http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4Uec8MjvXs – My Youtube link
My project was about testing a cross section of American citizens on their basic civics knowledge. I wanted to know if our oral civics test as part of our naturalization process could easily be passed by everyday common American Citizens. I went to the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) website and downloaded free copy of the 100 questions that could be randomly asked on the oral civics test.
Veteran’s day felt like an appropriate day to do the testing since my friend Paige and I had no class that day. She was my camera person and i was the interviewer, we stopped random people in the street to see if they would consent to taking the oral test on camera. 90% of the time we got turned down but its the 10% that made the project possible. There were no names in the video except mine and Paiges, and all the people shown on the video signed consent forms that i have filed for liability reasons.
My data surprised me, 60% of the people taking the test fail basic civics knowledge. We think that something so basic and elementary would not be easily forgotten but as everyone that took the test realized that if you don’t brush up on things you will forget them. I think this is going to be one of my missions in life, educating citizens to strengthen our country.
The major obstacle that i had in shooting this video was the 20-30 mph wind downtown that made over half of my footage useless. The ones that made the cut had to be subtitled in parts with flash, that took over 4 hrs of timing and synchronizing. Another 5 ours between editing and encoding led me to realize that video editing not not a quick process. I really had fun making this project.
