Mini Research Project #2

Realistically I believe the idea of a Mocumentary I developed in class is an achievable story concept apart from a few elements. The first element is that the family home is based on a farm; although this is not a grand concept that location itself would be very hard to attain in terms of travelling time and seeking out the actual property. The other thing that would be hard to achieve is the actual at of the boy asphyxiating in the manure tank, although with this issue it is very easy to side step and avoid it by just having it be a past event that is not actually captured on film. Seeing as the film is set as a Mocumentary it is even more plausible to leave out the actual drowning itself as it would be a story of the people after the fact.

The way around these issues that I have thought of is to add more storyline and plot. For example, the family has since moved from the farm due to it being a constant reminder/too much media attention/didn’t want to live with their son’s ghost. I had the idea that the Mocumentary would be set around 3 years after the actual incident and the family has moved to the next small town over into a townhouse or unit in a more suburban area of the town. This way it is much easier to stage interviews, personal recounts, have a look at family memories in a realistic setting. It is much easier to get photos of farms and people than to film a whole set.

From these ideas I grabbed a few photos of my friend’s lounge rooms. They are the perfect setting for the type of family I wish to portray. It is a modest, Australian town house in suburbia and the furnishings and feel of the house is family orientated (which the family in the film would love to portray after having an incident such as theirs). This house is very accessible for me to use and makes the ideal location for the main setting of the film. it’s practical use is also ideal due to the space available and my relationship with the owners.

These photos are of the loungerooms/settings I would like to stage the interviews and family times spent together:

I also had the idea of using someone’s rainwater tank and the ‘scene of the incident’. I have a rainwater tank in my old house, which is very easily accessible to me (I wasn’t able to get a photo of it yet). It makes a perfect setting for a possible manure tank as it’s in a corner and you would not be able to tell that it’s in a house and not on a farm from the right angles. Ideally I would love to get a rainwater tank or just a tank on an actual large piece of land but factoring in travel time makes me reconsider.

I think the location of the film has a big influence on the way your story might unfold. It’s made me reconsider the flow of the story, the characters’ lives and how they interact with one another. It’s also made me creatively more adaptable; it’s made me consider and develop more concepts or possible plots and shooting techniques to get the same story across in a different way. The issue of location for just a student with no budget is a great way to develop techniques in problem solving. It helps you to think on your feet and introduces initiative in developing new ways to tell a story through the camera.