Brothers on the Pitch

The Premiere

The FedEx Global Education Center welcomed over 300 attendees for the premiere of Uprooted. Photo Credit: Tenley Mae Garrett

Last night was special.

Four months of hard work culminated in a successful presentation of our project, Uprooted.

Over 300 members of our community came to campus to watch the live presentation of the short documentaries that told the stories of Venezuelan migrants in Medellín, Colombia. It was a surreal experience to see the impact the films had, and I’m grateful to have been a part of this amazing project.

The ‘Economy’ team. From left, journalist Brooklynn Cooper, visual storytellers Bryan Cereijo and Abby Cantrell, and designer Kailee Akers.

Celebrating after the premiere. Photo Credit: Alex Kormann

To the Vinotinto FC family, thank you so much for allowing us into your lives and sharing your story. The world now knows how special you all are.

Laurenti Velasquez and Alvaro Junior Cardenas of Vinotinto FC.

The Process

After filming for 10 days in Colombia, our team had a little over a month to edit the films together. We would share our radio cuts, scenes, assemblies, and rough cuts in class and give each other feedback. It was a long and tedious process, but it proved worthy.

Here’s what our final timeline looked like:

Scenes are coded by different colors, natural sounds make up the first three audio tracks, the interview audio makes up the fourth track, and the music bed is in the fifth and sixth track. Having this coordination is definitely helpful during the polishing phase.

While the video team worked on editing the short documentaries, the developers, writers, designers and photographers worked on making sure the website was coming together, the stories were polished, the interactive graphics were functioning, and the photo journey was edited.

The Final Product

And here is my team’s final video:

Most Venezuelans who have the fortune of making it to Colombia find the things that they lack in their home country: food, safety, employment and the list goes on. But sometimes, even when life’s basic necessities are fulfilled, you can still feel a void. This is the story of how an immigrant from Caracas filled his void through sport—and helped dozens of other Venezuelans fill theirs too in the process.

You can explore the rest of the project at http://uprooted.unc.edu - where you will find the four other documentaries, the written pieces, the interactive graphics, and the photojourney.

Ten Days in Colombia

The past couple of weeks have been busy. There’s been filming, working on midterms, more filming, getting ready for Colombia, more filming, traveling to Colombia, more filming, and now I am finally back in the States. 

It’s taken me a couple of days to regroup - and I’m still working on it - but I’ve finally have been able to gather myself enough to sit down and write a bit about my experience.

Traveling to Medellín, Colombia with the Uprooted UNC group was an amazing experience. I’m grateful for this opportunity because it was inspiring and meaningful: we traveled, met awesome people, and documented important stories.

There were a lot of moments of reflection during the trip in which I just thought about how incredible it was that I was in another country, doing what I most care about, and working with my peers to shed light on the struggles that Venezuelans face when they are forced to flee their country.

Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing some of my favorite moments and images from the trip as my peers and I start putting the entire project together for an April 23rd premiere date.

The view from Medellín’s recently inaugurated ‘Metrocable.’ The Miraflores station became the fifth gondola lift station in the city, making Medellín one of the cities with the best sustainable public transportation in the country.

The view from Medellín’s recently inaugurated ‘Metrocable.’ The Miraflores station became the fifth gondola lift station in the city, making Medellín one of the cities with the best sustainable public transportation in the country.