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.

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

The focus of this film is a former sex-worker named Marlene Carson who now runs a shelter to help victims here in Columbus. Carson was forced to be a sex-worker as a teenager and was one for years, until she was able to get out.  In the film she recalls stories of her traumatic experiences as a sex-worker.  She started a shelter called Rahab's Hideaway to help victims who want out of sex-working.

The film's is structured around Carson's monologue about her experiences as a sex-worker and the development and evolution of Rahab's Hideaway.  Many of the stories Carson tells throughout the film I found to be particularly difficult to process because they were she was so candid about the terrible realities of victims forced to be sex-workers.  One of her stories was about a couple helping her and trying to get her out of the industry by pursuing charges against her pimp at the time.  But, when the pimp was arrested and she thought she was free of sex-work, she found out that he had already sold her to another pimp.   Her stories such as these that form pieces of the film are sad and emotional, but nonetheless the film finishes with hope.  The shelter Carson started has helped so many and Carson herself has shown demonstrated the power of resilience and hope.  The film does a great job of highlighting Carson's stories while maintaining a level of positivity based on the good work Carson has done for sex-workers in the area and the community. 

I think that the interview style works for this film because it allows for the audience to hear Carson's story directly from her and to see her face and the emotion it exposes while hearing her stories.