I made the decision to do my media portrait on Tahj Rosmarin, solely because he sprung to mind almost immediately upon receiving the project task. This was because he is a dear old friend of mine who is made up of such captivating aspects in terms of culture, appearance, beliefs and interests. He is also conveniently my housemate so I was able to infuriatingly follow him around whenever I felt necessary.

Although as an outcome of this project, I discovered accessibility definitely comes with a catch. Switching the dynamic of friendship to subject was a difficult task, especially as I intended on creating quite a deep and pensive aesthetic. At the beginning of the interview I felt as if Tahj were one of those sea creatures curling and tightening up with unease. I also found it difficult to try and encourage the conversation without speaking too much so as to avoid being present in the edit. Out of desperation I made a strange decision to hand Tahj the camera and have him speak directly into the microphone. This was my saviour; I asked the questions I wanted to know and got the exact response I was hoping for. I suppose this was also a problematic aspect as it came at the cost of losing a direct on camera interview leaving it up to B roll to illustrate the entire portrait.

In the editing process I faced the challenge of sifting through the interview to determine what was of value to the story I wanted to tell. I knew from the start that incorporating his drawings were imperative to articulate him visually. But I also kept in mind what Kyla told us about following a story, letting it head in a particular direction and to have the confidence to jump aboard see where it takes you.

I used my found footage as a kind of metaphorical analogy, re-contextualising the footage to give it creative appropriation. As an example, I felt I was successful in portraying the significance of Tahj’s emigration from South Africa to Australia, using found footage of a skipping stone on a lake to represent one step to another.

I think a key aspect that I will take away with me is that short projects like this one need to be textured, have a sense of randomness and have to be ruthlessly stripped apart to what stands bare, even if it’s as simple as a few drawings.