Your Support Could Change a Life

On Saturday, December 1, 2012 at 11:30 a.m. in Westminster College's Mueller Theater in the McKelvey Campus Center, three senior broadcast communications students are sharing their senior capstone documentaries with the campus and community.

Three short films will be presented including a documentary which looks into the journey of ten children who survived European orphanages and have found a home in Raleigh, NC. 

The other capstones in the series are Hannah Paczkowski's project titled "Personalizing Homelessness"  which takes an inside look at a woman who, with her daughter, fought the hardships of homelessness and found a better life in the Interfaith Hospitality Network.

Adam Carswell's film "The Quest of Champions" highlights the Westminster Mens' 2012 Track and Field season.

Service Learning and What in the World this Documentary has to do with it

My focus for my Capstone actually started with service learning.  My friend, Leah, met the Boyd's while she was on Spring Break with a purpose in Raleigh, NC.  She called me up, told me about the family and the rest is history.

My documentary focuses around International Adoption and life for the family after the children are adoption.  In relation to service learning, it raises awareness of the hardships orphans in Eastern Europe face in the orphanages.  The children start off in not so healthy environments: being chained to cribs and staying in them for so long it deforms their bodies...

                                           
                                           
The children hardly receive enough nutrients to sustain themselves and in many cases, never see outside of the orphanage grounds. 

 

After spending a week with the Boyd's, I connected with them on such a close level and I feel like I am helping them personally when I inform others of the befits of adoption, as well as the horrors which go on in some Eastern Europe orphanages.

Love is Patient, Love is Kind

At the start of my documentary, I will use the voices of the six oldest children reciting 1 Corinthians, "Love is patient, love is kind" etc. and putting videos of children in the orphanages of the country's where the Boyd children are from.  I think that using their hopeful voices with the startling videos of the children still in orphanages will have a strong emotional impact on the audience. 

For the music, I don't want to use music very much in my documentary.  I think that the natural sound and the interviews of those who know the Boyd's best will make for the best sound.  For the parts where music is necessary, I plan on developing my own music in Garage Band.  I want to use something uplifting and inspirational for the opening and closing.

Below is another video I might use, if it fits, regarding what happens to orphans in Russia if they are forced to live on the streets.

My Little Pepper

Originally, I arrived at the Boyd residence with mental and written notes directed at the focused theme of how Mrs. Stephanie Boyd, the mother of the ten children, goes day in and day out taking care of them.  I was going to discuss with her things such as how she prepares a meal for a family of twelve, how she provides enough love for each of them, and how she and her husband, Warren, keep such a strong bond of marriage.

What I found when I arrived there was that the little girl, pictured below, was really just one of the children who would change everything which I had planned for prior to meeting this incredible crew.

Meet Summer. 

She was adopted in April from a depressed orphanage in Bulgaria.  She was biologically the age of five but developmentally she was about 18 months.  She wet the bed, could not talk, and seemed to be mentally pretty far behind.  She is missing her corpus callosum which allows communication between the right and left side of one's brain.  One of the issues which this directly affects in her life, which I witnessed personally, was that when she is upset, she needs to have someone or something take her mind off of her emotions or else she will never pass her mood.  What I witnessed was after her sister pinched her with her seat belt, she started crying.  I noticed that Stephanie instantly took over and got her mind on something else.  Stephanie explained that had she not done that, Summer would have continued to cry for hours.

Summer's story, just like each of the other nine children, is one of perseverance and strength.  Each of the children came to America developmentally far behind where they should be.  They have all over come so much more than teachers, neurologists, and other medical doctors ever thought they would.  These amazing children are really the focus and they each have an amazing story to tell.

Life Throws You Curves But You Learn to Swerve

Initially, the focus of my Capstone was how Stephanie Boyd, the children's mother, handles being a mother to ten children with disabilities on a day-to-day basis. 

After spending my first stint with the family in early July, I realized that the story was actually about how far the children have come since being adopted.  This required a change in everything I had initially prepared for my documentary.  However, I was very happy to see that in spending time with the family, a focus for my Capstone became so clear.

One of the Men Behind the Scenes

Dr. Corso is providing excellent help to me as I am in the production phase of my Capstone.  He even provided me a helpful portion of his doctoral dissertation to give me additional guidance on my Capstone.  I have always had a great deal of respect for Dr. Corso as a professor and that respect has certainly carried over to working with him for my senior project.

Dr. Corso will help me with my framing and producing of this Capstone for the rest of the semester.  Then, at the Capstone Showcase on the first weekend of December, he will be in attendance and provide me an overall grade afterwards.

Attempting to Spread the Word about International Adoption

        I plan on entering my documentary in the Spirit Quest Film Festival at Edinboro University and the Peace on Earth Film Festival at the Chicago Culture Center on March 7-10.  The reason for selecting the Spirit Quest Film Festival is that it is an opportunity for participants to showcase documentaries which highlight the human experience in everyday life.  This is a perfect opportunity because my documentary will showcase day-to-day life for the Boyd family.   

       I also plan on entering my documentary in the Peace on Earth Film Festival as that festival goal is to raise awareness of peace, nonviolence, social justice and an eco-balanced world.  My documentary will enlighten the audience on the horrors and injustices found in adoption agencies globally; it will also show how one family in particular gives children a way out of that horrid life.  I believe that would fit perfectly under that festival’s objective.  The challenges of presenting at both of these festivals are going to be affording the cost of submitting my documentary and covering travel costs to get to the festivals.