Why You Should Adopt Animals: The Documentary

Y'all, the long-awaited, long-anticipated, long-dreaded, much fretted about documentary on "why you should adopt animals" has finally happened!

Geez, this thing was hard to manage, despite the fact that it ended up being pretty simple--IF you have the equipment and know what you're doing with it. Way back last May, Syd proposed a service project for our Girl Scout troop: she wanted to make a documentary about the animals at the local Humane Society, to get people to adopt them. The other girls liked this idea, and then.... nothing. I just could not figure out how to get five (then six, then eight) girls to film a documentary at the Humane Society, then actually make it into a movie.

I did NOT study filmmaking in college, my Friends.

Finally, I decided that we'd skip, for the moment, the logistics of even asking to film at the Humane Society (all those children, all those barking dogs, all that hand-held video...), and just film animals that had already been adopted, and maybe interview their owners about their experience and why one should adopt.

Even that, of course, was hard for me to figure out, and I went way down the rabbit hole of amateur filmmaking forums before I finally figured out that the equipment that we have--a digital SLR with video recording capabilities, a USB-compatible microphone, Audacity, and Nero--would work just fine for this. We won't be submitting to Cannes, but we could make something that would please and delight little Girl Scouts.

We still have to present this particular idea to the rest of the troop (which means that I still have to figure out how to do it with eight little girls and assorted animals), but as a test case, and for Will's Cadette Digital Movie Maker badge, my two kids made a documentary about Gracie and Spots, fostered and then adopted from our local animal shelter.

Considering that this documentary was Syd's idea, and that Will spent most of an entire year being vocally NOT on board with it, it will probably surprise you to learn that Will did the vast majority of work on the documentary. It doesn't surprise me, as I know that Will tends to get very deeply immersed in projects, but I was nevertheless VERY relieved that she did not just all of the compiling and editing--

--but also the filming of the interview, which was something that I'd expected Syd to be excited about.

So now, without further ado, I present to you the world premiere of the original documentary short film, Why You Should Adopt Cats:



Thank goodness that is figured out and over! Now all we have to do is figure out how to do it again, this time with six more little filmmakers. And I have to buy the patch for my now officially certified Cadette Digital Movie Maker!