On the third episode of the Reeder Reel, Sarah and Drea talk to Sedra Olabi '25 about a documentary storying the evolution of ceramics in Williamsburg that she is producing with Taiga Lewis '26. She explains how her employment at the Reeder Media Center fostered her ability to step outside her comfort zone.
- Episode Transcript
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Sarah Thompson:
Hello, welcome to the Reeder Reel. I'm Sarah Thompson. I'm the Content and social media coordinator at William & Mary Libraries. I'm here with Drea George. She's the media specialist at Reeder Media Center.
Drea George:
Hey everyone.
Sarah Thompson:
So Drea and I are going to be talking to a few students and alum who are working on projects that have been supported by Reeder Media Center’s equipment and expertise.
Drea George:
Today we're talking to Sedra Olabi, who is a senior. She's also an employee at the Reeder Media Center. Today we will be talking about a ceramics documentary that she is working on with Taiga Lewis, focusing on the evolution of ceramics in Williamsburg.
Sarah Thompson:
Hi Sedra. Welcome.
Sedra Olabi:
Hi.
Sarah Thompson:
So let's start with you just telling us a little bit about your project.
Sedra Olabi:
When I was interviewed for this job, I was asked, ‘why do you want to work at the Media Center?’ And I answered, I always liked photography and videography, editing, and I always wanted to do something with it. So I would feel like this job would also help me to be more brave to create something and a cool product and just do something new other than studying and being ,you know, following grades.
And I was working during one of the shifts, I saw Taiga and I was helping him as a patron. And then I was asking him, ‘why do you always come here?’ Because he was always a regular, why do you always have so many things with you and you're always carrying a video camera or a camera, a tripod, a wireless mic. Then he told me he works at the Flat Hat as a videographer, so I was like, ‘what is the Flat Hat? I'm a junior. I don't even know what the Flat Hat is here.’ And he told me about it and he was like, yeah, we actually need photographers. I was like, maybe should I give it a try? He connected with me with a photography team and I got accepted after giving my application to them. It just started from there. We started working together in some other projects while I take pictures and he takes videos of some other events.
After that, that's basically where I started experiencing more stuff other than photography and until we got to meet back again at the JCA meeting and he was like, maybe we should do something bigger. I said I wanted to in the future have a small ceramic studio or something like this, he always also wanted to have something like that. And we tried to figure it out how could we make a cinematography kind of video about ceramic making because we just want to do something with ceramics. And then we realized we can't just make a cinematography video where it's just oh, so cool kind of thing. It was like we needed to make it with more content. We need to make something with a community. We need to meet new people.
Drea George:
Tell a story.
Sedra Olabi:
Tell a story. Exactly. We needed to create something instead of just, oh, I am just going to go take some cool shots of someone making a pot or something. And that's how the idea just got bigger and bigger. And when we started to research more about the ceramics in Williamsburg, we found it very cool because it has a lot of history as you know Williamsburg has a lot of history too. So yeah, it just grew up to this idea.
Sarah Thompson:
Very cool. Why do you think this story is important to tell through video documentary specifically?
Sedra Olabi:
Especially for this one, you're talking about an art piece and it's really, really important to show what the art we are talking about, especially if the audience is not familiar with whoever is in CW and what type of art is found here.
Sarah Thompson:
And it seems like you guys have a pretty extensive history to work with and a lot of people that you're talking to. How do you go about building your storyboard? What do you want to start with? Who do you think your main character is, if there is one? What were the conversations that you guys were having about this?
Sedra Olabi:
I wouldn't say there's a specific focal person we're going to be focusing on. It's mostly about just ceramics, and we're just going to be starting broadly from the archeology lab from Sean Devlin and then going all the way narrowing to Palin Thorley giving an example of who he was in CW, and then we're going to be bringing it back to the Williamsburg, the William & Mary community with the ceramic studio and then the students' artwork.
Sarah Thompson:
I know you guys are still in the process of finishing this. Do you have any proudest moments or most challenging moments or if you haven't had any yet, maybe things that you're expecting down the line that might be challenging or really cool to work on?
Sedra Olabi:
I don’t know. I feel like just getting out of my comfort zone for this project, because he [Taiga] told me that he wanted the partner to get him going with his project while also knew if I was by myself, I wouldn't really work on it. So I would say just being where we are right now and having overcame so many obstacles and so many just points where we were like, we can't finish this. This is not going to work. People are not responding. We can't get any content for the video. We got to a point where we were like, we can't do this anymore. But I would say the persistence and the continuity of our work, and yeah, I would say we just kind of imagined it happening, so we just continued with that hopefully to actually make it real. So.Sarah Thompson:
That's awesome. I feel like the hardest part is always getting the project off the ground and getting your contacts and making sure they trust you and we'll be willing to have you in their space because making a documentary film is very invasive to the people that you're filming, so that's always the hardest part. So that's great that you guys kept with it and have made it work.
Sedra Olabi:
Thank you.
Drea George:
Did you have any technical challenges thus far?
Sedra Olabi:
I don’t think there was a lot of technical issues, we both were pretty confident on how to use the tools.
Drea George:
So you guys were using stuff that came from the Media Center, right?
Sedra Olabi:
Oh, yeah. Everything except his own camera. He has another camera that he carries around. He just kind of gets most of the lenses from us, wireless mic as well, tripods, a video mic sometimes. Everything here is from the Media Center.
Drea George:
Can you talk about why having that stuff available to you is so important
Sedra Olabi:
Oh gosh yeah.
Drea George:
and meaningful.
Sedra Olabi:
It’s so important. Without them, nothing could have been done, even with his own camera, we needed a tripod to make sure that the interview is held properly with the interviewer in the frame while I'm also away from the frame. We needed the wireless mic so that the voices are also recorded properly. We needed some of the lenses for different details of some artworks because I also did some photography, not just videography, of these small pieces from Palin Thorley. We needed to get these small details of these art pieces at the Special Collection. Without any of these equipments, it would've been very difficult to create something in that high quality, and not even that, because if it was only his own camera, it would be most of the work on him. So I would be barely contributing to making the video. So yeah, he would be having his own camera. I would be having my own camera. Sometimes it would be also having extra lenses, as I mentioned. So without any of these tools, nothing could have been done actually or been made.
Drea George:
So you're handling all this stuff. How did you know how to use it all?
Sedra Olabi:
From the Media Center! When we come here to the Reeder Media Center, you don't really have a full expectation of how you need to use every equipment. There's so many things, you're going to be learning it by time. You get this thing and you get this that, and then you just start to experiment on them. With these, we have something called weekly training or weekly assignment where basically we are required to create some type of creative thing from this specific equipment. These practices help me so much to actually experience and know what I'm doing when I'm handling the specific tool or specific equipment. That's when I actually learned how to use most of the stuff, especially the wireless mic. I had so many trouble understanding them because we have multiple types. We have Rode Mic and DJI, I personally prefer the DJI. They're really good. Yeah. And even when some other patron comes in and he's like, oh, how do you do this? I am kind of having to problem solve, and that also helped me so much during that time. But yeah, that's just how I would say I learned most of my knowledge.
Sarah Thompson:
Awesome. I have kind a two-part question for you. So you're graduating, is video production, that career field, something that you want to pursue? And how would you say, if so, how would you say the Media Center has set you up for pursuing that career field?
Sedra Olabi:
If I pursue it, it would be probably something on the side and I realized when I have to be paid for it or when I am having some expectation from others about my own work or my own art, it kind of takes part of the enjoyment for me. So if I do it, it would be something very small, very on the side kind of thing. I would say the Reeder Media Center has helped me to learn the very basics, but also with so many other advantage that I would've not learned it if I tried to teach my own self the basics through YouTube or some other things because yes, I get the basic, but I also get to experience more with so many time I have here and with Steve and Troy and you know Taiga and so many other colleagues that helped me learn more than whatever I'm supposed to be working with. That paved the way for me to experience more things after graduation and it helped me just easily go out of my comfort zone. Yes, it's something new, but you know what? I'll take it. It's really cool to get out of that comfort zone and see how much I'm capable of doing and creating.
Sarah Thompson:
Yeah. They are skills you can bring outside of media production.
Sedra Olabi:
Yes.
Sarah Thompson:
That's great.
Awesome. I think those are all the questions we have. Thank you so much for coming in today and sharing your story. We're so excited to see how the final product turns out.
Sedra Olabi:
Thank you so much. I'm really excited too. This was really fun.
Sarah Thompson:
I’m glad. laughs
And that wraps up another episode.
Drea George:
Thanks for joining us. Stay tuned for future episodes, which will be posted on the library's website.
Sarah Thompson:
And be sure to check out the Reeder Media Center for yourself.
Sarah Thompson and Drea George:
Bye.
Sarah Thompson:
The harmonizing. laughs
- Transcript Notes
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- JCA: Japanese Cultural Association
- Sean Devlin, Senior Curator of Archaeological Collections at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
- Palin Thorley, 20th century ceramist and Williamsburg resident. Find more information on J. Palin Thorley in our Special Collections database.
Schedule an appointment with a staff member at Reeder Media Center