William Starkoff

This Story of a Life was different than all the others I have watched before. It was the story of William Starkoff, but everything you learn about him is a lie. Except for the amazing Dairy Queen eating. That was true. I think.
That is what I find so interesting about this movie. You are "learning" about this spunky high school boy, but at the end, you have only learned what you can from his hilarious and witty lies. This is a unique and extremely entertaining way of doing the Story of a Life project. Through the lies and jokes, you are able to see Starkoff's personality. In no way is this the deep, dark, story of his life, but it is the story of his witty approach to his life. The movie leaves you questioning, something never considered an option in the Story of a Life project, but it keeps you wanting more. Who really is William Starkoff? This is why I can say it is one of my favorite projects so far.
When I first began the video, I was blown away by the editing. It was such a modern way of filming and made you feel like you were either spying on William's life, or a part of it. The witty editing allowed this movie to be short and to the point. I must say, the movie was nothing without William of course, but its editing made it the successful movie it was.

Something to Be Proud Of

I watched Aubree Dipman's Story of a Life titled, Something to Be Proud Of. In this video, Aubree traveled to Kentucky where she told the story of a family that lives in the Appalachian Mountains. In the video, she introduces each of the family members and interviews them about their lives. I thought that the topic that she chose for the project was really cool. She traveled all the way to Kentucky to film and the story that she told was definitely a different experience. I really enjoyed learning about this family and I thought that she did a good job capturing how although their lives are quite different from ours, they are great people. I thought she did a nice job. The only thing that I thought could have been improved was the current life of the characters. She asked them a lot about their previous lives growing up and working, but she didn't ask a lot about their current lives. Otherwise, I thought it was a very interesting film.

Survivor: You Were Getting My Body, You Weren't Getting Me

The first video I watched was called Survivor:  You Were Getting My Body, You Weren't Getting Me by Morgan Ransom and Kristin Schultz. The film was about a local Columbus women who had been kidnapped and sold into prostitution from a young age, and how she now started a shelter for girls that have had similar experiences.

First off, I really enjoyed the video because the topic caught my attention. I never realized that the selling of young women and even men is just around the corner in Columbus, Ohio. In fact, the person Morgan and Kristin interviewed said that she had a meeting where she paid $10 to each person just to hear their story. She said that over 120 people, ages 12 to 56, attended. This was very eye opening and I feel like I really learned a lot from the whole video.
I enjoyed the beginning with the music which made it a lot more dramatic. I also enjoyed the structure of the film. It was very easy to follow. I do think that Morgan and Kristin could have used more footage from different locations. Like something I thought they would have done was given the viewer a tour of the shelter home that the majority of the video was about.

Another thing I didn't like about the video was I didn't think the story line was clear enough. I found myself asking lots of questions in my head that were left unanswered. I wish the interviewee could have been more specific with her story so that the storyline was easier to follow.

Teen Therapy V. Haque Project

I liked the film Peri made about Ms. Webster. She was able to keep me interested with her unique filming and edits. I actually didn't notice her film was just audio and not actually interviewing someone (I know) until I read Julia's post.

The reason why I liked Peri's video was that she was still able to visually appeal to me. She added clips from high school movies, had stereotypical high school pop music, and had editing that made it childlike and fun. I was engaged the entire time watching her film, and actually was a little nostalgic. Her choices of music and pictures clearly communicated her ideas despite an absence of the traditional interviewing in the SoaL films. I have known Ms. Webster for four years, but I feel like the film showed a side of Ms. Webster that we normally wouldn't have seen and a side that would normally take years of communicating with a person to see.

The Haque project on the other hand was an audio essay that was not visually enjoyable. The story was about Ms. Haque who was a physics teacher that used to teach at our school. I did like her story because of her strong personality and her role as a female person of color science teacher in an independent school, but I was not engaged. I honestly don't remember anything particular in the film that stood out pleasantly to me. I felt like the entire time I was watching this film I felt as if I was listening to an essay which unfortunately couldn't keep my attention. The bits of videotaped interviews once in awhile was normal in the SoaL films, but it didn't keep me invested in the film.

Public VS Private School

Public VS Private School was a film that followed Jimmer, an student who left Academy for Gahanna, around his public school to show how different the private and public school cultures are. I feel like this idea of showing the differences of private vs public school students could have been used to do something really cool, but this film fell short of that. The students who made the film followed 2 students who were very similar to each other in their public schools. These 2 students seemed to be from similar circles and didn't give much variety throughout the film. We were only exposed to the same type of people, which made it seem like public schools were only full of these types of kids (which I'm sure isn't true). Instead, the students who made the film could have followed different types of students around to show the different sides of public schools

A big part of the film was Academy students stating stereotypes about public school students and vice versa. It would have been really cool if the film showed how, yes, some of these stereotypes exist but then dispelled other stereotypes. They should have showed students who didn't fit into the image one might get when they think of a public school student. Instead, the film-makers just showed clips that reinforced the negative stereotypes of public school students, for example when they were filming in the middle of classes everyone was talking and it didn't seem like anyone was paying attention. The last shot of a few guys being really rude to a foreign exchange student didn't help with the image of public school students, either.

They could have even the dispelling of stereotypes at Academy, too. There were a lot of stereotypes that public school students stated that I know for a fact to be untrue.  Dispelling these stereotypes that students at both types of schools thought to be true would have been a really cool, eye-opening segment but instead the film-makers reinforced negative public school stereotypes and didn't show any side of the private school student experience at all. This documentary started with a good idea that could have blossomed into something very interesting and eye-opening, but instead went in a different direction that ended up making it very one sided.

Dog Stories

This was not a film so I cannot comment on the visually pleasing aspects or how the images kept me engaged. I did enjoy the audio stories for about the first 20 minutes, but then the stories began to slow down and I was ready for it to be over. Also, between each story there was an abundance of music, and while I thought it was interesting the first time it became something I wanted to skip over. Some of the stories were very interesting though, and I was just sitting in the library laughing at a blank screen. There were also stories that felt like they were an ill prepared presentation where the person is just saying umm until they can think of some other random bit of information to spit out. Also, while listening I almost felt like it was an NPR special by the end, which is not bad when done right, but sometimes feels like it will never end. Overall I thought the stories were really cute, but 30+ minutes was too long to keep me engaged the entire time.

SOL William Starkoff

 This film was both visually interesting and humorous. The film's subject is William Starkoff whose personality is more the focus of the film than his life story.  In fact, for much of the film William lies about himself or tells fake stories, and this is highlighted with his long made up story about his future plans, which include going to the moon on a rocket ship made out of carrot and starting a colony with Tom Cruise and Ellen Page.  Facts are not the basis for this film, but even through some of his lies and fake stories, the audience is given a portray of William's personality.  

Humor plays a large role in the film, and something I took away from it after I watched it was that William perhaps constantly uses humor as a mask to hide behind.  But, nonetheless, the film still reveals William's personality to the audience, and in some cases one can learn more about a person this way than by simply hearing their life story.

This film was thoughtfully constructed to work well visually and to have diversity in scene location, which added interesting variety.  The film is Matt Pickering's project, and he edited and filmed it very well. I particularly liked the visual effect of the in car scene when they go through the Dairy Queen drive through.