This week, I am focusing on choosing a topic for my final project. I want my final piece to be meaningful and at least a bit useful in terms of allowing people to see another point of view and rethink their attitude. As much as I enjoy atmospheric montage videos, I want this final project of this semester to be informative and important. So far, I think I want to explore immigration history in Australia because it’s a very relevant and engaging topic. With globalisation taking over the world, the immigration issue is more significant than ever and I feel like it’s something that should be talked about. Especially since it’s one of those topics that have devoted supporters from both sides and its sometimes difficult to see the whole picture. Plus, I am new to this whole debate and it’s a great opportunity for me to deepen my understanding of the concept.

So, to jumpstart my thinking process, I will be using this prompt from canvas. I feel like already covered the “topic +why” section, so I’m gonna jump right in and start from the second question.

Driving question to answer?

Well, first off, immigration IS happening, there is no stopping it and that’s a fact. Globalisation now plays too big a part in our daily lives and even if we wanted to reverse the progress and go back to living in more or less isolated communities it would not be possible. So, asking whether it’s something that we should allow or not is off the table. I’d rather focus on the attitudes of “locals” towards the “newcomers” and how homo sapiens’ primitive psychology of “us and others” is making thinks more complicated than it should be. So, the driving question would be something like “why are some people so reluctant to accepting new members of society?”or “is immigration a good thing or a bad thing?”.  At this point, it’s all hypothetical and I’m just exploring what I could potentially do, but I really like to include both points of view in all my makings.  As it said in week’s 5 reading:

 Beginning a documentary endeavour with a period rather than a question mark in mind dramatically curtails opportunities for growth, listening, complexity, and openness to the unanticipated gifts that inevitably present themselves during the production process.

(Fox,  2017)

I really don’t want to have a stand prior to even starting the research and the filming, I feel like I’m being unfair and close-minded otherwise.

World (where and when it is set, length or series)?

In terms of time, it would probably be the present. It’s the only time that matters, really. We can’t change the past and we have no idea what the future holds, so I’d much rather spend my time exploring the problems and stories of today. In terms of where, I’d say West Melbourne. Since it’s the focus of the studio and we are working with the Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West it just makes sense. As for the length, I would be interested in making short series. For this project, I’d rather investigate various stories/cases than go in depth with just one. But, to be realistic here, it’s difficult to talk about the world of the project before I even have a story or at least a character in mind. I can start planning a more precise world when I have an idea of what exactly I am doing and why. 

Our differentiations among theme, story, and plot should not lead to the misconception that the creative process of planning a documentary always begins neatly, with a theme falling into our laps from which we readily identify a story and make specific plot choices

(Fox,  2017)

Story (what happens in the film?)

Good question. I really can’t say yet, I am just exploring my potential interests hypothetically. I think I would want to find a person and follow his/her story through the film.

Modes- why this one?

I am mostly interested on observational, expository and participatory types of documentary. I think I would want to come up with some sort of combination of all of these and experiment. Interviews is definitely something I want to work with, but I don’t want it to be the typical face-to-face conversation. I feel like it’s a bit overused and boring. I remember I found this mini-documentary some time ago and it’s exactly the format I would like to adopt for this project. It is an interview, but it doesn’t feel like it. The main character is more of a mysterious narrator telling us about his life as we enjoy beautifully made shots. I very much prefer this to having poor interviewees sit awkwardly in a chair and not knowing where to look.

Audience

As I said before, immigration is a hot topic right now and I feel like the audience is rather broad. It would probably be the people with especially heated opinion on the matter since they would be the one googling it. Or quite the opposite, people like me know don’t know much about the topic and want to educate themselves.

Function (what will the audience feel, think, do?)

My hope is to always balance opinions and let people decide for themselves rather than shove my point of view down their throat. I would want people to feel compassion and sympathy, to see that people are not that different and that we can all live together in peace if we only try. Best case scenario, even change their daily behaviour and attitude towards immigration to the better. But I want the audience to come to this conclusion by themselves, without me spelling it out for them.

Position (what do you think about this topic, what are counter positions)

I don’t have a strong position and I think that it’s a huge advantage of mine. It’s really difficult to stay calm and unbiased when you get easily triggered by the topic. Not to mention, that when people are entirely devoted to a certain stand they become close-minded and often fail to even recognise the other points of view. As I discussed in one of my previous posts, there is no such things as the truth, and we must always keep that in mind, especially as documentary makers. I also kind of experiences both points of view: in Europe refugees is actually a big problem and since all my best friends live in EU I know exactly how much of a threat it is. Feeling unsafe in your home country is definitely not okay. On the other hand, I spend a year living in Singapore and now in Australia- both culturally diverse countries with a very high percentage of immigration. And both these countries are safe and developed, not to mention that Singapore is my #1 favourite place on Earth and I dream to live there one day. So, I think I would be able to explore the topic from a position of an unbiased observer rather than a devoted propagandist and investigate both approaches to the topic.

I’ve done some research to see if there are any similar works on the topic of immigration in Australia and I’ve stumble upon this great documentary called “The Immigration Nation”. It consists of 3 hour long episodes and I only had the time to see one so far but it’s definitely something to watch. 

I just want to say one more time, that this is all purely hypothetical. I am just exploring my potential interests and trying to figure out the topic area for the project.

Works cited:

Fox, B. (2017). Documentary Media (2nd edition). Melbourne, Australia: Taylor &Francis.