My experience in doing this documentary was somewhat difficult.

I am not an

experienced documentarian and therefore encountered some challenges during the creation of my

persuasive documentary. One of those challenges included using other video clips within my

video. I have created a PSA video before but the requirement for the time limit was not as

extensive as this assignment, so I had to add more information. I believed other clips would

enhance my video and decided to include them but ended up having a lot of trouble with the

technology part. At first I was having trouble downloading the clips and adding them to my

video because my computer couldn’t read the files, so I had to download the clips using various

different platforms. Another issue was getting the clips to play at full length. They kept getting

cut off and not playing fully, which took me several days to figure out. I addressed these two

issues by simply searching the internet for solutions, figuring out how the video editor app

works, and also by asking the technology center for assistance. One of the bigger challenges I

encountered was deciding what information to include and where. Since we only had a certain

time frame, it was hard to decide what information was the most important to include and in

what order, for the documentary to be effective. Although I struggled to decide what to add and

where, I figured it out by going back to my sources and depicting what information people are

most likely to pay attention to and understand its relevance.

Some aspects of the video took longer than others to complete. One of those was finding

effective background images related to the topic that could have an impact on the audience when

viewed. Since my topic was a more serious and somewhat sad one, I had to find images that

corresponded with that and it took time to come across an image that could fully depict my topic

and evoke pathos at the same time. It took a lot of searching through internet sites to find them.

Another aspect that required a lot of time to complete was dividing the other video clips into
smaller segments to add in my video. It took up most of my time when developing my video

because I had to get rid of parts of the clips that weren’t necessary and then trim those clips into

small segments that I could insert throughout my video to make it more suitable, rather than just

having slides with words.

Overall, I consider my documentary to be very persuasive. I added footage and

information that points to an important issue which I believe people are sympathetic to. Not only

that, but the images and background used were chosen to evoke pathos and persuade the

audience to want to do something about the topic being discussed. In addition, the call to action

was fairly reasonable for people to partake in which makes it easy for the audience to not only be

persuaded but also motivated to do something for a change and realize that the topic is of

extreme importance.