Initially the community story project made me quite nervous. I had never conducted any kind of interview before. Let alone record, edit, and present one. The perceived challenge isn't what caused me to worry. It was knowing that if i didn’t succeed i would be doing Mom Elizabeth, my community partner, a huge disservice. With any other assignment i would have been responsible only for my own grade. The community story project charged me with properly delivering the incredible story of an incredible woman.
Left with no other choice, i swallowed my anxiety and set about preparing. While i was not asking the actual questions during the interview process i knew it was important that i educate myself as much as possible so i could help construct meaningful questions for my partner. Knowing that we would be covering sensitive information i wanted to present it as professionally as possible while taking extra care to address the concerns of the refugees themselves. The classes talks with Sana Mustafa and Chanda Womack where extremely helpful in both regards. They helped me to realize how important it is to avoid portraying every refugee as just a tragic vagabond without a home. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” reaffirmed this conclusion. Americans often view refuges with a single story, a story of lost huddled masses fleeing some horror in their homeland. I wanted our video to have a more empowering message similar to what Sana & Chanda spoke about.
After completing the interview the bulk of my work began. Much of my initial concern was lifted, Mom Elizabeth gave us such a moving interview i knew we would be able to make a worthy piece. Originally we thought to tell Mom Elizabeth's story as a solely chronological account of the hardships she faced. While this made for a more straightforward story, Erin Anderson’s “The Olive Project” showed us that chronology is not always necessary. With “The Olive Project” as reference we decided it would be more effective to keep a rough chronological format in the beginning of the video that segwayed into a different focus at the end. The ending portion of the video we focused on how Mom Elizabeth was able to recover from the traumar she experienced with her deep faith and aide from Higher Ground International. My partner and I spent hours sifting through our footage trying to find the right clips to create our film. Something i was not prepared for was the difficulty of choosing what fits and what go’s. My partner needed to reign me in more than once with reminders of what we learned from the “Keep or kill” & “Your baby’s ugly” chapters in ‘Out on the wire’. I had to remind myself that to deliver a strong message we needed to keep it concise.
The audience for our video was another major consideration. Originally we planned to include slides in our video that would consist of text on a black screen providing background information on the conflict Elizabeth lived through. We created a few of these slides detailing things like the political forces behind the Liberian conflict. I felt this context would be absolutely necessary in understanding the larger story, especially since many do not know the details of the Liberian Civil War. When piecing the video together I could not find a way to insert the info slides that i was happy with. Eventually i decided i didn't like the info slides because they made the video feel to much like it was focusing on the war. Obviously the civil war had a major impact on Mom Elizabeth's life and is a central part of our video, but we felt the lack of specific details did not obstruct the story. Instead we were able to use the extra time and space to give more attention to Mom Elizabeth's comments on her faith. This was very important for me i wanted our audience to see the story of Mom Elizabeth, not the Liberian civil war.
The biggest take away for me from this project has been seeing that often less is more. Through editing our video i realized how much stronger a message become the more succinct it is kept. This has transitioned into my writing as well. Thanks to “Out on the wire” and our class discussions i feel i have a far greater understanding about how to hoan in on an idea. I have also developed a much greater respect for the use of alternate modes in writing. For instance why try to explain a feeling in words when a song can invoke so much more. This same idea is why we chose to leave the extra info slides out of our final video. Allowing Mom Elizabeth to explain the war is infinitely more powerful than hearing a historian's perspective. All in all i'm incredibly grateful for the way this project has expanded my view of how we deliver messages.