Fear. Hope. Excitement. Afraid. There were the words Assignment 2 had to revolve around. I was extremely excited to go out and film. I feel like I work better when there is some sort of structure and instruction as to what a project has to be about. For example on assignment 1, I had to get specific shots, but what I shot was completely up to me. So I loved the fact that I had something to go off of. Now, deciding what to shoot was hard. At first I wanted to film my best friend, Carolina, going to an animal shelter and adopting a dog, because I figured there is a lot of emotions happening. But I forgot my camera, so that topic was a no go. A day later, I got invited to a march on the quad to protest the Muslim Immigration Ban and I knew that was the topic I had to film.
When I got to the march I just started taking pictures of every one in the crowd. It was said there was almost 400 protestors at the march. I then started taking pictures of signs that people made. There was so many signs and they were all equally invoking emotions. From signs that said, “Melania is an immigrant too” to “White Apathy Kills,” emotions were running high and I wanted to capture that.
When people started chanting, “No hate no fear, refugees are welcome here,” I knew I had to start filming and not just take photo’s. So I added that audio to my project. My favorite audio that I got was a speech from a muslim immigrant student saying, “and I refuse to be bullied into leaving this country.” Those were extremely important words and everyone in the crowd was cheering strongly.
One of the hardest things about shooting this event was trying to get pictures while everyone was marching. They moved really fast and I 'wanted to make sure my shots were blurry. Most of my shots came out clear though. I took over 100 pictures and it was extremely hard to narrow it down to just 12. I decided to use the pictures that made me feel the 4 emotions: fear, afraid, hopeful, and excitement.
I am extremely happy with this project and it was a lot of fun shooting this event and learning about it. I felt all 4 of the emotions and I hope you will too.
You can see my video of images from the protest here!