Doco in a Day

A blog by Hayden Wessling

Midway through Term Two, myself and three other students, Manahali, Hatio, and Kyle, participated in an EREA fundraising initiative; Doco in a Day. Believe it or not, the name is a pretty good summary of the task - basically we had one school day to create an entire documentary from the ground up.

The theme for our documentary was ‘equal access to education’, a combination of Catholic Social Thought Principles, and a Untied Nations Sustainable Development Goal, to unite Catholic values with a global issue.

But how do you make a documentary in a day?

A lot of chaos, and a lot of teamwork. As part of the task, EREA gave us 18 gigabytes of raw footage. In these 18 gigabytes of footage, there were five case studies on five individuals in East Africa. Our first task was to choose one or two of these wonderful people to focus on for our documentary. Next, we had to plan, and look through all the video files, and plan out exactly what parts of which videos we wanted to use. And then the fun began. Editing, and a lot of it. As hard as the task was, I know whether it be mad dashes home to retrieve a drawing tablet in the middle of lunch break, arguments over the spelling of the word receive, or piles upon piles of exporting errors, we all walked away thinking what a fun and eye-opening experience this was.

Before our presentation of the documentary at assembly, I introduced Collins and Faith. Collins is a violinist, who has played for many orchestras in Nairobi and Kenya and has even played for Barack Obama. He spends his time teaching other kids in his community how to play instruments or repairing instruments in his spare time. Faith is an inspiration. Having struggled with the passing of her mother in her teen years, she learned how to bounce back with the help of EERUP (the equivalent of EREA). And now, she helps others and is a student counsellor at her school. What both Collins and Faith have in common – besides being incredible human beings – is the lack of support that they and their communities receive, and hopefully you can see that in the documentary. We’re well aware it’s not National Geographic level!

In the end, we chose Collins and Faith because of their similarity to so many of our students. So many of you have those niche and amazing talents like playing an instrument, and so many of you struggle at times – and that’s okay. One thing I took away from this experience was the number of ways that I could relate to those so far away. I know it might seem obvious in hindsight, but when someone talks about marginalized communities, do you think of musicians who can’t afford proper instruments? Do you think about someone starting a radio station to spread hope in a community that desperately needs it? – that was another of the 5 case studies. My point is, it really opened my eyes to how many different, unique, and absolutely wonderful people aren’t given a proper chance.

And so, I present to you a call to action, as Ms. Murphy and all my past English teachers have taught me every good speech ends with. This call to action is not boring and very sweet! On Tuesday 10 June the students are running a Krispy Kreme donut stall in conjunction with the Faith and Mission office. We are going to need some volunteers to help organize this event, so please email faithandmission@atc.qld.edu.au if you can assist.

For more information on this project check out the Edmund Rice Foundation page: Doco in a Day - Edmund Rice Foundation

Thank you.

Hayden, Manahali, Hatio and Kyle