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OLIVIA follows the musings of twenty year old, Olivia Chamberlain, as she talks about gender dysphoria, societal expectation, and defying the norms of femininity as a transgender woman. 

Due to the time constraints surrounding project brief three, I decided to keep the interview focussed upon Olivia’s relationship with femininity as a trans woman, and discuss the complex interplay between gender dysphoria, femininity and womanhood, and whether those three elements necessarily align for everyone.

My intent was to contrast current conceptions of gender fluidity and womanhood with the highly circumscribed definition of womanhood that was conventional in the 1950s (a time of social regression, particularly for women). The opening of the film clearly illustrates this; the almost jarring visual switch from the 1950s footage, to that of the pill package conveys how much change has occurred, grounding the work in the modern day whilst creating a ‘realness,’ as juxtaposed with the ‘surreal’ attitudes of the 1950s. All the found footage throughout is employed to similar effect; to create contrasts that emphasise and bring added meaning to the film’s key messages.

Overall I’m pleased with this piece. The audio was fairly clean, so there wasn’t any distracting noise to detract from what was being conveyed in the film, and the music works in an understated way to enhance the mood of the piece, without being a distracting or overbearing element. The piece has achieved quite an intimate tone, which positions the viewer in a way that allows them to connect to the subject and engage with the message of the film; they’re being spoken with, not lectured to. In regards to the interview itself, I prepped my subject a day prior to the interview, ensuring that she knew the direction the piece was heading. This allowed for better articulation of her thoughts when it came time to sit and record. In addition, I conducted an off-camera interview for this piece, as I thought this would allow the subject to relax and speak with authenticity. I believe this was a large factor in why I was able to create an intimate piece, and is something that I will keep in mind for future projects.

Visually, I am content with the piece (the above shots being my favourites from the work); however, next time I will ensure to scout the area fully before beginning filming so that I can put more work into the curation of shots to ensure they are all to a higher standard and that there is a larger range of diversity throughout. Also, I will have to have to look into Vimeo’s file compression, and the best export settings to maintain video quality, as online some of the blacks in the piece have been crunched into blocks of colour, which isn’t present on the actual finished file.

In regards to the editing, my main issue was that I should really have broken up the walking sections towards the end of the piece. The first walking shot was intended to break up the piece (let it breathe), as I felt that it was important to allow the viewer to focus on the speech at that point, and not have their concentration divided by busy visuals. The second walking shot was used to reinforce the audio, that is, the way that cisgendered people will never fully be able to understand what it’s like to be transgender. Here, there is a shift, from a tracking shot to a static one as the subject walks away, thereby visually expressing this disconnect and highlighting the impassable separation in understanding. Despite these creative choices, which are effective separately, the two walking shots should have been spaced further apart, as they appear repetitive and lose poignance as individual shots because they are so close together. Constructively, through this project I have come to realise the amount that can be conveyed nonverbally through cinematography and mise en scene, and the immense contribution that this non-verbal communication lends to a film’s meaning.