Self Portrait (Brief 3)

OLIVER (Self Portrait) from Lucas James on Vimeo.

The process of making this 2 minute film provided me with both challenges and great opportunities to explore someone I knew in detail. I decided to chose my younger brother  (Oliver) to create this self portrait. Although I knew a lot about him already, I thought it would be interesting to gain some insight into what he actually feels and thinks towards the world. I decided from the get go, that I wanted to have dialogue running over the top of a series of film clips that captured my brothers life. I worked from this starting point and began filming what my brother literally does in his life, such as listening to music, but also images of him as a person, just simply being himself. I thought that this was one of the strong points of the film, being able to effectively portray my brother in a natural environment being himself.

Throughout this project, one of the main downsides for me was the lack of time management. I failed to manage my time appropriately and consequently the piece may have come across as rushed in some bits. Also, I would have liked to have more footage of my brother to make the film more interesting. If I had managemend my time more effectively, I could have explored more creative opportunities to depict my brother. Another, issue was finding suitable found footage. I found it really hard to find footage that was appropriate for the film and fitted into the storyline in a way that made sense. Again, if I considered time more carefully, I could have explored found footage to a greater extent and perhaps used it in a more interesting way.

When going into future projects there have been some major things that I have learn’t from creating this piece. Time management is key when creating a successful film, especially a portrait of somebody, if you rush it, it will come across that way and important information may have been missed. It is also important to experiment with documentary’s or any genre of film, bend the rules of the typical conventions associated to a genre. Through trial and error, experimenting can yield great results and if it doesn’t work out, you learn from it.

Overall, there are many aspects of the project that I am happy with, such as the music and the editing of the film which makes the story coherent and interesting. However, through the use of more time, more images of my brother and found footage, it would have added greater complexity to the overall story and film.

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