Today we filmed our video for project 4. It was a long day, and a long process getting here, but it’s been fun. My favourite part was probably doing the interviews, seeing people struggle to avoid buzzwords surrounding sex and it turning into an open, fun exercise rather than an awkward conversation. It became a project about opening people up to the idea of talking about sex by censoring it in conversation, and that’s something I found interesting. A lot of my friends were up to it as well, and saw it more as a challenge in avoiding words than a challenge about sharing personal information. Of course, that wasn’t true of everyone in the film, but the majority, and that was a great thing to happen. In a way, it proved the point of our documentary, that people are restricted too much in what they think they can talk about when it comes to sex, and younger generations aren’t being taught enough by those who are older and have knowledge because of the taboo nature of sex.
In saying that though, we did want to interview someone older than us for our film, but had a really hard time finding someone who would speak openly about sex, and perhaps that’s representative of society and by not having an older voice in our film we are being truthful about the reality of who’s censoring the topic and who wishes they could discuss it. We did try to find someone online once we’d exhausted family and friends, but found that if its not a personal or moral issue then it was because we were uni students asking strangers about sex and their bodies. It just didn’t work out.
Today specifically, we were pressed for time filming. We had the whole day until 6, and it took us 10 hours total to plan, rehearse and shoot. Surprisingly, it only took 4 takes to gets the final shot, but we did have the whole day of rehearsals to back us up. For the most part it was choreographed on the day, since we wouldn’t know the exact set-up until then, and that was stressful having so much of the project to fit into one day, but it was a great feeling to see it all coming together. The imagery ended up being perhaps a but more literal than we’d originally planned, and less about sex itself and more about the experiences of sex, but I think it still conveys the message clearly.
