Within Assignment two I decided to research and uncover a better understanding of the details surrounding the Bridges collapse on the 15th of October 1970. Initially I thought it would be interesting to look at the social and ethical reactions of having two Australian flags raised on the bridge, specifically focusing on the lack of an indigenous flag. Although, from my external research and visiting the Living Museum of the West, I felt it important to explore the events surrounding the collapse, and that this material I created could be of good use to the museum itself.

One work I have taken some resources from and much knowledge is Donna Jackson’s audio documentary titled; A West Gate Bridge Documentary, which explores the collapse of the bridge. This was made available by the staff of the museum and after recording it, I was able to listen to personal accounts of some of the workers and gaining a better understanding of the effect this event had on not only the workers of the bridge, but their families and Melbourne society at the time. Further research into news paper clippings and radio recordings created a stark contrast between these personal accounts found in Donna Jackson’s documentary and I believe may have inspired her to create this piece. Something that I have discovered through this research is a dubious interest in what political perspectives and motivations could have been present when considering the manufacturing of the West Gate bridge and what effect these views and expectations could have had on the production of the bridge. I hold a curious nature when considering the way media outlets covered the events surrounding the bridges collapse, compared to the real accounts of workers of the bridge. This idea of truths and reality is discussed in Documentary Media: History, Theory, Practice where its stated “Despite the potential range in form and content, all documentaries make truth claims about our physical world”. (Fox, 2009, p. 7) This concept has stuck with me and highlighted what the claim of ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ might mean when documenting events such as this. Are these personal accounts true and real or are they subjected to failings due to the memory recall or even the act of recording and interviewing. Furthermore, when considering news articles and radio reports to be documenting events, what external factors can affect the validity of truth.

Within this assignment, we as a group decided to divide the edits into three, each individual would complete one edit and we gathered resources together through visiting the museum, independent of class time. We used time together at university to reflect on the editing process and through social media, shared idea’s for our production and bounced approaches off one another. I feel this allowed for our group to work well together, gaining resources and insight into our topic whilst allowing for individual creativity when approaching our production. I created the interview and used audio recordings supplied by the Living Museum of the West. My intentions with this production was to recreate the accounts of one of the workers, Eddie Halsell, whilst creating a sound scape and visual stimuli that would reinforce idea’s of time, memory and emotion. The choice to use colour within my production to convey time worked well, as much of the resources we gathered from the museum were black and white photographs of the event and bridge at the time. Beginning the production in colour and desaturating it to black and white allows the audience to recognise the importance of time within this interview. The use of opacity within the interview was to signify memory, as this is quite old interview (30+ years) and the subject is recounting the events of time past, I felt it important to convey this through visual cue’s and felt it would create an emotional connection with audience, allowing better understanding and engagement with the interview. I feel the production I have created closely resembles the expository mode of documentary and Eddie’s narration works as a voice of god and the visual content I have chosen reinforces and creates truths through archival material.

When first considering approaches to this assignment, I thought it would be really interesting to be able to get in touch with someone who could recall these events, whether it was a worker of a bridge or just someone living in Melbourne at the time. But due to the time constraints for this assignment I did not have the opportunity to conduct this type of interview as I currently don’t have access to someone with this experience. This is something I would definitely like to achieve in a future production. Because I was working with a pre-recorded interview, there would have been elements in the interview I would have liked to elaborate on but could not because I didn’t record it myself. Elaborating on this, I had to edit and rearrange the interviews audio sequences so it made sense for the listener, this detracts from the validity of the interview and is insincere to the original recording. In future productions I hope to be able to create more validity in my productions whilst not being confined to the expository formatting. To achieve this I will need to create more of the productions content myself and push myself out of my comfort zone when considering composition.

 

Reference:

Jackson, D. 1985, A West Gate Bridge Documentary, Audio Recording, Australia

Fox, B., 2009. Documentary Media: History, Theory, Practice. Allyn & Bacon