This week I spend a lot of my time trying to figure out what to do with the material I had from my trip to Harlan. I wanted to go through all of the incredible material which Elisabeth had saved that amounted to hours and hours of videos. At first I thought the best way to go through the video would be to create transcripts as I go. This was incredibly tedious and I was feeling unproductive and not inspired creatively.

During my Wednesday cohort meaning Joan suggested rather than try to transcribe I just sit down and watch all of the videos. This was how I spent many of my hours this week. In doing this I was able to start getting and idea of possible characters and settings however I still feel like I am lacking a clear and cohesive idea of story. My next steps that I hope will help with this are going through my notes and free-writing about my memories that weren’t caught on camera. I am also planning to talk with Joan’s husband Andrew about editing (which I have learned is central to the Documentary theater process) and with Allison to talk about the junior trip in general.