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.

I never had an idea about the process of adopting from foster care, but after watching The F Word I have learned so much. This docseries allows the audience to feel like they’re experiencing the search for a child with Nicole and Kristan. It is challenging from their part, because they’re in limbo and are trying to figure out a way to remain hopeful. Their approach of speaking to other parents who have adopted is insightful. It is painful to see them struggle and to see how desperately they want a kid.

To maintain the audience’s interest, the doc series is kept short and has animated parts, adding some comic relief to their tense waiting period. I was so curious to know as to what would happen so I watched all episodes in one go. I enjoyed how they went about defining terms such as concurrent planning and disclosure meeting. While sharing their experience, they are also educating their audience on the adopting process. I admire how Nicole and Kristan question their roles as transracial parents and realize that it might not be easy for the kid or them. Their open-mindedness and clear communication is shown very well in every episode of this series.

I refrained from posting on Brooke Gladstone’s talk until I (somewhat) accomplished this goal. A week ago I decided to log off Instagram. I didn’t directly take her advice and delete the application because I wanted to test myself. I was curious to see how many times my fingers would gravitate towards the application. As I waited for my food, as I walked to class, as I had a boring meal with a friend, I’d keep opening the application and stare at the log in sign, fighting the urge to reenter this superficial world where people are portraying their lives as what our generation would call “#goals”. Later in the week, the struggle was a lot less and I felt liberated from Instagram. The time I’d spend uselessly scrolling, I give that time to a book, a friend, or myself. I was saving time and energy. I kept telling my friends about this challenge and most of them would respond saying that they were proud of me, but they’d go back to the application after our brief conversation. For everyone: It’s better than a food cleanse and I recommend that everyone should try it, you will feel great.

Gladstone touched on very important points during her talk. She reminded us that we have the power to choose the media we consume. We can choose to read an article from NYTimes, CNN, Fox, or Independent. But, as we read, we must question the information being given to us. Many sources give us information, and most readers accept them as facts. But that, is in fact, not true. It made me think of what my Corporate Finance professor keeps reiterating. “Don’t accept any statistic on a website until you know how the person reached that number. The statistic will most likely be a number pulled out of a hat.” We are wired to be distracted, but we are not forced to be. As a documentarian, we need to find the truths and present it to our audience. Making a documentary is a form of reporting; the differences are that the documentarian engages with the interviewee, focuses on certain perspectives, and is in film form.

Her comparison of Orwell 1984 and Huxley Brave New World got me excited because I remember painfully reading both pieces in high school. I love how she contrasted the concepts of both books and related Brave New World to media today. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance, and here we are today. We need to filter out today’s junk media and save our culture from becoming trivial. Going back to Junot Diaz’s point, she emphasized how we need to allow ourselves to get bored to have great ideas and think about the future. We shouldn’t allow media to keep distracting us and encouraging our brains to develop this short attention span.

I initially didn’t enjoy how Gladstone was a stationary speaker, especially after seeing KJ float around the room. But, her tone and insightful talk suited her body language. She wouldn’t have been able to read her lecture if she was moving around the room. I am glad we were able to hear her talk, especially after reading The Influencing Machine two years ago.

On Monday, Rob started his talk by reminiscing about his and his friend’s liberal arts experience at Williams College. Rob kept reminding us of how lucky we are to be at such a school where we have the privilege of being around minds that are disciplined, exciting, and to take advantage of our professors and friends. This gave me a little flashback to Junot Diaz’s talk I had attended a few weeks ago. For those who don’t know, Diaz is an amazing Dominican American author and everyone should read his books. Diaz had concluded his talk by telling us how the liberal arts education is great BUT very economically driven. This education doesn’t give us the opportunity to sit down and reflect on what we’ve learned or how to approach situations because we’re constantly so busy with assignments, papers, tests, and what not. Diaz kept telling us to live our life and to stop putting too much pressure on ourselves. By the time we’re 23, we would have put so much pressure on ourselves in trying to be a “writer, a filmmaker, an engineer”, that we realize we haven’t spent anytime enjoying doing what we love in a non instrumental way. If we’re doing something that will produce a future, we won’t love it, but if it has no purpose, we’ll love it. Diaz said, “let your art have no purpose.” These are some questions he asked us about our education – these questions received a lot of claps from students but a lot of awkward looks from those who work in administration. “Why don’t students have enough time to deliberate over the important issues of their day? Why are we to the point of breaking to get college degrees? why are we so busy? There are so many important things we don’t think about because we are so busy. How do we allow a free exchange of ideas? Why corporate boards are running our university?”

This has forced me to think about the type education we all are receiving here at Lafayette – or at Muhlenberg and Lehigh. I think it’s important to make time for things we enjoy and allow our brains to breathe a little. We need to make time to reflect on important issues in our community and our world. After all, we are citizens of the world.

Tension sentence : DACA students are working towards a college degree while constantly fearing deportation.

Andrea, Yannick, and I are looking forward to working together on this extremely important topic, DACA. Our goal is to make this piece specific to our generation college DACA students. I think we are very lucky that Andrea is a part of this group because the perspective we will receive from her will change our whole approach to this piece. The motivation towards working on this project should come from within, and I feel that at this point, I want to help tell Andrea’s story. I want to help tell DACA students’ story. Before we could start talking about interviews or B-roll, Andrea insisted that she wants us to do full research and be aware of the entire policy, what does DACA give students? We need to be so well informed because we can’t afford our interviewees getting defensive when being asked about this sensitive subject. We want our interviewees to be comfortable in front of us before we can present a camera in front of them, which is why we all need to be well researched (NEED – WANT). With this piece, we also plan on clearing all misconceptions rotating around DACA. Andy reiterated this by reminding us that the camera is powerful, editing is powerful, and we aren’t here to hurt people. The way we choose to edit these interviews will be the only way the audience will perceive them. We are responsible of the way our interviewees are presented.

Erol Morris’s Thin Blue Line (1988) is a well crafted documentary and is one story in this history of injustice that often leads to exoneration with no compensation after being put to death. It’s incredible how Morris was able to influence the outcome of Randall Adams’ death sentence. I appreciated the usage of the reenactments over and over again, assimilating one piece of the evidence into the documentary and also allowing the audience to play a role in this investigation. This brings in the themes and importance of memory and truth throughout this case. I initially thought it was odd to not show us the reenactment of the real killer behind the wheel, but then realized that this played a role in the mystery of the documentary. Morris structured it as a whodunit, a story or play about a murder in which the identity of the murderer is not revealed until the end. But, the interviews were a form of giveaway, since David Harris was in the orange prison jumpsuit while Adams was in a white shirt. The narrative spine is the evidence that helps move the Thin Blue Line forward.

This once again brings up the question of ethics. Was it right for Morris to use Adams’ miserable story to create a piece of art? In one of Morris’s interviews, he says that if the internet was as prevalent as it is today, more people would be more aware of Adams’ story back in the day. The fact that it wasn’t helped him investigate and create this documentary. Morris also talks about how Adams was never part of the equation; he went into this documentary with intentions of filming a psychiatrist about his role in the implementation of death penalty in Texas. Through this psychiatrist, he heard about this case and decided to start investigating. This goes back to the point Bernard and all of our documentary books collectively say, “the story revealing itself over the course of the production or even in the editing room.” (Bernard).

After watching The Above, I felt similar to how I did after reading Orwell’s 1984. I was uncomfortable and this US blimp feels like an intruder. I would hate to imagine how the Afghanis feel every day when they wake up. Everything that lies above the surface of the earth, the sky, is meant to be liberating. But in this case, it wasn’t.

I enjoyed how Kirsten captured shots of random carrots, people driving, kids playing on a hill, and more shots of objects and humans in relation to this hovering blimp. She plays with the distance between her, the camera, and this blimp. It follows her and everyone else in Kabul. People go about with their day to day lives, but the blimp remains up in the air, watching them and taking over their free space.

Her way of playing with distance between her and the blimp makes me think of the parallel relationship between a camera and a human being. When we take videos and pictures of a person or an animal, they’re aware that we’re in their sphere. We try to be as unseen as possible with our camera when trying to get a shot of the dog catching a bone or lady working on her sowing machine. Yet, they know that they’re being watched by 2 sets of eyes, ours and the camera lens. Even if we aren’t talking with a person, we are still interacting with them by standing right there. It is our choice, or KJ’s to decide whether we want to engage further with our subject and get to know them better or just stand in a corner and film from a distance. This reminds of when Mike and I filmed last Monday, KJ kept encouraging us to follow her instead of standing at the bottom of the steps and move the camera instead of our bodies to follow her. She didn’t want us to be the blimp. Just as how she engages with people, she wanted the camera to engage with her interaction of engagement (awkwardly phrased). The camera and the documentarian naturally builds a relationship with who they engage with, and it is our choice whether we choose to be the blimp or person.

I think this past Monday will remain as one of my most memorable days in my life. I also think that this one blog post will not do justice to my experience with Kirsten Johnson. I feel very lucky that she chose to add some more sparkle to our Lafayette film community. Last Sunday, I remember bumping into any friend and telling them how they should attend the Cameraperson screen downtown. I was extremely excited after KJ’s visit because as some of you may know, Cameraperson was the only random documentary I chose to watch one sad Saturday night. When I think back to that night, I remember that Prof Andy had emailed me saying that I could be part of this documentary filmmaking class. I knew I hadn’t watched many documentaries and wondered what I’d have to add to this class, as having some back knowledge of watching documentaries could help. This summer Saturday night, I was feeling low because I wasn’t enjoying my internship at the bank. Movies and TV shows helped me get through that boring month. I decided to look up, “best movies directed by women” and a page on IndieWire popped up (http://www.indiewire.com/2017/05/best-films-directed-by-women-21st-century-1201830875/). That is the actual page. KJ’s film was ranked at number 23 and it was also a documentary. It was perfect! So there I was, tucked in bed at 3am, with my brains, eyes, and ears about to be blown off by this piece. And it was…

Women In Film Class: I was lucky enough to be in Professor Sikand’s Women in Film class where Kirsten made her first appearance. She led our class in a very unique way by asking us to go around and speak about a time when we felt apart, separate, or different from our family. The way she tackled this was by picking us randomly, not from the start or the end of the table where each student would anticipate when they’d be picked to speak. We weren’t given a minute of heads up time to gather our thoughts as the person before us was concluding theirs. The beauty of her approach forced us to actually listen to our peers and to also think on our toes. This was a powerful listening activity. The concept of thinking on our toes was related to cinema, for instance, when we watch certain movies or hear stories from people we interview, things take a different turn and can tend to throw us off. This was the effect she wanted to leave on us. Moving on, Kirsten said that if we ask X where they’re from, it wouldn’t affect them. But, if we ask Y about where they’re from, they might get pissed. She says that as a questioner, our questions come from a place, a point of view, experience, or lack of experience. We could be hurting someone’s feeling or putting them on defense with our first question to a person. Kirsten emphasized that this is how we learn. Body language and a person’s tone were also two key factors that she and the camera focuses on during interviews. When someone told a story about their childhood, she immediately noticed how the person gripped their hands and could tell how uncomfortable they were talking about this experience. In Cameraperson, we notice how Kirsten focuses on hands, in order to show emotions that words cannot. Another classmate shared an intimate story about her family, and Kirsten noticed the crack in her voice, the sound of shame. She emphasized on how we all can read things from people’s bodies because that is how emotions are expressed. The camera has the ability of looking into people’s private business and seeing things that people will not share. These small moments happen and they pass, but it is the camera that holds on to them and makes them true. When interviewing, “dig deeper,” she says. Relating to Cameraperson, Kirsten did dig deeper, especially  when she rushes to film her emotional friend who was coping with her mother’s death. Essentially, we became Kirsten’s interviewees and she showed us how she is able to read people through these small yet important details.

Visual workshop + Q&A : A comment that stuck out to me was how KJ said that documentaries reduce one person to one part of the story/a category/a victim/a narrative. If we interview Jane on sexual abuse, to us we only identify Jane to that one topic she’s talking about. She is nothing more to us because nothing more is told about her. As a documentarian, it is a challenge for us to portray someone for the person they really are. We are easily able to be unethical and disrespectful to our interviewee in post, but it the director’s choice to determine how the interviewee is portrayed.

Another thing she said a few times was, “own your advantages, use your sexuality.” Kirsten shared her personal story about how her height was always critiqued on as she was growing up. But, in her career, she used her height to intimidate those who underestimated her. Her comment reminded of the alumni panel lunch when Ayesha said that she uses her sweet smile and soft voice to be able to get an interview with some government official. Ayesha said that someone else in her workplace tried to get an interview but their efforts were in vain. This was rewarding and a positive way of using her sexuality to her advantage. It can be intimidating to be a woman in the film/media industry, but this piece of advice stood out to me from both talks.

She also emphasized on how our stories don’t need to be a narrative. Her documentary wasn’t three act structure, it was put together the way she and her editor thought would do justice to her 25 years of filming. It will allow the audience to feel things, rather than be told. I later had asked KJ a question: It surely takes time for your interviewee to get comfortable with you and the camera. When you initially talk to your interviewee, do you ask them the same questions like you do in front of the camera or do you ask them random stuff to get to know them? She stared at me and said, it’s different with every person. There is no formula and you have to trust your gut. Every experience is different, but make sure to get to know your interviewee.

In my WIF class, I heard a lot personal stories. KJ said that we don’t even realize how good we’ve had it. Everything is part of a system, it is connected to history and to a system that has been deeply unfair. We all experience different things. After watching Cameraperson, I felt grateful for what I have. After hearing my peers open up to KJ in our class safe space, I felt even more grateful. I still have a lot more to share about my experience of just being around her, but I think I learned so much about why being a documentarian, a filmmaker, a scholar, and just being human a human who listens is so important. I still remember how excited I was at this hour last week, unable to sleep because of my excitement to see KJ. I was still unable to sleep after seeing her on Monday night, and she has left these sparkles of excitement in me. Below is KJ and I( awkwardly holding back my tears).