Mother Succa

Documentary Ethics

Collaboration

Real World

Final Thoughts 

Representing the real world can be tricky – in its essence it should convey authenticity and reveal an honest retelling of somebody’s story or their truth. Authenticity in nonfiction media is important because it helps portray a sense of reality throughout the text. Without realism viewers will question the claim of truth and the honesty of the people participating in them (Jørgensen 2017, p. 12) and will contend the film to be performative and premeditative. There were instances throughout the editing process of Mother Succa where I felt as though I was struggling with making it less performative. Caitlin is naturally a larger than life personality so I had plenty of opportunities within my collection of clips to persuade viewers that she is such without making it feel forced. Initially, I had edited a whole opening sequence that showed a montage of all the plants and plant-like objects around her house with outrageously boppy music, in a bit of a Brady Bunch style manic. And although all those clips were portraying Caitlin’s reality, I understood after watching it back that I was starting to blur the line between fact and fiction.

Clark (2001) agues that the two cornerstone principles to nonfiction is do not add and do not deceive. He believes that when we add a scene that did not occur or a quote that was never uttered, we cross the line into fiction and as such we deceive the audience. He also notes that nonfiction media practitioners should be unobtrusive, by in which I believe he means that we should be there to only observe not to alter the scenes that play out before us. There is three different shots in Mother Succa where Caitlin seems to have forgotten that she’s is being filmed and I was able to get these little snippets of voice over from her that I felt conveyed authenticity. The first was the shot is where she was showing off a sick plant and she says the throwaway comment about putting it in the sick bay, the second was the shot of her scrolling through Instragram and finding a plant she likes so she says “might save that” and the third was when she was looking through the nursery and is looking at a plants before she goes “oh that is gorgeous”. All these shots, I felt, where an honest reveal of Caitlin and helped reveal her real world. 

References:

Clark, RP 2001, ‘The Line Between Fact and Fiction‘, Creative Nonfiction, issue 16, viewed 18 October 2021.

I worked on Mother Succa as a solo media practitioner. I think the most important attributes of solo work include planning ahead, time management and discipline. Planning ahead for pre-production, production and post-production ensures that you are prepared and confident in your work. I think I could have improved in planning ahead for pre-production – other than having a rough guide of interview question prepared, I didn’t organise a schedule with my interviewee, rather we just filmed when she had some free moments and on the days of her market stalls. Due to this, I felt as though I missed quite a bit of narrative that I was initially aiming for when I wrote my synopsis and treatment.  That being said, I was able to still gather quite a large amount of footage in the end. However, I felt like I wasn’t able to use a lot of it due to it not being to the standard that I would have preferred. I also put this down to not preparing enough in pre-production and envisioning the shots I wanted to take and so I wasn’t confident enough during production.

I’ve always been quite good with my time-management and I feel as though that goes hand-in-hand with discipline as well. I was more prepared when it came to post-production and had a set timeline for when I wanted/needed certain parts to be done by and I feel as though I stuck to it well. I find solo work easier sometimes as you can always rely on yourself to get things done in a timely manner, however, there were instances where I thought it would be nice to be collaborating instead. Particularly when doing technical things that I wasn’t as confident in such as mixing sound or colour grading on Premier Pro. I also think it’s nice to collaborate to have a chance to bounce ideas of each other to create a better project. For this reason, I appreciated the feedback we were required to give each other in class as it offered insights that I missed or was also questioning but needed it confirmed by someone else. Overall though, I think I’m quite a competent solo media practitioner but I will definitely strive to be a better planner for future projects.

If I was going to continue working on Mother Succa, I would like to delve further into the history of Caitlin’s family as successful business owners and how that has shaped her own work ethic. I would do this by filming footage of her working for her family business and asking her dad some questions in regards to what advice or guidance he might have given over the years and what he thinks the pros and cons to being your own boss entails. I wasn’t able to draw this out of her during her own interview so I think going straight to the source would work better. 

I would also like to further explore side hustles in general and why they’ve become such a big phenomena, particularly with millennials, in recent years. I imagine this would lead me down a bit of a rabbit hole of minimal wage woes and dreams of one day sticking it to the man which could create a bit more depth and structure for the project overall. There is quite a large plant community up in Cairns of propagators who are doing similar things to Caitlin in regards to business opportunities, so reaching out to them could be an option as well. 

To give the project the ability to explore these two considerations, I think extending it to a 10 minute piece would suffice, with some restructuring of the current project. Or perhaps three 5 minute segments with clearly defined narrative beats. For example, episode 1 could explore side hustles and their popularity, episode 2 could explore an introduction to Real Neat Plants and Caitlin’s family business success and episode 3 could follow her around over a month or so to see all the aspects, highs and lows, of her business as opposed to small snippets of it. 

My ethics charter was rather brief I’ll admit. I guess I was more or less under the impression that following the general rules of humanity would probably suffice – to be respectful, courteous and kind. However, after completing this project I would like to add the following:

1. Respect the participants autonomy
2. Film only with the intention of telling the participants truth
3. Protect the participant from discomfort and harm

I think the participant/s must feel as though they have the ability to leave the project if they no longer feel like it is in their best interest, particularly if its not a compensated role. Understanding as media practitioners, that people have their own lives and worlds outside of your project so you cannot fault them if it no long aligns with them.  In the same light, ensuring the participant feels as though their stories are safe in your hands and won’t be outrageously edited to fit your own narrative or view that you may be trying to persuade viewers towards.

Documentary filming involves the exploration of people’s experiences and investigates people’s feelings, beliefs, way of life and the meanings attached to these. It’s because of this that we, as media practitioners, must ensure that the power relation between interviewer and interviewee remains equal and that we understand that the “photographic image contains a power that we should not underestimate” (Jørgensen 2017, p. 15). Jørgensen (2017) also argues that we must be aware of our responsibility to ensure there are no detrimental effects, for the participants who are filmed, once the film is released and we are communicative if we think they risk making a fool of themselves. Although, I think on a larger scale, Jørgensen may be referring to an interviewees ideas or opinions being misconstrued by public perception as we’ve seen quite a lot of late with ‘cancel culture’, I still took a moment to reflect on my own project and what pieces could have represented Caitlin in a less favourable light or made her uncomfortable. Nothing made the final cut but I certainly had some footage that she may not have appreciated.  I only reflect on this because I had included some in my very first edit as I was trying to create this ‘goofy, cheeky character’ but ultimately decided that I didn’t need anything overly performative to show this as she naturally holds this presence. I suppose this in itself has protected my participant from be uncomfortable with the final project.

References:

I’ve honestly never given much thought to letterboxes. What they could mean to a person or a household or what they might say about a person or a household. They’re a funny little thing, almost everyone has one – how else would we get our mail! When I decided to set out and photograph a few for this assessment, I really was impressed with how much effort people put into them…or not. I initially considered ordering the photos into the socio-economic status of suburbs to show how our social class even effects our choice of letterbox but the more I photographed, the more I realised that doesn’t ring true. A classic example of this is number 21 and number 24 below. Number 21 is clearly in a wealthy part of town with their iron gates and booming pillars, their letter box is subtle but still blends well with their exterior. On the other hand, you could be forgiven for thinking that number 24, is on the other side of town in the not so wealthy part, with the pile of dead palm fronds and wispy letterbox. When in reality, these letterboxes were adjacent to each other, and number 24 looked like a much more expensive house. In the end, I decided to order them from 1 to 25 so that it’s left to the viewer to decipher who these letterboxes might belong to, although, I think we can all agree the number 1 clearly belongs to a household that loves to get on the beers.

Very little post-production went into these photos apart from some straightening here and there to balance out the frame. I was going to play around with colour and brightness but decided against it. I think the green’s seen in the grass and trees are good indicators of the photos being taken in a location with a wetter or ‘tropical climate and didn’t want to take away from that with editing. For future practice, I would improve upon framing and taking more time when taking the shots.

The remaining photos of this collection can be found at:
https://rmiteduau-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/s3605464_student_rmit_edu_au/EiZLQV3MnsNEgKYIyjSAlQ4BiQFnnYQV9ZZmCjUvLSFBCQ?e=glxBug

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