have seen email announcements or flyers and been interested but never would have had the time to be able to go them.

I really enjoyed this documentary in the sense that it was very real and laid everything right out there for the audience to take in. I always think of myself being global-minded or aware of the world, but I had no idea about the extent of all the political unrest in Egypt and this documentary was quite shocking!! This is just another reason why documentaries are powerful because it’s a medium in which everyone can learn and be educated. I loved the integration of the news clips, with the interviews of Bassem, and then with the cartoons interspersed. It was so special that the cartoons were created by Andeel, who initially was just a fan of Bassem’s and then became an integral part of his show.

At the end of the show, I was secretly hoping that Bassem would be waiting in the lobby to answer questions, and I think it would be great for him to come to Lafayette to speak about the power of political satire and risking one’s life in order to make such great societal strides.

https://drive.google.com/a/lafayette.edu/file/d/1CBKWLpLYoDVpZ7PxiYLKy2_tCVA9ri5V/view?usp=sharing

Here is my most updated, final final cut, incorporating feedback based on my last two versions. In retrospect, the audio still is quite irksome to me, but after trying various audio effects to get rid of the background fuzz/clear up the audio, it sounds too artificial so I reverted back to the original versions of the audio. I know that the audio became bad because of microphone technical difficulties, but upon reflection, I felt like a re-done interview would not have the same effect and would seem too “staged” since my subject now knew what my intentions were in terms of putting his words together. Therefore, despite the bad audio quality, I think the story about Mitchel’s growth and transformation from a quiet student to a climber still prevails.

Enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1V0G_7zGvhM1lgr6dlXOB3cKi8t-M4SkL

After many long hours of figuring out aspect ratio/export issues (thanks Adam!) I finally got the Final Cut done. I know it’s a little bit over the 3 minute cut-off, but I think the dramatic footage at the end really is worth the extra time.

• Average age of a person who overdosed in the Lehigh Valley was 38 years old
• In 2016, Lehigh Valley police received 466 overdose calls
• In 2016, 169 people died from overdosing in the Lehigh Valley
• The number of hospital stays for heroin overdoses increased 66% from 2014-2016 in Pennsylvania
• 13 people die every day from drug overdoses in Pennsylvania

Scary stuff!!

Sources: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-lehigh-valley-heroin-overdose-deaths-continue-to-rise-20170429-story.html

http://www.mcall.com/business/healthcare/mc-biz-health-overdose-hospital-costs-20170626-story.html

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/06/dea_discloses_disturbing_numbe.html

I have no idea what happened to make this have very low pixels and only a small part of the screen, so if anyone has suggestions, SOS!

Yesterday, Luke and I filmed our first major interview for the Opioid documentary.  We were filming a local Emergency Physician about her experience working in the Lehigh Valley. The interview overall went really well, and our interviewee said a lot of GREAT points that I know we can use in our documentary. The difficult part is that she just talked  A LOT in general, and it is going to take a long time to really cut down on the film.  After waiting two hairs for her to come, she finally showed up, and I can definitely attest that I was pretty exhausted before it even began because of that. However, the actual shooting went really smoothly, and it was lovely getting to use the studio room with the professional lighting. We only had one mini-hiccup; the cameras both turned off after a certain time of filming, so we did lose some footage which is disappointing because we were certain everything would be perfect! It was definitely a good learning experience that no matter how times you film, you need to prepare for at least something to go wrong. Luckily, even though I was the one doing the interviewing I was within arms’ reach of the camera, so I could quickly reach over and get it started again. I just hope that this will not disrupt the flow too much!