FINDING FO’NA MINI DOCUMENTARY
THE PROJECT
In Spring 2024, my Environmental Documentary class was tasked with creating a mini science documentary about a local science story of our choosing.
My group and I searched local news and found that an NC State Paleontology PhD student, Haviv Avrahami, had recently named a new dinosaur.
Dinosaurs in our backyard? Not quite. The fossil was found in Utah. But the team was based out of the NC Museum of Natural Sciences Paleontology Research Lab. Gold!
MY ROLE
As associate producer, I acted as the primary source of contact between my project group and the team at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.
During the planning phase, I built and maintained the relationship between our class project team and the NC Museum of Natural Sciences Communications Department.
I also conducted pre-interview phone calls with our academic sources on the museum Paleontology Research team.
THE PROCESS
With a primary scriptwriter, Jess Hoyt, our team collaborated to storyboard the documentary and write the script.
Once the interview footage was collected on-site at the museum, our team worked with Videographer Rob Gunter to sequence and edit the final video in Adobe Premiere Pro.
THE PRODUCT
Producer: Ellen Benware
Associate producer/researcher: Minta Rice
Associate producer/researcher: Emma Eyssen ’26
Associate producer/researcher: Maya Johnson ’26
Scriptwriter/narrator: Jess Hoyt ’24
Videographer: Bob Gunter
Executive producer: Tom Linden