It’s easy to say that the idea, creation and execution of film project two has been a ride from start to finish. I had a really great feeling when I pitched my idea for film project two, I knew that it was exactly what I wanted to do for this project and I’m really glad to have undertaken the unknowingly large heartfelt project on my own.

 

My original idea to repurpose old footage to create a home movie stemmed from my interest in documentaries, home movies and the avant-garde stylisation of films. After my idea had been given the green light, I quickly placed my Dads miniDV tapes into a shop to be digitised. Despite this process taking two weeks and $316 of my hard earned money, it gave me time to really research into what a home movie really was, and gain an idea of the type of film I wanted to create. In preparation and as a part of my research I watched Merilee Bennett’s film A Song of Air (1987) and Richard Linklaters 2014 film Boyhood, two very different films with various elements that I tried to replicate in my first rough cut. I did a lot of reading into home movies and discovered that home movies gave any person who owned a camera, cam-corder or any device that had a record button the chance or opportunity to become or be an amateur film maker. Recording the family completing leisurely tasks such as eating dinner, kids running around the backyard or at sport are activities that were generally recorded by ‘amateur film makers.’ So if you think about my film with this thought in mind, you could almost say that my Dad was an amateur film maker, which I think is pretty cool and really interesting.

So after viewing a few films, investigating further into what the home movie was and what it became, the two weeks were up and I collected my digitised tapes. All up there was about six hours of footage that I had to sort through, and funnily enough it wasn’t as time consuming as I originally thought. The way I tackled this was to sort tape by tape, and use premiere to cut out scenes and organise them into five different sequences so that they would be easier to transfer into the film sequence. The footage was separated into the five sequences which were categorised as:

1. Life Events
2. Playing
3. Family
4. Other
5. Sport

These were the most recorded “scenes” you could say from all the footage and by sorting the footage into these sequences it made it a lot easier to construct the film.

 

After sifting through all the footage I began my first attempt at constructing my film. This is where I got very stuck, I was pressured for time to complete a rough cut because of my upcoming surgery and I feel as if the pressure and possibly lack of direction with what I wanted to achieve with the film was the main reason for this. Before I even received the feedback from my first rough cut I knew that my film needed to change, and once I got feedback and the suggestion to look more into my research for inspiration and guidance, that’s exactly what I did. On top of researching into the idea of the home movie, I also researched further into documentaries and the different styles there are.

 

Looking back in reflection I can definitely see this as a turning point for my research topic and the direction in which I was taking my film. I really put a magnifying glass on Bill Nichols conceptual scheme known as documentary modes which helps to separate and identify conventions of documentary film making. Out of the six modes (poetic, expository, participatory, observational, reflexive and performative) I found that my film sat in the poetic mode of documentary making. This mode abandons conventions of continuity in films, in turn following and exploring “patterns that involve temporal rhythms and spatial juxtapositions.” It helps to create “alternative forms of knowledge” instead of the usual “straightforward transfer of information (Nichols, 2001). After reading Nichols work and watching a few poetic documentaries on YouTube I decided to do a brainstorm to try and spark an idea using key words.

 

So after brainstorming I came up with an idea to juxtapose birthdays with any other day. The reason I decided to do this is because I have a lot of footage from different birthdays between my brothers and I over the years, as well as tones of footage of us doing general kid things. I thought this would be a good idea because birthdays have these certain customs like cutting cake, singing, parties etc but every other day seems to run as normal. After thinking about this concept I made a structure of clips  (see picture) to arrange my piece into. This took me to my second rough cut which felt a lot more like a film than my first go.

 

I followed the structure that I made after my brainstorm to construct the film putting one birthday clip in and then accommodating it with another mundane clip. Once I finished this I watched my film through and it felt better but almost too structured. I revisited my research on poetic documentaries where more things stuck out to me for example films aren’t meant to be chronological or cohesive like a narrative, but really focus on aesthetics, mood and tone inside the clips. I used this to help guide me into the final stages of completing my film. After meeting with James I knew that my itch to muck around with the structure was probably something I should do before I start to refine and polish the piece.

 

Something I definitely learnt whilst trying to find rhythm and space within clips is that it’s hard, especially when you didn’t film the clips. I tried to look for the way the camera moved and see if it matched with other shots I have to make it seem like one motion of panning left to right for example. Or when a ball was thrown or kicked, used the direction of the ball to match the next shot. This process took a while, but it definitely shook up the structure and I feel made it look more like a poetic documentary and because the duration of shots was different, it didn’t feel as ordered as the last cut I made did. After doing this I even thought of possibly switching up the birthday to mundane shot structure. Like for example: normal shot -> birthday instead of birthday -> normal shot. After having these ideas I went into a phase of exercising creativity with editing, mucking around with shots, where they sat in the timeline and structure depending on their internal rhythms, their look and the content. I tried my best to stay away from a linear structure that I constructed in my brainstorm, this proved to be really difficult.

 

 

In hindsight I’m very grateful to have undertaken this project, despite how incredibly tedious and long it has taken. I know I’ve put a lot of heart into this project, and it’s really helped motivate me to create films that I’m passionate about in the future. I’ve learnt a lot of things from working on this project, as a film maker I’ve learnt the importance of rhythm and tone has on a piece. Particularly the internal rhythms of shots instead of focusing on the overall finished product. I definitely feel like I’ve developed more knowledge and understanding of how documentaries are made and created, especially in the style of poetic documentaries. As well as this I have gained more of an appreciation for documentary’s and how they’re made and film makers who repurpose footage into new films.

 

This project gave me a lot of breathing space, which allowed my research topic to move from the home movie and Avant Garde style films to the poetic documentary that it became. I’m happy that I went along this process because it gave me the chance to really expand my learning and knowledge within film culture. I’ve never really had the opportunity to do this before, however I know now after doing a non-linear film not driven by a narrative that I can create films in other ways that are just as powerful and meaningful as typical narrative short’s I’ve seen in the past. Although I am very glad to have undertaken this project solo, I definitely have missed working in a group dynamic through pre-production and filming after seeing a lot of the stuff that other groups have come up with.

 

Finally, after completing this film (and the studio) I feel like my mind has really been opened to experimental film and the many, many different roads it can take you down. I’m excited to see where this mindset takes me going into the future as I feel a lot more confident in myself as a film maker and the messages and idea’s I want to put out into the world.