Paige Dahlke CIS Capstone Writeup Advisor, Linda Mokdad May 6th, 2018 The Making of Starting the Conversation ​

While the production process for my documentary began this semester, the preparation for production started in the beginning of the academic year. To prepare for the semester ahead, the first thing I had to do was decide on an idea for a documentary. As I discussed in my presentation, the idea I came up with during fall semester wasn’t what I ultimately filmed. There was one concept that stayed consistent during the process, however, and that was working with a college student to show their passions for the environment. The focus and number of subjects changed, but that underlying concept remained. In the end, the focus of my film was on Julie

Johnson's passion for learning and teaching about and the importance of education in starting the conversation. The research I conducted had a large impact on the direction I took my film. During my presentation, I spoke in depth about the production process, but I would like to take the time now to clarify the reasoning and inspiration behind my work.

I conducted a majority of my research during this time to help me prepare for what was to come. I delved into what it meant to make an environmental film and the different avenues I could take with it. I wanted it to coincide with ecocinema, which Duvall says “strives to inspire personal and political action on the part of the viewers, stimulating our thinking so as to bring about concrete changes in the choices we make” (26). Going into making this project, I assumed the expository mode was the obvious choice to do this, as a majority of the ecodocs I had seen were done in this documentary mode. As it turns out, my film ended up being in the participatory mode. Before I started production, I took some time to view and research popular eco-documentaries. A commonality between films like An Inconvenient Truth, The Cove, and ​ ​ ​ ​ others, is their argumentative nature (Hughes 117). Both focus on what they want the audience to leave with rather than the context of the events discussed (117). A successful documentary with an argumentative focus was ’s An Inconvenient Truth. ’s missions are ​ ​ to convince the world that exists and that we are responsible for it and are able to help mitigate it. In my documentary, my final argument became that anyone should feel comfortable speaking about the environment and climate change.

What makes documentaries so effective is their method of communication. Their desire for change is persuaded by means of “emotionally and intellectually charged words, images, and sounds” (118), tactics which are unable to be used in scientific journals and reports. Films are also easier for the public to digest and understand; they transform scientific evidence into a visually interesting, comprehensible format. An Inconvenient Truth reached millions of people, ​ and those who viewed it “appeared to have greater knowledge about the causes of global warming, felt more concerned about the environment, and expressed increased willingness to reduce greenhouse gases” (Janpol and Dilts). Although the effect has been observed to be temporary, change is happening because of it. It is my hope that the documentary that I create will enlighten people that they too can cause change just by starting a conversation and talking about .

My main goal with this endeavor was to create a film that didn’t seem like an ad campaign for a university (as the documentary I made last year seemed to be); I wanted it to be personal, collaborate process, that engages the community and inspires people to become an advocate for the environment. This is what ultimately turned my film into a participatory film rather than expository. Since my film focuses on direct activism and the community, it corresponds with this technique as it presents “to audiences inside the perspectives on methods and tactics utilized by activists, sometimes even offering possible strategies might choose to employ themselves” (Duvall 257). Starting the Conversation focuses on a student environmental ​ advocate/activist and stresses that her tactics to raise awareness can be performed by anyone.

Rather than focusing on the negative aspects of the issue at hand, it imagines the “possibility for constructive change” (257).

Aside from telling viewers that Julie is an advocate, I also wanted to explore why she became that way. I considered two possibilities: childhood and university. College campuses offer a central area in which groups of students have the ability to discuss, reflect on, and critique the environment around them and issues pertaining to sustainability (1468). Students in China found college to be a place to gain environmental knowledge and become encouraged to participate in environmental action (Danqing et al). For my documentary, one of my ideas was to build on the idea that St. Olaf offers a space like this and that it encourages students to become informed and support environmental issues. This corresponds with Julie because she said that she started becoming passionate about environmental issues when she took a course in university.

However, the desire to be sustainable doesn’t always begin at university; sometimes it is fostered by a student’s family life and how they were raised (Tuncer et al). Because there are many individual factors that go into why a person chooses to be sustainable, I believe that going into why Julie chose to do so would connect with people on a personal level and make her actions seem more achievable. The research I conducted before, during, and after the production process ultimately helped me realize what I truly wanted from my documentary. I went into it with a broad, unfocused topic, thinking that I’d make a talking head documentary with facts that would encourage change, and I left with a personal, interactive film that still advocated for change, but with a much more focused theme. My documentary took many twists and turns, but as Duvall says, “documentaries are risky adventures, since you never know what you’re going to get until you get it” (293). Having finished the film, I can say that I am very proud of all of the twists and turns this process has taken me on and that I look forward to continue moving forward in documentary filmmaking.

Bibliography

Duvall, John A. The Environmental Documentary : Cinema Activism in the Twenty-First ​ Century. Bloomsbury Academic, an Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc, 2017. ​

Hughes, Helen. Green Documentary : Environmental Documentary In The Twenty-First ​ Century. n.p.: Bristol, UK : Intellect, 2014., 2014. ​

Li, Danqing, and Jin Chen. "Significant Life Experiences On The Formation Of

Environmental Action Among Chinese College Students." Environmental

Education Research 21.4 (2015): 612-630.

Tuncer, Gaye, and Elvan Sahin. "Message In A Bottle: What Shapes University Students’

Understanding Of Sustainability?." International Research In Geographical &

Environmental Education 25.4 (2016): 294-308.

Janpol, Henry L., and Rachel Dilts. "Does Viewing Documentary Films Affect

Environmental Perceptions And Behaviors?." Applied Environmental Education

And Communication 15.1 (2016): 90-98.