Gabriella Gagliano

SUNY New Paltz

Escape The Vape!

For our capstone project, my group and I decided to take a more personal approach to documentary film making. We wanted our subjects to get as vulnerable and honest as possible, which we correctly assumed could only exist when our cameras weren't present. In order to illicit strong emotions from human beings, we needed to raise the stakes and give them something to fight for. We decided to challenge two of our classmates to quit vaping for 30 days, as they have been addicted to nicotine for the better part of 10 years and have tried to quit before and failed. We had them film themselves throughout the day on their phones to log the ups-and-downs of withdrawals. As time went on, both subjects became more restless and agitated. We wanted to understand more about the withdrawal process, so we traveled down to Washington D.C. to talk to the quitting experts over at the Truth Initiative, and get more information on their services. In understanding how difficult it is to quit, but how easy it is to get addicted, we also talked to lawmakers in Albany about what they are doing to try and lower the number of underage individuals from getting hooked. I, Gabriella Gagliano, was the director and editor for this project. I would not have been able to create this documentary without the help of my producer, Carlin Feck, my director of photography, Stephen Jeong, my audio mixer and composer Matthew Walsh, and our data organizer, Lindsay Feldherr.