Kai Uyehara

Senior Project Advisor

Joan Connell

Document Type

Project

Streaming Media

Publication Date

Spring 2022

Keywords

Community, Hospitality, Restaurant, film, journalism, video

Abstract

The iconic Sunnyland breakfast spot, Homeskillet, closed after punctuating its ten-year run with a celebratory brunch party. Watch a community built around warm hospitality, hearty comfort food and eclectic decorations gather to bid farewell to a Bellingham favourite in this video feature story. To construct this six minute video, I pulled from my knowledge of storytelling through multimedia learned in my years at Western Washington University earning an English Creative Writing major, a journalism minor and participating in a film production club. This video feature story dwells within a smaller quadrant of journalism: feel-good journalism. Community and hospitality are at the heart of this story, as shown through several interviews with Bellinghamsters at the party who love the quirky restaurant not only for its food, but its boisterous owners Tina and Kirby White and eccentric nature. In its ten year run, Homeskillet demonstrated how a business and two passionate community members, with the help of their staff, can bring out the best in people and bind a community together around a hearty brunch. To convey this story and capture the character of Homeskillet and the Whites, a professional photographer and I attended the closing party on May 1st and pulled patrons aside for interviews and recorded b-roll for video footage as well. I wrote open questions that allowed interviewees to express their feelings about the restaurant, its staff and food, then followed the threads I found between their interviews and structured the video story from there. I edited the footage into the final product myself, harkening back to skill I acquired in my extracurricular filmmaking during my first couple of years in college. The final product is published on YouTube and was sent to the Whites to use as they please. It is a story of community joy, nurturing and iconic quirkiness.

Department

Journalism

Subjects - Topical (LCSH)

Restaurants--Social aspects--Washington (State)--Bellingham

Geographic Coverage

Bellingham (Wash.)

Genre/Form

streaming video

Type

Text

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

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