Documentary Proposal

WRD111 Proposal

Taylor Bucholtz

Kristina Watkins

Shawnee Sparrow

Kimberlyn Paschke

Evan Mefford

For our final project in this class we chose to focus our documentary on Resident Advisors (RA). More specifically, we are focusing our main attention on the extreme situations you may not realize Resident Advisors have to deal with. The purpose of this documentary will be to inform students and potential Resident Advisors the emotional stability required in order to become an RA in the most extreme and scary situations. Everyone knows that Resident Advisors have to deal with stupid drunk college students quite often, although the more dangerous and life-threatening situations that these RAs may have to deal with sometimes slip our minds. The issue is, is that when Resident Advisors have to deal with these threatening situations regarding students, are they qualified to deal with these problems in an effective and supportive way? Moreover, the audience this documentary will be focusing in on is Owen, University of Kentucky students, and potential Resident Advisors.

While finding out the intimate details of the most extreme situations may be difficult, we have assigned specific positions for this project to come together perfectly. The people that will be filming and interviewing RAs will consist of everyone. Each one of us will do our best to depict the intriguing stories and the struggles the Resident Advisors had to experience while dealing with these situations. Everyone will also take part in the editing process, although we do not know the specifics of the jobs yet. We have not decided what or if we want to do narration. The decisions on the narration will happen after we receive everyone’s films and the content within the recordings.

While discussing the filming details, we have talked about the tone and style being more serious. Depending on the stories we receive, the tone and style will definitely change, although we will have to deal with that on the scene. Assuming that the stories the Resident Advisors will tell us are more serious and will have a sadder moral to the story, it is a good guess that throughout our documentary the tone will be in the more serious direction. The group has decided that before each interview we will take an establishing shot of where this interview and section of the documentary will be shot. Assuming that the interviews will be taking place where the stories the RAs will tell us took place, the establishing shots will be of the dorms, resident complexes, or dorm rooms. Aside from these establishing shots, tracking shots of the Resident Advisor that is being interviewed will be included. Our group also had the idea of recording some of the clips of the documentary when the RA is on the clock doing their rounds. This will give a little incite of the “a day in the life of a Resident Advisor.”

            The organization of the documentary will start of with typical things a Resident Advisor does such as dealing with drunken residents and roommate drama. Eventually, as the interview and filming goes on, there will be a transition into more extreme cases the RA has had to deal with or has heard of other advisors having to deal with. These extreme cases can include suicide, attempted suicide, rape, alcohol poisoning, cases of serious alcoholism, etc. We are then going to focus of the main question which is – did the Resident Advisor feel like they were qualified enough to deal with such extreme cases.

            The plan for the way that the documentary will be put together is still kind of up for discussion. Depending on the shots we get, good or bad, we will have to do whatever works. Audio may include voiceovers, music, interviews, background noise, sound effects, and anything else necessary for this documentary to be “A” worthy. Along with the audio in this film, filters and effects will be an important aspect. We were thinking that because the documentary will possess a more serious tone, a darker setting would be most appropriate. Although, the documentary will not get too serious until the middle, therefore, the beginning will have a natural look. We will also decide more of the effects when we have all of the filmed and gather all of the stories.

            Overall, the content of this documentary will have many interviews. Through these interviews, personal experiences from the stories will be the main focus and we will strive to have these stories emotionally affect the audience as much as possible.  Some of the questions we will all be asking the Resident Advisor each of us interview are as followed:

How long have you been an RA?

What does a CA do and how is that like an RA?

What is the scariest/most exciting thing you’ve had to deal with?

Did you have to take a class to help prepare you for serious situations?

When dealing with serious cases, did you feel qualified? If so, how did you handle the situation? And if not, did you feel like you could have ever been prepared to handle these extreme situations?

Did it affect your life? How?

The timeline and schedule we are going to try as best as we can to stick to is:

March 30^th – proposal typed and posted

April 1-7^th – as much filming and interviewing done as possible for first cut

April 9^th – first cut

April 10-14^th – film extra shots if necessary/begin to cut clips and organize

April 15-21^st – continue putting the documentary together: WORK AS A TEAM TO MAKE IT

            April 23^rd – project due