After almost a year of work, my documentary is finally complete. At the end of the semester our class held a screening to which anyone from the community could come. It was nerve-wracking to see my film up on the big screen, but the applause at the end of it really gave me an incredible high.
Several people told me they would start thinking more about where their food came from. I’ve said from the beginning of the project that if just one person stopped to think about the source of their food, the project was worth it.

Click here to see the film.

The photo above is courtesy Presley Adamson.

In the end I walked away with so much more. On the surface, I created – almost entirely by myself – a short film, one of my biggest accomplishments. It’s just under 7 minutes, but I do not even want to recount the painstaking process that I went through to get it done. I lost count of how many nights I stayed up until 5 a.m. in the edit bay.

But I also learned more about film, practiced new ways in which to craft a story and proved to myself that I could complete such a massive project.

And now it’s done and online. Watch it below:

I tracked my progress here, on The Cost of Food Blog.

Photos are courtesy my friend Raisa C.

And the empty office after we all left that day.

Photos are courtesy Emre Kelly.

How Social Media Has Transformed the Media Landscape
When Grady Burnett joined Facebook in 2009, the Web site had 150 million users. Burnett, director of Global Online Sales and Operations for Facebook, said the site now has 400 million users, many of whom visit daily.
Published: Monday, April 12, 2010 by the Newspaper Association of America

Catching Youth: Their Eyes and Their Attention
Michael Smith, executive director of the Media Management Center (MMC) at Northwestern University, doesn’t advocate changing news Web sites to attract younger readers. Instead, he thinks news organizations should create new home pages altogether.
Published: Monday, April 12, 2010 by the Newspaper Association of America

Click the titles to read the complete articles.

I appreciated spending the day learning about the business perspective of the industry, but I’d much rather stay on the editorial side.
What was most interesting about the conference was that I was essentially listening to the speakers talk about me – that is, how to engage youth on their individual websites. I walked away with a little more knowledge about marketing tactics that are used to attract my attention, as well as some of my own ideas I can implement once I have a full-time job.