Digital Short

Part of the ethnographic study we're doing is creating a digital short that addresses one aspect of our projects.  For mine, I'm using the headline "they're just like us" to develop the concept that even homeless people are "normal" people too, or at least "were" at one time.  My plan is to use a combination of audio from the interviews I had with homeless people and Belmont students, some instrumental background music, video from the sites where I interviewed the homeless people, and some images of homelessness/homeless communities available from Google Images.  I'm debating using a screen shot from the online homeless forum (mentioned in a previous post) of a question I posted and the responses I received.  I will need to determine if it really fits with what I'm trying to convey via this short.

Specifically, I'm going to use the interview clips that include questions pertaining to how homeless people were raised vs. how Belmont students watched their parents treat homeless people (when they were raised).  The first clip I'll play, probably with no visuals or the background music (though if I do visuals, it will be of a kid who looks spoiled), is Saw (a homeless person I interviewed) saying that he was a spoiled kid growing up, in order to relate him to the Belmont students.  Then I'll start the music/video of homeless people and continue the interview clips.

The purpose behind showing the sites where I interviewed the homeless people is to show a number of things:  1) these sites are less than five minutes away from Belmont, 2) they are areas most Belmont students drive past several times a week, 3) they're very "normal" areas with plenty of "normal" people around (therefore, why can't the homeless people also be considered "normal?"), and 4) to show the number of people that drive past without helping those begging.

I hope that this digital short will take away the veil that seems to exist over "normal" people's eyes, and once existed over mine, to help them to be able to see that homeless people are people too.  They aren't rodents, pests, or people who are intruding on our "normal" lives.  They're people, with a past, a life, and hope for the future (sometimes).  They deserve to live, and live well, too.