Week Nine reflections / Problems

So continuing on with the reflecting part of this, I will be talking about the K-films that have been suggested to the class during this weeks class.
This week we basically continued brainstorming ideas and telling the class about our concepts – we’re still developing ours.
Instead of telling you where we’re at with ours (boring), I thought I’d talk about other peoples ideas..
In our class, we have a range of ideas and concepts ranging from hometown identity and stories, to dancing sequences to people confessing the best advice they have to share… with only the footage of their feet being shown to the screen.
It’s this last one that caught my attention.
I’m finding, especially through speaking to groups outside of my class in particular, that the most interesting K-films and stories tend to be the one’s involving people – in particular the one’s which reveal a personal fact or experience about the person. The idea of not showing the persons face, but instead having only a body part, or even an overlaying piece of footage with the voiceover playing, is something that really intrigues me.
Although it is different, these types of K-films tend to remind me of the “Humans of New York” blog.

For those who don’t know, The Humans of New York Blog (and yes, this photo was added to the post a little late for those who do follow the Blog) is created by “Brandon”, and is a collection of pictures of every day people throughout the streets of New York, with a short story or quote from those people accompanying those pictures.

I strongly recommend that you watch this video, explaining Brandon’s story:

There is one part of this video that I love particular. At around 2.50, Brandon states:

People always say “‘oh man, you know you photograph the things that other people walk by everyday single day and don’t notice, but somehow you photograph them and make them beautiful’ … so much that walks by me inspires me”

As you can see, Brandon has over 5 million followers on Facebook. That’s 5 million people interested in the simple act of noticing people. Something we all have the opportunity of doing. Everyone has a tale to tell – a story to share. I know in IM we talk about our lives not being ‘stories’, and maybe they’re not in the narrative sense of things, but we do have a beginning, a middle and an end of an event that has happened in our life. Put them together, in a collection like Brandon’s, and you’re able to create an artefact that could generate interest worldwide.