Junior Project: The Process
Every year, my school mandates a junior year project. The only qualifications are a necessary faculty advisor, and minimum number of hours. My initial exhilaration at the prospect of complete freedom to pursue my interests quickly faded when I realized I had to pick one, or so I thought. I wanted to do a social science experiment, conduct interviews, create a collection of compelling photographs, and investigate the inner workings of the American beauty standard (all during the confines of a Covid year). Somehow, between the months of November to March, I managed to combine all of these passions into one singular project: "the beauty conversation". The first phase of my project involved creating a scientific style survey, using the snowball sampling method (with a lot of help from social media) To reach over 100 girls in the New Jersey area. I assured participants that their answers would be anonymous if used in the project, and I was shocked by their honesty in answering deeply personal questions to a complete stranger. My heart broke with the girls who claimed they couldn't look into the mirror without recoiling, and as one girl heart wrenchingly sent me a voice memo, "I just feel like a monster sometimes".
Step two was the interviews. I single-handedly constructed a mini recording studio in my garage in the middle of freezing cold November. A singular heater stood at the mouth of the open door as I tried to make ideal lighting settings mesh with Covid regulations. I had hand-picked a group of friends and acquaintances who I thought represented a diverse range of views, largely from their drastically different worldviews and cultures. I nervously lobbed questions such as "does objective beauty exist?", to "are you scared of aging" at fellow 17-year-olds, and was astonished by the raw honesty, authenticity, and passion that each of them exhibited.
Step three was the self-portraits. Previously, I planned to get models, but with such provocative and personal photos, I decided there would be solidified authenticity in my representation and reflection of the topics through a visual art form. In one of the photos, I projected the most poignant survey responses about the girls deepest insecurities all over my silhouette, and tinted it to an ominous-blood red color.
Step four was the last and hardest step: editing. I had hundreds of survey responses, hours of raw footage and its separate audio component, and one week to put everything together into a finished product. Being optimistically ambitious, I downloaded Final Cut Pro assuming it was a straightforward application, but one look at the various boxes and modules sent me straight to crash course Final Cut Pro tutorials on YouTube for an entire day. Splicing clips, alternating the different camera angle clips, and weaving together a comprehensive conversation from different interviews became my primary occupation that week.
