Another learning journal post! Today and last week we began researching and planning for an upcoming documentary about homelessness in san francisco. the whole purpose of this is to show the people in san paolo that here in the states we have these kinds of problems to, such as homelessness. it's also to raise awareness and advocate to help diminish this ongoing problem. I'm really excited to go out and shoot some footage and interview people. I'll contact the Glide memorial church to schedule a day where i can interview a client. The major problem i am currently facing is that i'm leaving for New York this monday---and won't be back until next week, when school begins. So i don't think i'll be able to keep up with everyone if you guys edit next week, but i'm certain that i'll get everything done by next next week.
Homeless interviewee(s)
1) How long have you been staying/going to glide memorial church?
2) What is the cause of your homelessness/how did you become homeless?
3) can you tell me some background information of yourself, before you were put on the streets?
4) how did you get help to overcome this?
5) were you initially on your own or did you have some help from family/friends?
6) describe your struggle throughout the time you were on the streets.
7) would you say being homeless can be prevented?
8) what is your advice to people struggling with the particular problem you had before being homeless?
This is all i can think of now, but i might add some more questions.
Shotlist:
Topic order: causes, how the media portrays it, organizations that can help and in contrast how some aren't safe, what you can do. i think we should have clips of statistics in text throughout the whole documentary.
each topic can have an interview, and during the interview there can be b-role(of figurative and literal picture stills, video clips, etc), or the interviewee talking, maybe both. and also picture stills and video clips of the environment/neighborhoods, displaying clearly how homelessness looks in san francisco.
For my particular topic, i want to
-open up with a montage of neighborhood shots, establishing the homelessness here.
-then have a shot of glide memorial
-what it looks inside (the kitchen)
-and then go right into an interview, with b-role of figurative images, relating to whatever information the interviewee tells me.
-if there is time i want to have another interview, just to have a range of how people in different situations have different stories as to why they are homeless.
-fade into a statistic or two about homelessness.
----then to the next topic, + fade into statistics, next topic, fade into statistics, etc.
thats my idea for a shotlist for my own topic, but i don't know how other people are planning to arrange theirs.
http://www.nhchc.org/Children/sld018.htm
http://www.camillushouse.org/camillus_resources/homelessness.php
http://www.chicagohomeless.org/factsfigures/causesandfacts.htm
http://www.homelessresourcenetwork.org/causes.html
http://www.homelessagency.ie/about_homelessness/causes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/main_nowayhome_causes.html
http://anitraweb.org/homelessness/faqs/causes/index.html (good one)
Main causes of homelessness
The major reasons and causes for homelessness as documented by many reports and studies include:
- Lack of affordable housing
- Substance abuse and lack of needed services
- Mental illness and lack of needed services
- Domestic violence
- Poverty, caused by many factors
- Prison release and re-entry into society
- Lack of affordable healthcare
- Natural Disaster
- Lack of education
- Lack of economic resources
- there are also voluntary homeless people (nomads), but i guess that doesn't count.
My name is Diem, in Latin that would mean "Day". Hence the phrase "carpe diem" (seize the day). But the history of my name comes from my native home Vietnam, which in retrospect means "pretty". I was born in Vietnam and came to the states when i was about 3 years old. My father is a Nam veteran which gave my family a free ticket to America. I suppose that's the least they could do after abandoning the war and allowing my father to be trapped for 13 years in the re-education camps. I could go on forever about my family's history but that would take several days. Well anyway, I'm 16 years old and am fluent in English and Vietnamese. I'm learning Spanish in school but i wouldn't say I'm doing quite well. I can also speak a couple of phrases from other languages such as Korean, Cantonese, Tagalog and Indonesian. The perks of having an ethnically diverse range of friends.
My favorite authors have to be Mitch Albom, Sarah Dessen and Alice Sebold. My favorite books are in line by these authors--Tuesdays with Morrie, The Truth About Forever, and The Lovely Bones.
Some of my favorite music artists are Regina Spektor (she is amazing), The Format (i just went to one of their concerts last friday), and The Beatles (my beatles obsessed friend Monica has influenced me with their music).
I only keep up with a few TV shows. I used to be majorly addicted to Degrassi, a canadian drama, but I've gotten bored of the plots' lack of continuity. Other shows I like watching are House M.D., and re-runs of Boy Meets World and Chamed.
My favorite movies includes anything with Gael Garcia Bernal in it--he's not only a great actor, but he's gorgeous! Other movies I enjoy watching are Everything is Illuminated, Girl Interrupted,and Thirteen.
I looove Smosh videos on youtube. And how can i forget Wongfu. These guys are geniuses.
I'm not really into sports. I would say I am athletically challenged. I like recreational swimming, probably because I'm not a very competitive individual. I've always been more on the artistic side. I love drawing, painting, and creating things from trash and scraps. I like the concept of turning normal and overlooked things into art. But my favorite form of art is fashion. I'm hoping to get a sewing machine so I could start creating my own pieces. I love going to thrift stores and purchasing old vintage clothes, and putting outfits together. I'm also learning how to play guitar, but recently I've been neglecting it because of my busy schedule. Over the past year I've gotten into filming, and I've created a few short pieces with the help of my mentors from BAVC. I like the idea of influencing others and helping the community through media.
I love hanging out with my friends on the weekends, doing ordinary things like watching movies and going to the mall, but sometimes i like to be spontaneous. One time, some friends and I were eating gelato at Holy Gelato when we suddenly had the impulse to climb the huge redwood tree at Botanical Gardens, near Golden Gate Park. Then we fed some squirrels nearby. I love animals, part of the reason why I'm a vegetarian. I've gone meatless for over two years now, and I don't think I'm ever going back to being a carnivore.
I would like to travel all over the world. My goal in life is to visit every country there is. I'm still deciding on what I want to do after college. Possible career paths in my future: filmmaking, fashion designing, some other type of art, or somewhere along the field of psychology--I'm interested in the human brain, and why we do the things we do. But ultimately, whatever I do, I want to help people and influence them for the better good.
Currently, I'm really worried about my upcoming junior year in high school. When it came to school, I've always been stressed out. This coming year I'm taking AP (advanced placement) classes, in World History and Biology. I'm also taking all honors academic classes, with one elective in Media Arts. Aside from school I'm going to be participating in Building with Books (BWB) an organization that teaches young people about current issues of the world, and by the end of the year I have a chance to travel to a developing country to help build a school! I'm very exciteddddd. I'll be returning to JCYC, my youth group that I've been in for 2 years now. I'm also re-elected into office for my school, as Vice President of my junior class. This is by far going to be my toughest year, but I'm hoping to get through with it without going completely insane.
Heroes in my life are my loving family. My parents, younger brother, and older sister.
Aside from finishing editing and uploading stuff today (which i had a lot of trouble with 'cause stupid vox won't accept my video files, but that'll be fixed by next week), KQED's Leslie and her intern gave us Projectview kids a sort of ''audio tour'' for a few blocks in the potrero neighborhood, using gps satellite transmitters and bluetooth (some technical stuff) but what it did was, whenever we aproached a specific area on the tour, the gps devices would detect it and give us a story (we had headphones). It was pretty cool, learned some historical facts and information about the area, it was overall pretty cool. I especially liked stories of the murals on i think it was 17th street. I felt like we were some high tech patrol officers or something, with our sashes and wires. It was fun.
Sorry I'm writing a little late, but I didn't have much time the whole week. During last week's meeting Leslie and her intern came by to give us a little tutorial on Google Earth. It was pretty cool learning how to make your own markers and creating some html stuff. We then marked our neighborhood and the different shots we got in that neighborhood. I'm still working on mine but I'll be finished later today. I also finished my neighborhood video so I'll post that up shortly. The audio on my food interview video is kind of messed up but I'll post that one up soon too.
