Many students just play video games as a pastime, not many are able to integrate it into their school work. Senior Ian Burton has found a way in his documentary for Video Production over the 1983 North American video game crash. 

“I think the topic is hilarious, such a succession of fumbles that caused a crash in a rapidly growing market, how there were so many different consoles and an utter lack of quality control,” Burton said.

During their senior year, seniors in Video Production create a documentary out of any subject of their choosing. The documentary has to be at least five to seven minutes long and has to be school appropriate.

“Part of the goal of our program is to give students a well-rounded learning experience, and the documentary is a great way to demonstrate their skills. Such as showing off creativity, storytelling, camera work, and interviewing. Through the project, they’re able to show deep structures and narratives, plus I always like to see what students come up with,” teacher Josh Branch said.

 Senior Anthony Scott has been making his documentary about the VR tech’s history and future.

“VR’s future is much more expansive than people think and may one day be a part of everyday life. I see VR being much more accessible and cheaper but right now it is limited by price, tech and the current chip shortage,” Scott said.

Scott mentioned some difficulties while making the documentary.

  “How long this whole thing got, how much history is behind VR… finding pics was also hard as the concept of VR started in the 1830s with panoramic paintings that got people into immersive stuff…It was easy to get into but difficult to find and do a lot of decent research,” Scott said.

Every video documentary requires at least five different sources.

Branch acknowledges this project is often more challenging to students than they first realize.

“Difficulties with this project often involve time management and an unrealistic expectation with the time frame given. This project tends, much more than other projects, to have students bite off more than they can do…it’s a ton of work, students sometimes fail to realize what it takes to make a doc of good quality,” Branch said.

Branch explains they have had a number of great and inspiring projects over the years.

“We have had a few documentaries about veterans or grandparents. Some of them have just been about what the students find interesting like documentaries about steam or vine…one being about a friend of theirs overcoming teen pregnancy. This project has the ability and the opportunity to be more inspired than most projects,” Branch said.

For Burton, the hardest part of this project was narrowing his documentary down to a reasonable amount of time.

“I started off with a much much broader topic. But the script was way too long, so I took the most interesting part of the script and decided to focus on that instead. It got a whole lot easier once I cut the stuff I didn’t need,” Burton said.