Late Post

Sorry for missing the last week of submissions. To sum up the time lost, I basically researched about Sebastian de Leon, what the disease was, how he contracted it etc. 

Apparently, the disease is so rare that it is twice as likely to be struck by lightning. As a result, I believe that I figured out what I would be doing for this project. I wish for this TV documentary to be a part of a series that focuses on rare diseases that are found around the world. I will be going through the overall outline of this TV series in a later blog post.

Also, I have looked through various news articles that talk about Sebastian's miraculous survival story, including big names such as CNN and ABC News. What's interesting about how these two sources presented the information is that CNN almost exclusively focused on the disease itself while ABC allowed for a more in depth look at the overall story. Both, however,included a video report of the lead medical examiner that saved Sebastian's life. Due to both sources including clips from this interview with Sebastian's doctor, it can only be assumed that this has been a medical breakthrough, especially since Sebastian has come out of this relatively unscathed. I have linked both sources below:

CNN Link
ABC News Link

Ask and you shall receive

When I was at my lowest, most desperate point for new ideas, an idea was presented to me in the form of my friend Andres. Now, I've known Andres since around 6th grade but we had only just begun to hang out in recent times. So when it dawned on me that Andres had just solved all my problems about this project, he really surprised me. It was like a miracle.

A miracle who went by the name "Sebastian de Leon".

Sebastian de Leon is one of the few people known to have survived a (insert deadly condition here...I'll ask him more about it later on). Now, I've also been good friends with Sebastian for a while so I had heard about his miraculous story. But when Andres suggested that I throw away my idea about collective identity out the window and replace it with Sebastian's story, I knew it had to be good.

Quickly thanking Andres, I ran outside and called Sebastian, who I knew was at lunch at the time. We begin to talk and I pitch the idea to make a small documentary about what had happened to him. To my surprise, he was extremely excited to be a part of my piece and he said he would be glad to help me.

I don't have much outlined for the piece but I have a good feeling about it. I feel like it could be one of my best pieces to date--if I play my cards right. I'll update this blog as more developments are made for this new documentary.

How the heck do I do this?

So following what I mentioned in the last post, I finally had a main topic to follow. But as I attempted to create a sort of storyboard for how i wanted this documentary to flow, I found myself at a MASSIVE barrier: How to get this group of clowns to seem more like a collective identity rather than just a string of friends that stick together for no reason. In other words, I didn't know how to frame this friend group properly.

I had hoped that I would be able to get some help in this on Friday but had no such luck. My classmates were just as lost as I was when it came to this topic. Many of them attempted to help me find a way to introduce the topic, but there was still the huge problem of how to frame the documentary and design the questions so that they may more closely resemble the main idea of the piece.

As a result of this conundrum that I found myself in, I decided to sit in my room for the rest of the afternoon and really try and form up a draft for a possible storyboard. Unfortunately I was getting nowhere, so I decided to go to the source of the idea in the first place and invited Santi over to my house.

Santi and I grinded out ideas for the documentary for maybe an hour and a half but I ended up more lost than before. It really seemed like there would be no end to this nightmare of confusing thoughts and lost ideas. It seemed like a miracle to help me get through this part of the project.

Tricky Ideas

Well, its been a rather busy week when it comes to reaching a final decision on what to do my documentary on. At the beginning of the week, I was able to chat with a few of my fellow Media Studies classmates on what they thought I should do. However, the next big step I took in developing a plan for an entire documentary TV series would not come from a fellow classmate, rather an old friend, Santiago, or "Santi".

Now, I have been good friends with Santi for a while now so he definitely knows just how much this project means to me as well as my future endeavors. So when he suggested that I make a documentary about his friend group, I knew not to take it lightly. We had been talking awhile about making a sort of "mockumentary" about our whole friend group. But when Santi suggested that we make the video more serious, it really started to seem like it might actually be possible to make this more like a legitimate documentary.
So as we finish up talking about our idea, 7th period rolls around--my media studies period.

During the class, my class is being called up to talk about an practice essay we had written the week before. When I come up, my essay is relatively unedited, so there wasn't really much to discuss there. As a result of this freed up time, I decided to ask my teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa, about the possibility of making this documentary. To my surprise, the result was not an immediate denial. I think my teacher saw just how passionate I was for the topic so she instead suggested a small change to the main idea of the video.

Since the prompt was meant for a TV series, Mrs. Stoklosa suggested that I make the prompt something broader: something that a wider range people could be interested in. As a result, together we formed the main idea that this documentary about friendships would be shaped around: How teenagers form a sense of collective identity.

First Draft of Ideas

This blog post will be to show what directions I seem to be going when it comes to brainstorming possible topics for my documentary excerpt.

Here is what I have come up with so far:

• Riding a bike for the first time as a teenager*
• Does prom matter?
• When a group that is recognized as a minority in a country becomes the majority within an area
• Impact of the suburban life on young minds once they are thrown into the real world
• Going from a "normal" household to a monoparental home**
• Becoming a doctor in America, despite already being recognized as a doctor in another country
• Drugs at Cypress Bay High School
• Growing up with no family near you***
• Day in the life of a Cypress Bay security guard****

*This topic may or may not remain on this list. I wanted to do a sort of cute "taking your first steps" experience with someone that is more grown up. The documentary would follow my friend Nacho and his experiences with riding a bike for the first time. However, I recently became aware that he would be moving back to Argentina soon. As I do not know when this may be, I will likely have to discount this idea early on.

**This topic offers a lot of possibilities as it is one of the more versatile options on this list. I could do this documentary as a sort of case study on the experiences that my sister and family had when this came about their lives and how it impacted them. I could also likely take a bunch of research and slip it in the piece to sort of support the overall experience of my family as well as the experiences documented and studied by professionals.

***Not direct relatives. I mean like grandparents, uncles and cousins. That sort of deal. Living without any family is really much more of a tragedy than I prefer to outline in a piece.

****I would like to do this piece in a sort of humorous, "Michael Moore"-esque fashion. I would follow a bunch of security guards around school and instead of mostly asking them questions about their jobs, I would like to focus on the types of lives they lead outside of the workplace. It really is a unique idea because it is not something most students really think about when they bump into one of these guards within their every day lives.

This is only a rough draft of my various ideas. I plan to narrow them down and refine those that are left in order to reach a final decision on my documentary's topic.

Me, My Rules, and I

So it turns out that coming up with a practical yet interesting documentary for someone at my age to do is actually quite difficult. However, that does not mean that it is already time to throw in the towel. On the contrary, actually. 

I've given myself the liberty of just about the entire week to be able to find interesting subjects worth me documenting. However, there are some things that I had to take into account before I set out to find some topics. I've laid out my self-impose guidelines below:

1. Do not choose a topic that cannot be completed within the given timeframe.
2. Do not choose a topic that requires an egregious amount of interviews to portray whichever message you choose to portray.
3. Don't choose something boring. Don't be afraid to try something unique.

The purpose of these guidelines is to give me a basic idea of the topics that I may be able to touch upon for this topic.

#1 reminds me that I do have a very finite amount of time to develop this entire piece, so I cannot choose a very broad or extensive topic, for I will surely lose track of time and it will be a repeat of last year once more.

#2 is really a guideline that I debated heavily with myself before setting it in stone (or online I suppose). While I do believe that having a wide range of interviewees tends to bolster the strength in the message of most documentaries, my biggest concern is that these interviews will eat up my time-which is something I simply cannot afford for this piece.

#3 is not much of a guideline but I believe that it is the most important for me to keep in mind while searching for topics. Many times, I have found myself thinking of many secure and unimaginative themes, which is always a concern of mine when it comes to developing an original piece. I want to be sure that no matter the topic that I choose, it is a subject that really is unique to me and truly represents who I am as a creative force.

"Don't call it a comeback" - LL Cool J

To whomever this concerns,

This is a Blog for any reader to understand the process gone through to create this documentary excerpt as well as all my research and thoughts on this journey.

For my last project, I began my blogging by introducing myself. However, as my introduction has already been made, I'd rather explain the title of this blog and what it means to me.

I decided to call this blog "The Comeback" because of my experiences with my project for my AS level portfolio. My AS project was an utter disaster from start to finish, and there really is nothing to blame myself. I prioritized studying for other examinations and left every part of that project for the very last minute-and this lack of time management cost me heavily. 

So, as a result of my experiences with my last project, I have immediately decided to set up a calendar with due dates for myself to keep up with. NO EXCEPTIONS. I will be uploading this calendar as soon as I get all my due dates sorted out. Hopefully, I will be able to adhere to this calendar, which will in turn allow me to develop a much higher quality project than the last one I made. A project that I can feel proud to call my own.

Sincerely,

Joaquin Perez Nogueiras