Recently I finished producing my first (and possibly last) documentary, about Kennesaw State’s student-run newspaper: The Sentinel

This spring I took a Digital Media Production class at Kennesaw State, with Sangsun Choi as my professor. The main project over the course of the semester was to produce your own short documentary, with any topic of your choosing. Professor Choi was a great help in guiding us with our projects and truly helped keep me sane during the editing process (in which my computer crashed multiple times, deleting all my work).

I worked with The Sentinel for about 5 months, and over that time realized how much the staff care about their work. When I was tasked to document a story earlier this year, choosing this publication was almost a no-brainer. While I wasn’t sure exactly what the focus of my story would be, I knew that the staff of The Sentinel would provide a good one.

The filming part of this process was very enjoyable for a few reasons. Interviewing the editors was very interesting for me. I was able to learn more about both the people I spoke with, as well as how a newspaper runs. Through this, I got to see more about what went into each story that was published and learned more about the school I attend. Going to events and filming B-rolls around campus added to this feeling, and I came out of this project with a greater connection to my college. Coming up with creative shots was also very fun for me, and I spent a lot of time trying to craft certain shots in the style of directors I love such as Wes Anderson, even if they didn’t come out like I had envisioned.

While I may have had fun filming, editing was not at all a good time. For starters, my computer was not powerful enough to handle Adobe Premiere Pro. Because of this, I was forced to complete all of my editing on a computer within Kennesaw State’s library. This was very frustrating, as their computers aren’t a whole lot better than mine. This became very clear when after about four hours of editing, the computer crashed and somehow deleted all my progress. Even though I saved it multiple times, it was still gone. All of it. Devastating. Even after overcoming this and spending about 12 more hours over the next week editing in the library, it was still such an incredibly frustrating task. If there is one thing that will keep me from any more creative endeavors including video, it will be the fact that I HATE video editing with a passion.

I am happy with my final product. While there are many things I wish I had done differently (more B-rolls of the staff, better audio quality, audio/music transitions, etc.), I do believe that this was a success in terms of trying a new creative endeavor. Making a documentary has been on my bucket list for a while, and I am glad to be able to cross that off. While the frustration of editing may keep me from producing my own video project ever again, I did enjoy filming enough to make this a positive experience altogether. More than that, meeting and getting to know the staff at The Sentinel was very rewarding in itself. Not to mention the heartfelt messages they sent after watching the documentary. While I was very critical of myself and my work, they were able to see themselves and their best friends doing what they loved from an outside perspective. I’m really glad I was able to do that for someone. Thank you to everyone who helped, and to Professor Choi for guiding me through this. If you haven’t seen it and would like to, you can do so below. Thanks for reading!