The immediate feedback to our idea, by the Panel, and from Kim has been interesting, as there seems to be this mutual understanding that what we have picked a very interesting idea, and there is a lot to be said of the extraction of this story, and this place that has changed, and how we approach it. One panel member spoke about how Gigi’s story would be worth focusing on, in part due to this crucial line she uttered, “9 months without pay”, lending to the rather urgent nature of the situation. I think this is really quite important for us as a group, to understand the socioeconomic effects perhaps, or damage that the loss of this market, and so many people’s jobs would have caused. Kim herself has mentioned or suggested a means as to perhaps being able to understand this situation, looking into like They also mentioned that it would be important to see how these supporting voices/characters would be able to function to compound this story. I definitely resonate with this, even if it’s only in the sense that the culmination of all these stories and perspectives could really stand to capture a really important understanding of how neighbourhoods deal with the change or loss of a place that in a way is in direct relation to ones livelihood – either for those that worked there, that owned businesses there, but even all the foot traffic and the residue of all the nearby businesses that have been affected by this change. It was very interesting to do the first steps of perhaps interviewing the nearby grocer around the corner, who seemingly were unaffected as they did not lose their business. But this is purely from a superficial perspective, as they have clearly lost business as a result of the lost residue foot traffic of those went to the market, as the geographical position of Little Saigon Market was quite on one of the edges of the commercial and retail precinct in Footscray, and so was this grocer.

Another panel member made an interesting point, which I’d considered for my own documentary idea, but not Ellie’s here which is, what the space was before being Little Saigon Market as we were to know it. This is really interesting because in the scheme of things Little Saigon Market could only have really been around, under that moniker, for like a maximum of like 40 years, as Malcolm Fraser only began letting in Vietnamese refugees in 1975, so any fruition of a vibrant vietnamese community could have only really taken place, after this time. In this sense it would be cool to look into the genealogy of the area prior to the inception of the vietnamese people, though for the sake of this production I feel like this can’t really be warranted due to the can of worms it would add to the overall length of the sequence. I know that in anyway case the area presented as quite an Italian area