Taylor Ha (PMMA ’20)
This mini documentary project focuses on her family’s life during the pandemic.
Taylor Ha said:
I have always wanted to become an author. When I was a child, I spent many weekends at my local library, where I immersed myself in novels, comics, and fictional worlds. In college, I studied journalism and learned how to write stories about actual people. Three months after graduation, I started my first full-time job at Fordham University, where I write stories about students, faculty, and alumni for the school’s marketing and communications department.
A year later, I took advantage of Fordham’s tuition remission program for employees and applied to the school’s public media master’s program, in the hopes of earning a tuition-free degree and improving my skills in visual storytelling.
I started graduate school in the summer of 2019. At the end of the year-long program, I was required to produce a capstone project. I planned on producing a video series about New Yorkers with fascinating backgrounds, like the Irish step dancer and photographer I had recently profiled for my job. But when the pandemic hit New York City, I realized my idea would never work. It was impossible to socially distance from my camera subjects. And what if I accidentally brought the virus home to my grandparents, who would likely die from COVID-19 or suffer from long-term complications?
Instead, I created a mini documentary about my family’s life during the pandemic. I interviewed my younger brother, Jason, and our parents about how their lives had changed. From March to July, I recorded our daily lives with my iPhone, including grocery shopping trips with masks and gloves; my brother, a pre-med college senior, learning about his first acceptance to medical school; and my brother and I becoming sick with what we feared was COVID-19. (Spoiler alert: A few days after developing symptoms, Jason tested negative for COVID-19; a few months after my illness, I tested negative for the antibodies.)
Telling my family’s personal story wasn’t easy. I struggled to develop a storyline and seamlessly transition from one scene to the next. Interviewing my family members was fun, but sometimes strange and awkward. I also faced many technical problems. I received a new laptop that was specially equipped to handle my 4K video footage, but my laptop crashed after I spent hours editing footage, and I nearly lost all my saved work.
The video production process was challenging, but rewarding. I became better at shooting videos on my iPhone. I learned how to write an engaging story script for video projects. Perhaps most importantly, I documented an extraordinary time in history that affected not only my family, but also millions of people around the world. I hope this documentary resonates with you and your own experiences in the COVID-19 pandemic. Stay safe and well.
For more information about me and my work, visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-ha/.
