Farewell Graduate: A Day at the Open House

Farewell Graduate: A Day at the Open House is a short web documentary about the graduation party of one of the Dozerfleet founder's sisters. The documentary was shot on June 9th, 2007, and was finished with post-production on June 11th of the same year.

Synopsis
The short's focus was on R. E. W., who was the actress playing Kelina Averes in The Blue Face Film Strips four years prior. In Farewell Graduate, Rachael explains that she has finished up her four years at Michigan Lutheran Seminary in Saginaw, MI. Done with high school, she mentions her college plans being to enroll at Bethany Lutheran College in Minnesota.

As she is explaining this, many friends and relatives pitch in to give their thoughts about her going that far out-of-state for college. She also reveals some of the work she did for various high school projects, and others who are outdoors enjoy in the festivities of the party.

Original plan
The documentary was originally going to be a piece on the prevalence of machinima on the campus of Ferris State, and attitudes about it on that campus. But in the end, very little footage was made that was usable for that piece. Most of the machinima-practicing crowd was gone over the summer, and most of those left on the campus in 2007 were medical students who'd heard nothing about machinima.

The plan switched
Some clips were made to demonstrate the difficulties of creating Ciem, but this promotional tie-in flopped when the Video 1 lab's Avid stations could not recognize the AVI files that needed to be imported in order to be used. In a last-ditch effort to turn in a final project for Video 1 class, the Dozerfleet founder took a very different and radical approach: a documentary on a gal's graduation party.

Locations
The production was primarily shot at 7779 E. Mt. Hope Hwy. in Grand Ledge, MI. It was edited together at Ferris State University, inside a video lab in Bishop Hall.

Distribution
The final video was shot on a Sony GL-1 video camera and was sent to an Avid editing station. From there, the pieces of the video were assembled into a cut for the final project. A slate was also added to the video. The final production was then printed to a mini-DV tape and was also exported as an AVI file. The AVI file was converted on a laptop to a WMV file and was then uploaded to Dozerfleet Studios' YouTube channel on July 21st of 2007. On Friday, November 23rd of 2012 around 10:14 AM EST, it was officially placed in Ivan's Vault for the foreseeable future.

Reception
The documentary was treated very fairly by most of the class, with the teacher, Glenn, being particularly impressed with it as a "significant improvement" over the failed machinima documentary. It has been met with mixed reviews by those who were in the piece itself. As of May of 2008, the video has been viewed on YouTube over 100 times, but with no comments and no awards.

Music
The soundtrack for the video consists of "Grace's Waltz," off of the Fernando Ortega album This Bright Hour. The choice to use this was inspired by the fact that the last story to feature Rachael in it was The Blue Face Film Strips, in which the soundtrack for that short film was "Christina's Dream" off Fernando Ortega's album Storm.