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Critical Reflection: "Part-Time, Full-Time Student"
“Part-Time, Full-Time Student” is a documentary I made with a group that captures the hardships of being a full-time high school student whilst having a part-time job. This essentially speaks out for those who lack time to do much for themselves as they struggle between the imbalance of both school and work.
The documentary aims for a target audience that wishes it could relate to, educate, and even rival ideas that may circle in the mouths of many. This includes other students who may struggle with being a full-time student while having to balance (several) extracurriculars or outside activities unrelated to school yet equally as crucial to them, people– including students, teachers, and parents– who may not have had the same struggles, who may not have understood how the lack of time due to school and work affect a student’s lifestyle before. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 55% of young people aged 16 through 24 are employed. Though these statistics include ages that surpass the years of high school, those particular people likely go to college. Both high school and college students have to balance between school life and work life, which may broaden the interest of the target audience that we look to relate to beyond high school students.
Because of our constantly changing society, many different expectations of students are changing alongside this moving society. Requirements for certain programs that several high school students rely on to pay for their future education– which in recent years, has been increasing quite dramatically– like the Bright Futures program, which recently also released higher minimum test scores for eligibility (from an SAT score of 1290 in 2017 to 1340 as of now), which has put a major toll on many students, especially those with minimal time to study. Part-time jobs that students acquire may be for many different purposes, such as helping pay for bills in their household or saving money for their future education– which of course, could not be enough to pay for the average tuition of $10,662 per year in a public college according to Emma Kerr and Sarah Wood’s article, “See the Average College Tuition in 2023-2024”. Students may have part-time jobs to earn money merely for their own spending as well, which is no less work than those saving money.
Throughout the documentary, there were two particular documentaries that I used as a reference while editing. The first one: John Butler: A Short Documentary. This documentary was used as a reference to structure the interview audio. I would have refilmed our interview clips and audios if we had the chance to. I wished to capture an almost solemn tone as our subject is not particularly upbeat and happy. I tried to incorporate a sort of a pause in between and within questions– which I believe is more prominent in the first subject’s, Mia’s, section of the documentary, for example, timestamps 0:40-0:55 of the documentary.
I incorporated a bit of b-roll footage with its original, raw audio as a pause to make sure not too much information is delivered at once. I would refilm the interviews itself yet again though, as I wish to capture more variety of shots of the subject as they speak. Another documentary that was referenced was this: He Spent 40 Years Alone in the Woods, and Now Scientists Love Him | Short Film Showcase. I used this documentary to reference how to structure the b-roll. I only hoped that we would have compiled more b-roll to be able to portray our theme in a more eye-catching and interesting way. I would ensure in a future project that there would be an abundance of b-roll rather than just enough b-roll, which is especially evident throughout the entirety of the second subject’s, Sarah’s, portion. I also noticed that in both documentaries that I referenced, it included the shaky, handheld footage which allowed for a more organic look– which was not included in our documentary. This organic look tends to exist in many documentaries to allow the audience to feel more incorporated, though in our case, we did not include it.
Our documentary centers around two subjects who are high-school students with part-time jobs who struggle in this way, though it should have captured more of the ‘why’ aspect of the purpose of their part-time job to allow for the understanding of the changing expectations for students leading to part-time jobs which are just barely manageable alongside having to be a full-time student. Through these two subjects, we aimed to capture the essence of the struggles. With my part in the editing process, I made sure to allow the tone to work alongside the subjects words and feelings, using the proper low-beat music to creat a deeper, heavier feeling for the audience to exemplify the feeling of struggle. Supposedly, however, it is not preferred that it starts off that way. The best way that this could have been approached was to let the subjects lead on the tone, so the bias does not seem so forced upon the subject and audience.
Throughout this project, I have learned quite a lot from having to make my own documentary. The real "doing" of compiling the project is much more intricate than just observing them. I hope that I can incorporate this newly learned knowledge in future documentaries. I want to be able to engage my audience more with my product(s), which even after this, will still require much more research.
