Finish Product

This is the finished product. I've said a lot of what I needed to say in the other posts, but I honestly am a big fan of this story about a guy crashing and burning and then rising like the phoenix to become better than ever and I hope you are too.

My interviews for the project. Ray's interview went really well I though. He was incredibly articulate and was able to knock down every single detail of the story with such great imagery. I honestly wish I could have just played this clip instead of doing the package, not because I didn't want to do the project, but because of how good this came out. Really powerful stuff and it takes you inside the situation and what happened afterwards. The other three interviews were more supporting interviews as opposed to main events. I used them to add an outsider's perspective to various stories. At the end of the day, outside of Steve, I didn't feel the need to use a ton of their content, but they really hit home the image of how Ray went through a total shift in every facet of his life as well as how proud people close to him are that he was able to recover from his injury.

Initial Thoughts

This project was originally supposed to be about how tough it is for college students to get a job once they graduate. I was going to interview someone who got their dream job right away, someone who had a job in their field but wasn't particularly good or what they wanted and someone else who 100% bombed and is doing nothing. There were going to be some talk with an expert as well. However, this project would have been incredibly boring, not to mention it didn't really fit the format of the class and project. I needed something different. Something that made you feel. Something real. I came across the story of Ray Hoffmeister, who suffered a server head injury a few years ago. He was told by doctors that he should either be dead or in a coma. It knocked him out of school. It had effects that lingered for months. In time, with a strong rehab and some help from doctors, he was able to make a full recovery from a absolutely debilitating social, mental and physical injury. It is not what I originally planned on doing, but I hope you enjoy the story of Ray as much as I did. - Luke