Junior Rachel Lin is addressing what she believes to be an under-appreciated but pressing issue at Campolindo: racial stereotyping. She is doing so through the creation of a documentary, Modern Yellow, in her Video Production class.
Lin’s previous subject matter has helped her compile an impressive range work.”They vary a lot. The last film I made was a music video. Other ones are like narrative films with stories, and comedies,” Lin explained.
For this project, Lin chose to create a documentary. “It’s specifically about racism against Asians and about how Asians have to deal with stereotyping from other people, and it’s not really a talked-about issue here, so I decided to make a movie about it,” Lin said
According to Lin, there are 3 steps involved in the production of a movie. “The first step is pre-production, which is like planning and stuff, the second is production, which is like the actual filming of the movie, and then post-production, which is like editing the movie,” she explained. Students use programs such as Finagraph Pro and Adobe After Effects for post production editing.
At this point, Lin has an outline for the film. “We’re just trying to schedule and plan out different shots that we need to film,” she said. “What we’re planning on doing is using found footage, just like old vintage clips to go over the voice-overs.”
Because the documentary focuses on Asian stereotypes, Lin has enlisted several of her Asian friends to speak about their experiences with racism. With encouragement from Lin, junior Alicia Kim shared her feelings.
According to Lin, Kim voiced that “racism is really important and something to be aware of, because in America there’s this huge diversity of different races and ethnicities, and so in order to live among each other we have to be aware of racism.”
Although Kim was initially hesitant to be in the movie, and was even “dragged into it,” she believes that it was an interesting experience. “I got to see how racism has affected my friends’ lives and talk about how it has affected mine personally,” she said.
Lin hopes that her movie will capture the attention of her classmates, and persuade some to change their views. “I wanted it to raise awareness that ‘hey, there is still racism out there,’ and that we need to become aware of that,” she explained.
Kim believes that racism is still prevalent on campus, and is fueled by ignorance.”I think the biggest problem about racism is ignorance, and if we can just raise awareness and make people understand that racism is still a thing, then things would be a lot better,” said Kim.
Although Lin finds the editing portion of film production monotonous, she enjoys planning and filming her movies, and believes that she may pursue film production in the future. “It’s definitely one of my options for a career. It’s a really fun hobby,” she said.
