Documentary As Action My Introduction

Reflection

Something of interest to me in this studio (Documentary As Action) is having the opportunity to create a documentary in either short form bite size pieces or longer form for a chosen non-for-profit organisation. My first taste for this was on Actuality Media’s Documentary Outreach Program in Guatemala where we created a micro-documentary (between 2-3 minutes) on a small non-for-profit organisation in rural Guatemala called Small Change 4 Big Change. Small Change 4 Big Change existed to help children learn skills in English, agriculture, horticulture and develop a greater understanding of their Ancient Mayan culture. As a producer working on that production I found out how to utilise my resources, how to communicate with the workers, volunteers and children at Small Change 4 Big Change to uncover their stories. Small Change 4 Big Change were hoping to spread the word about their inspirational work in the community to encourage new volunteers to join up, government and non-governmental funding to help them expand and cater for rising numbers of children at the orphanage and to increase donations to keep their facilities and resources up to date. Therefore creating a video (micro-documentary) on their website really helped people understand what they did as a non-for-profit organisation and made their approach to the world more down to earth and easier to understand for western audiences. I could only assume that creating an interactive sequence of short cover stories of inspirational adults or children on a non-for-profit organisations website can help promote their great work and encourage others to support their previously unsung work. In my Documentary as Action introduction I talk about the communities unsung heroes. I believe there are many great faces behind a name of a non-for-profit organisation, people who have worked hard, or have over come adversity to be where they are today. These are the true unsung heroes of the community, their voices should be heard and their accomplishments should be shared to inspire and encourage others to follow in their footsteps. I hope as an aspiring documentary maker I can take the right action in the community to unearth these inspiring people in our own communities so they too can be the faces of these non-for-profit organisations and with their positive image promoting, encouraging and expanding the scope of these non-for-profit organisations. Through Documentary as Action I believe every talented student can achieve this for their respective non-for-profit organisation.

Michael Serpell