Jamie Polson Capstone

Posted by Jamie Polson in Capstone · Pahomov · Wed on

Here is the link to my video:  
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AIJCnfi3cw

For my Capstone I decided to create a documentary for my Unitarian Universalist church.  It will have its 200th anniversary and I wanted the church to have some kind of documentation of it's past present and future and what their goals are as a congregation.  

I feel like I have learned a lot while doing this project.  For starters I feel like I have become a better listener.  Since it was a documentary and you always want to make sure that you have clear audio it meant that I could not vocalize when I wanted to react to things that people said for instance if I strongly agreed with it etc.  Another thing that I think I learned was how to make people feel comfortable when being interviewed.  Not everyone is used to being on camera and some people need a little time to fully open up on camera so you want to make sure that you are doing everything you can to make them feel very comfortable and safe.  What I would do before the interview is just ask them how they are doing and just have a casual conversation, but when the interview started I would look them in the eyes when they were talking and tried to be very aware of my body language.  If I ever noticed that I was crossing my arms or had them on my hips I would just put them by my side because folded arms conveys a message of judgment sometimes and can make people feel uncomfortable.
Some challenges I faced was dealing with scheduling.  I am a very busy person and am involved with a lot of things that unfortunately meet on the weekend.  Early on I was able to get 2-3 interviews almost every Sunday but when it started being warmer out things got harder.  I am on SLAs Ultimate Frisbee team which frequently have two day tournaments on the weekend and I also have a lot of choir practices on the weekend as well.  Since I have these conflicts it meant that I could not go to church on Sunday to interview more people so I would have to pick days when I didn't have conflicts and the person I wanted to interview didn't have conflicts.
Another problem I faced was at the very end with exporting the video.  In retrospect I should have tried to finish the editing a lot sooner so that I could have dealt with the issue sooner, but when I tried to export it, I kept getting these messages on my screen saying that there was some problem.  I would try to fix it and tried to export it again several times (which took about an hour each time) but I kept getting these messages.  So I brought it to school to talk to Ms. Walker-Roberts but I was still having the issues even after talking to her.  This caused LOTS of stress for me since it was the day before it was supposed to be due.  Finally I figured out that it was a space issue and that I needed to export it onto an external hard drive that had enough space to store it, so I tried that and it worked!!

All in all this whole process has been very fun and I have learned a lot in the process.  I have had a great time interviewing people getting to know their perspective and where they are coming from a little better.


Annotated bibliography:

  1. http://www.uurestoration.us/

Jane L. Hain

The Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration

4/28/98

My capstone project is that I am going to create a documentary for my church which is called the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration in Mt. Airy.  I have been a member since around 2013 but have been attending my entire life so it means a lot to me. This source is the home page of the Official churches website.  It talks about who they are which I can use in my documentary in a voice over section and I might even quote them on some of their information. It talks about how diverse and welcoming they are which I think is crucial for a church no matter its beliefs if they want to get new members.  This site is credible because it is the official website for the entire church and so whatever is put on the website has to pass through a couple rounds of editing by members of the church to make sure that they actually want that on their website.

  1. http://www.uurestoration.us/history.php

Jane L. Hain  The Church of the Restoration since - 1793

4/28/98

Copyright 2016

I am going to use this site to help inform me of what my churches history is.  I go to the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration in Mt. Airy and have been going my whole life.  I know the basics of its history but I do not know specifics and so I am going to use this site to gain knowledge of its history so that I can put it in my documentary and let the general public know about it as well.


  1. http://www.uurestoration.us/mission.php

Jane L. Hain

Our Mission

Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration

4/28/98


  1. Linda Hansell

Linda Hansell is a member of the church who I have already interviewed and she is a very active member of the community.  She is Worship Associate Leader so she is in charge of all the other worship Associates and makes sure that they do what they are supposed to and once a month she leads a church service.  That is why she is credible because she has expirience in the church and knows about it and knows where she wants it to go in the future. In our interview she talked about how she does not think that the name of the church best describes what it is all about and that we need to change the name to something less christian sounding because we are not a christian church.

  1. UUCR book

This book goes into great detail about the history of Restoration it talks about the church all the way back in the 1700’s when it was built and established.  It also talks about the couple times when it had to move one time because of a fire. It talks about the architecture and why it was built the way it was. It is trustworthy because

  1. https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles

Unitarian Universalist Association

The Seven Principles:

Unitarian Universalist Association

1996

This source is trustworthy because it is from the UUA which stands for the (Unitarian Universalist Association) so it is very formal and they are the ones that decide things for the greater UU community so they have a huge impact on my church and are the reason that my church exists basically.  Without the principals of UUism I probably would not go to church. The website talks about what UU’s think about the world and about other people that we believe in the beauty and dignity of everybody and respect people no matter whether we agree with them or not. It talks about the interconnected web of life that we are all apart of which basically means that we are all connected to each other and the earth no matter our species or race or gender.


  1. https://www.filmmakingstuff.com/12-tips-how-to-make-a-documentary/

Bru Baker

12 Steps On How To Make A Documentary

Filmmaking Stuff

March 13th, 2017

This website talks about the 12 steps that are needed to make a good documentary.  Some of those steps include: Make a trailer, think of the end first, and use your own music.  I think those are very goods tips that I will strongly consider when in the editing phase of the documentary.  I will also try and write my own music for it as well to add some flavor to the final version. This site is credible because the author (Bru Baker) has won many awards in creating documentaries so it is evident that these techniques work at least for her.

      8. Tim Styer

Tim Styer is a member of the church and is very involved.  He is the moderator which means that he organizes meeting and oversees all the other people who work for the church which is a large responsibility.  He is credible because he has been involved with the church for many years.

      9. Jane Hulting

Jane Hulting is another member of the church and is in charge of coordinating music at the church.  She leads choir practices almost every Thursday evening and Sunday mornings right before church starts.  In the winter around Christmas time she also leads a group called the restoration ringers and they play hand bells.  They rehearse several times a week and perform 3-4 times a year. Another thing that Jane does is that she leads Yoga class almost every week and has several people participate in that many of which are church goers.  Jane is trustworthy because she is very involved in the church and has been attending for around 20+ years.


     10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUsdwDgPqxs

This video talks about how to make a documentary.  It talks about the necessary things that you need to do in order to make a successful documentary.  It talks about getting a lot of extra footage since you never know what you might need and don’t want to have to film a lot of stuff at the last minute.  It is credible because it is on Expert Villages YouTube channel and their whole shtick. The whole point of their YouTube channel is to get experts who know a lot about their topic and get them to share information and tutorials on YouTube so that other people can be as good as them at that thing.


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