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Emiley Westfall Presents “Tutus, Pink Shoes & Baby Blues”

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Posted on Friday, March 3, 2017

Emiley Westfall ’18, Broadcast and Digital Communications major, is producing a documentary entitled “Tutus, Pink Shoes & Baby Blues” about the adoption process the Michelson family went through in order to adopt  5-year old twin girls from Africa.

During the adoption process, the Michelsons received notice they were eligible to adopt an additional two children. While the adoption process can be costly, the Michelson family was able to raise $25,000 within three days through online funding accounts. They have been over in Africa since the beginning of December. Their return date is still unknown and is all based on when the courts process their second adoption. The run time for this documentary will run anytime between 10-15 minutes.

For the documentary, Westfall will interview the Michelsons and, if it makes sense, a few close family members and friends. Westfall also plans to contact the adoption agency the family is going through and possibly someone who has been adopted.

“The purpose of this documentary is to show and teach the audience the process of adopting children and the effect it had on the people who go through it,” says Westfall. “It will create a lot of emotion for the audience by capturing it in a first-person voice of a 5-year-old. Also, the footage of the family in Africa will give the audience a first look of the living conditions these children lived in.”

Westfall is one of five students in the documentary production course. The course spans two semesters moving students from the research and concept launches of their documentaries into production and post-production. The experience end in the world premiere of their final projects during the November 2017 Student Documentary Showcase on campus alongside classmates Brad Kolesar, Justin Wilson, Troy Jackson, and Charles Borges.