My idea for film project two has been a culmination of multiple small elements that have merged together to create one big idea, to re-purpose old footage from cam-corders to create a short avant garde film. The essence of the film that I want to establish or really put across to the audience is the innocence of children and their everyday lives. This could be done by either following one child or family and their journey throughout their childhood, or how they grow up into, well adults.

This idea kind of came to me during a workshop this week, I’m not sure how or why but something James said pieced together something that I’ve been trying to make for weeks. The factors involved included acquiring my dads old Panasonic cam-corder, viewing the old footage and feeling very nostalgic and over the past couple of weeks in class discussing avant garde films and the idea of the home movie. I’ve watched “The Song of Air” and “The Man with the Movie Camera” after class discussions about different film makers which also added to the mix of thoughts swirling around in my head. But ultimately all these factors have influenced my idea for a short film of repurposing old family or stock footage to create a film focusing on the innocent nature of a child and their upbringing.

This style of movie is really cool to me, because it touches on a documentary style film (which I’m so interested in) but also has a home movie type of feel. For myself it feels more intimate and raw to use authentic footage to create this style of ‘home’ movie because you can make a personal connection with the audience and make them reflect upon (in this case) their own childhood and upbringing. I’m really excited to pitch this film next week to the class, I doubt that anyone will be interested in doing it but I’m still keen to present this idea to the class.

Here’s a screenshot from my Dad’s camcorder of my brother at 2 years old going down a slide. Also this isn’t the digitally converted file just using an iPhone to film the display on the camera (also the quality on this sucks but it’s a lot better on video I promise.)