GrantNelsonHawkenProjects2023

This week has continued to be much more fun and collaborative than my previous week. Having people around my age, and even just willing to talk to me casually in conversation, has lifted a sort of burden that I didn't know had been weighing me down. Unfortunately, I learned they will only be interning here for one week, so I will have to be alone for one more. This week we have started to work on a lot more cool things. One of the main ones we have been working on all week is our social media video that demonstrates what work we have been doing here at the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival this week to their audience. This was important because since the festival isn't closed yet, there has been a lull in the social media content, which we were tasked with filling. We spent time filming the beautiful landscape of Chagrin Falls for b roll, talked about our tasks day to day, and essentially demonstrated to the CDFFs audience what was going on behind the scenes. We also made socia...

  This week so far has been very different from my first one. Firstly I have now been working with 3 other interns, Skylar, Mikey, and Bobby, who are from Kenston. This has been a much-appreciated change of pace from working pretty much completely independently last week. I have already started to lean into a lot more collaborative work, although it is still primarily individual from a different perspective. I mentioned that I had handed out save-the-date cards for the festival to shops and people all around the Chagrin Falls area, and this week, we both hit the spots that I had previously been unable to hit and tracked back to a couple of spots to make sure they had not run out already. We, as a group also had to finish the Online Calendar Spreadsheet in a lot more depth and struggled through that project at times. Engelina took us all on a tour of all of the venues that the CDFF uses during the festival (Many of which we had already given save-the-date cards to unknowingly). It w...

  My week is continuing to be fruitful, even if it is getting a tad lonely at times. I am mostly working independently, and while I do not necessarily dislike it, I feel that I thrive best in collaborative spaces. Today, a construction builder came over to scout out the building, which was a great opportunity for me to get a mini tour of the premises. I got to see the basement with all of the storage and the blueprints for the building they plan to renovate directly below them, which they plan to do to have both the downstairs/next door public building and their upstairs/next door office. I did get the cool job of being a film screener for their pool of applicants. Obviously, I will not be the only person to review each documentary, but they need input to parse through the 600 applicants they get every year. I was really surprised at the insanely high quality of these submissions. Because CDFF can only select about 80-90 documentaries, they are very selective in quality. One of my ...

  How were you feeling on the first day of the project? What were your initial expectations?   What were your hopes and fears? Who are the people with whom you are currently working? Describe your colleagues and the organization for which you are working.  What have you learned so far about the people at your project and the expectations of your project? On the first day, I was excited to work with film and cinema and came in anxiously interested. However, I initally struggled to find the door to even get in. The Chagrin Documentary Film Festival is based in Chagrin Falls, but their office is placed above the stores. To get into the building, you have to access a narrow door squeezed between the ground-level stores that lead to a steep staircase up to the office. When I first came in, I was met by Engelina Koberna, the Technical and Creative Director. She essentially is the main person who dictates my schedule day to day and helps me to collaborate with other members of t...

  I was inspired to create this project because I have taken a film class before, and during that time, I found myself being more engaged than I expected and found the field to be very interesting. I had so much fun making movies all day with my friends and found a way to express myself much more freely than I had ever been able to before. Therefore, I am excited at the opportunity to work with the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival to get more involved in this side of the film. My work will not be focused as much on making the films as much as facilitating the space for them to be implemented, and I still have a lot of side projects that are more adjacently related to making films, such as social media videos, graphic design, editing, and programming. The CDFF Headquarters are in Chagrin Falls, and I will be going there every weekday to work with Ms. Engelina Koberna and the rest of the CDFF team from 10 to 3 or 4, depending on my extracurriculars that day.