I am here because I’m a firm believer in digital storytelling. I began by making short videos with my friends on the weekends and ever since we first captured our ideas and turned them into a 2 minute, uncut video to show to our parents, I have been hooked. I started taking filmmaking more seriously, making longer and cleaner edits of me and my friends goofing off and having a good time. Then in 6th grade, I talked to a family friend who worked with Pixar and Lucas Films to make animations and I was instantly captured by the ability to create whatever you want, whenever you want. This led me to work with Daniel Houghton, a professor at Middlebury College, to learn the ropes of animation and branch out on my own to learn a new form of digital storytelling. When I was in 7th grade I worked with a class at Middlebury to create the short animation 11 Paper Place which was featured in more than 20 film festivals in over 10 different countries across the globe. Then last year while I was studying in Mexico, I made a short animation with one of my good friends (Vermont Population Decline) which was posted on Facebook by Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott.

I decided to enroll in this course as a way to learn important aspects of digital storytelling while using it as a way to document my research for my upcoming animation project. These next two years I will be working on a project focusing on migrant workers from Mexico and what their lives are like living and working here in Vermont. I plan on interviewing workers, farmers and other members of the community that are connected with the migrants and using that information to create my project for What’s the Story.