Heading into this investigation, I had an idea that I would be working with friends and family in that I would be seeking ways to represent them and/or their unique qualities through sustained long takes. I also considered working with others in the class or in the course and assembling little crews to get better at coordinating and directing a group of people.

I eventually decided that the latter didn’t really fit into what I wanted to do, especially considering that a lot of the material was dependent on it not being preconceived. This was a shame as I enjoyed working with others in class however I think working independently gave me the chance to solidify what I was actually investigating and gaining out of this semester.

My initial idea for working with friends and family is something I might yet pursue, admittedly I was just so interesting in focusing on moments and environments that I just kept going along with that. That being said, I did experiment with making abstract portraits a few times but none of them were quite as captivating as the other takes I had done. See below for a quick example of a way I might go about representing people in the future – in this instance, Lara didn’t know that I was filming her which was the point, I just wanted to capture the moment of her talking and doing what she was doing at the time in a way that wasn’t obviously constructed.

So generally I was a lone wolf for this one. I’m glad that I went about it in the way that I did, it has made me a lot more confident in being experimental with film and following my gut in determining what to film. It has also established a new way of making for me which is to use my iPhone to capture a moment when the thought strikes me, a process I intend to use to build up an archive of like material to hopefully create bigger and better works in the future.

Lara portrait from Timothy Palstra on Vimeo.