For Project Brief 2 I decided to focus on ‘Flat 18’, the home of my three friends Jade, Jasper and Shannon. I have a unique relationship with their home as it is in the same building as the apartment I grew up in and currently still live in. Subsequently I was wanting to focus on the way three young adults navigate personal space and coexistence: an idea enhanced by their unique dynamic as a three. I was inspired by several of the readings Kyla had provided us; Serial in particular has got me so obsessed – I love the way Sarah Koenig uses narration. It’s also just generally executed brilliantly. Similarly despite the fact that I actually didn’t enjoy the documentary itself, I liked the way that the documentary of obesity Kyla showed played with conversation and multiple participants.

For my narration, I decided to make a hybrid of conversation, written narration, ambient effects and allusions to my presence through the participants. I definitely struggled a little bit with refining a concept for narration and thus think the final product is a little messy. This was partly intentional as I wanted to also do a ‘behind the scenes’ like formula with it. In the future I think I’ll try and refine the written narration a bit better as it sounds quite rigid – which is exemplified in the contrast between that and my conversational tone.

For my participants, I was really happy that I was able to piece together a strong concept and flow of narrative. This was something I’d learnt from the last brief – not to stick it all together, allow it to flow and embrace gaps. I was fortunate to be able to use Jade’s amazingly ambient music as a soundtrack which allowed me to explore new tones with conversation and interviewing. At first I felt that the song was too dark to use and made the tone of the piece too depressing, however after deeper analysis I concluded that ‘Untitled 03’ (as Jade has so ambiguously titled it) has a very meditative and spacial vibe to it which I think really enhanced the piece. I also felt comfortable reaching out of the conventionally chronological order of the interviews and discussion and have thus pieced it together into something more cohesive.

I do enjoy the rawness of my work and generally think I’ve achieved certain goals I had with it, however I would like to really focus on editing and production techniques next time so I can take it to another level and really refine the portfolio as a whole.