In class on Friday, Paul gave us a few writing exercises to get us thinking about our week 7 pitches for the semester’s final project. We listed everything that we had written over the course of the semester, which you can see going through my blog for the past 6 weeks, and I found this exercise really helpful because it made it clear what I was writing about most, what I’m interested in most, and how I can direct this writing into a final project.
Immediately I thought of making a series of short videos about my magic moment blog posts. I thought this would enable me to fulfil my Film 3 goal that I made at the beginning of the semester to learn more about documentary and fiction techniques, and use both in my final project. Some of these moments are my own memories, so I could recreate them using the documentary practice of re-enactment, and some are other peoples memories, or things that I have imagined, which I could write as fiction. I also thought that I could turn this project into a web series and perhaps research other short form web series, online content and viral video culture.
Another writing exercise we did was listing things that we are interested in, just generally. I want to put my list on here for future reference:
places
- places full of trash and junk
- squats and share houses
- parks – under trees
- empty plots of land
- places that people go for quiet, solitude, isolation
- homes
- abandoned places
- warehouses
- suburbs
people
- dishevelled
- don’t have their shit together
- creatives
- unhinged
- homebodies
- lonely people
- fringe communities
topics
- feminism
- intersectionality
- girlhood
- anti-capitalist
music
- world music
- black music
- girl bands
memories
- scrapbooks
- photographs
- journals
- physical manifestations
- repressed memories
- forgotten memories
- inside out – what memories make a person
out of this world
- dreams
- magic
- occult
- religion
- trickery
art
- surreal
- expressionism
- graffiti
- craft
other
- drugs
- mental illness
- television
One thing that I want to work on is the theme that ties all the shorts together. Some ideas I had was exploring the act of wandering and noticing, or memories, recollection, contemplation, reflection, and where the small memories go, and how little things often get lost.
I listed three of my magic moments that I would like to make: Pepsi on the Train, Strawberry Milk, and Bedroom. I also wanted to include moments of fiction in each short, to make them more engaging, and to use cinematic techniques that I have not tried before. I also think that these fiction techniques will help portray the magic that I find in these moments. For Pepsi on the Train, I am thinking of using slow motion, or maybe starting the short at the end, and going back in time to show the beginning. For Strawberry Milk, I think I would like to use non-diagetic sounds. And for Bedroom, I imagined a close up image with an overlayed and translucent image of paint across a surface… I’m finding it hard to explain, but I want it to look a little animated and trippy. Here is my inspiration for this idea:
So, action plan: during the mid semester break, I am going to write the scripts for the three videos I want to make, list the shots I want to do, and draw some rough storyboards of these shots. I’m pretty darn excited.
