The final steps, a blog entry by Sheela

These past two weeks have been a blur. Between doing homework and working
on college applications, Katherine and I have been working on finding
music for the documentary and coming up with a title. We started
brainstorming a couple of weeks ago about possible titles, and it is not
as easy as it seems. We wanted it to be catchy and informative and after
much contemplation, we decided on "Breaking Down Disability Barriers: The
Legacy of Timothy Nugent".

The music selection proved to be an even more difficult task which we only
completed yesterday. When I think about the civil rights movement and
gender equity, I can immediately think of songs that relate to those
topics. Disabilities, on the other hand, don't have many songs that jump
out at you. We decided that the best place to start would be to look at
the soundtracks to other disability-related films. After that unsuccessful
attempt, we used Google and typed in phrases like "disability music" and
"music relating to disabilities". We found a few websites that were a good
jumping off point. These websites steered us towards disabled musicians
who have sung about their struggles. After an exhausting week of searching
for music, we came up with a list of about 10 songs that seemed somewhat
usable. Since then we have narrowed our list down even more, and although
some of the music is bizarre, we are content with out selections.

On top of finding music, we had to also voice the documentary. We
scheduled a three-hour block of time to go into WILL so we could record
the script, and to my surprise it took the entire time. I never realized
how complicated the process was, but after going through it I have gained
so much appreciation for people who work in the field of radio and
television. I can't even count the number of times that Katherine and I
had to redo a segment either because we didn't have enough emotion or
because we would trip up on the words. It was tough, but as we got to the
last page of the script, it hit me that I would be hearing my voice on the
radio in about a month.

Wrapping up the process is an exciting and frustrating time. I finally see
all of our hard work coming together into a cohesive project, but at the
same time it seems like the work never ends. I have learned so much from
making the shorter documentary, and hopefully the longer one will go
smoother since we have learned from out mistakes!