For this assignment, we were required to create a 2 to 3 minute documentary based on someone important. I took this opportunity to expand on my western character, Riza. As someone who loves to create stories, I found it fascinating to create a documentary around a character I created.

To create this video, I first scripted what I wanted to say. I then marked the script where I wanted photos to change. To gather the photos, I searched “Old West” on Google Images and created the documentary. This was the only way for me to do this because 1. I don’t live in the old west so do not have the materials to create the theme and 2. Refer to 1. I then opened iMovie and matched the images to my voice over. Finally, I edited everything and uploaded it to youtube.

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This feature presentation is brought to you by Tueros Inc. “Leading the Future in Education.”

This is the story of Riza McHale, an immigrant from Guatemala, who ventured into the United States for a better future and life. When Riza was just 10 years old, her mother had taught and stressed the importance of working hard in life. Riza was taught that through hard work and dedication, anything was possible.

At the young age of 17, Riza lost her mother and siblings in a tragic house fire. This is when her drunk father, apologized for the years of not being there and supported her trip into the United States. When she first arrived to the US, she had nothing but the clothes on her back. A young man known as, Tate McHale, introduced himself at the docking station as a farmer. He told her that he owned a business in winery and came out to the dock every week to deliver fresh boxes of McHale wine.

Shortly after meeting, Riza and Tate fell in love and at the age of 19, Riza was married. By age 20, Tate had convinced Riza into opening a saloon with him. Her handwork, and Tate’s skill at wine making made the perfect combo for two saloon owners. Within two years, their saloon became the town’s hangout spot.

Though Tate and Riza never had children, their hearts were always focused on their nieces and nephews when not at work. They also adopted a dog, and named him Ringo. The McHales were the talk of the town, they were always there for a conversation or a shoulder to cry on.

Sadly, this came to an end when Tate was drafted into the army and was shot in battle. Riza continued to care for the saloon but the work of two built on her, and shortly after she sold it to a close friend. In 1905, Riza died in her home because of cancer.

The legacy of Riza and Tate still continues to live in the town of Tumbleweed and their stories can be heard from every corner.

This is the assignment that I was most worried about throughout the week because the assignment was to create a 2-3 minute mini-documentary about someone fascinating who is not a best friend or close family member. This made me the most worried because my 2 best friends and parents are the only people which I spend the most time with to be able to create a mini-documentary. Add in the fact that I just moved into a new house and don’t know any of the neighbors, and you can figure out why I would have such a hard time. This problem left me with the only option of having to make a mini-documentary about my created character.

All I had to figure out was “How can I make a documentary without any real people?”. This was a question I couldn’t figure out for a couple days until I thought about not directly showing any pictures of my created character. So I decided to make my mini-documentary a compilation of pictures of the western setting and dark/covered silhouettes that can’t be seen clearly combined with title cards for questions and audio of me answering the questions as the created character Buck Smith.

To accomplish this goal, I started googling and compiling a collection of western cowboy silhouette images that could be used for at least 6-10 seconds each. Then I imported all the images I felt that were needed for the compilation into iMovie. After I had done that, I wrote down which questions would be asked and answered during the mini-documentary; this was then used for the organization of the images in the documentary. I placed title cards with the questions before all images related to that certain question and then calculated the time between each title card. This way I could create audio files to fill in each section of images to provide audio as background to the images.

After I had finished importing and organizing the audio files in each specific section, I still didn’t feel like I had done enough. So I found background music to play in the background of the title cards. I went through my iTunes until I found the song by Jason Aldean “Tonight Looks Good on You” which had an instrumental intro that could be used as background music. At that point, I imported the song into iMovie and trimmed it to include only the beginning intro. I then copied and pasted the trimmed background music into all the title cards for consistently. 

As for the answers to the questions I answered the questions of “Who Are You…Where Are You From…Describe Yourself” and then changed the direction of the mini-documentary by talking about the incident that has occurred this semester of Mr. Blackhawk being shot by Crazy Joe Shooter and Buck’s pursuit of him.

Overall, the worst part of the assignment was the actual thought process of coming up with what and how I could complete the assignment. Then when I finally figured out what and how I would complete the assignment, I felt more relaxed in my thought process and creation of this mini-documentary.

I completed the four and a half star Mini Documentary.

I applied this assignment to my character, creating a mini synopsis of the first third of his life.

I utilized Audacity and iMovie to create this movie.

With Audacity I recorded my dialogue and applied a song in the background. I imported the mp3 created with Audacity into iMovie. I explored the internet for images which best represented my characters backstory and imported them into iMovie as well. While in the movie editing application, I edited both the pictures and sound to match up with each other. The finished product is seen above.

The hardest part of this assignment was finding images that best represented my character and his story. Images of western cattle ranchers in the 1800s are few and far between which is due to the fact that photographs were expensive and rare for most people. So only a couple photographs would exist per person. I didn’t realize this fact when planning out the video or recording the audio.

For my last assignment of the week I did the 4 1/2 star mini-documentary on my character Bob. You can find all of the info on Bob here. For this assignment you had to create a 2-3 minute documentary. I did it on my character because I needed one more star to fulfill my 10 for my character (My weekly total was 18 overall). For this assignment I used iMovie, Freesound.org and google for pictures. I simply just went through like you would with any documentary, starting from his childhood to where he is now. Freesound.org allowed me to add bird, chicken, cow, and horse sounds to add to my documentary. I am happy how it turned out seeing as it is my first time doing a documentary!

This week I was to complete this mini documentary assignment . I chose to create this documentary about my western character, Talie. You can read more about Talie here. I focused on certain aspects of Talie’s life such as her job, where she lives, what she finds important, and her personality. As such, in this documentary Talie tells the listener about where she lives and what she generally does in a typical day. Talie lives in the small town of Tombstone, Arizona and works on her ranch growing crops and taking care of all of the farm animals. She sells the items she produces on her farm to the local town store. Even though her parents and brothers moved away she is never alone, while she does her work on the ranch and goes into town her trusty steed, Smarty is always by her side. After her daily work is done for the day she heads down to the town saloon to meet and relax with friends. Talie really values her little town, her friends, and family so she keeps an eye out for trouble and tries her hardest to protect what is important to her.

I used Windows Movie Maker to create this documentary video. It shows clips of where Talie lives such as her ranch, her little western town, and certain elements in her life she finds important. I used images within the video that I felt would fit Talie’s appearance and personality. I recorded myself talking as if I were Talie and added sounds from Freesounds.org and imported the recording into the video. I used text, special transitions, and other features to make the video more interesting and dynamic. Lastly, I added a credits slide providing the details of where I obtained some of the images. Then I uploaded it to youtube so I could embed it within this post. The assignment was worth 4 and a half stars contributing to this week’s 16 star requirement.