Content
Assignment 1 – Analysis essay
Feed me a story is a transmedia project created by Laura Nova and Theresa Loong in 2016. It encourages people to share people’s family secret recipes and what they like to eat in their childhood in a documentary style. People who are living in America but have different cultural history background has been interviewed in this project. Laura Nova and Theresa Loong collected those stories from each short interview and explored the concepts of what it means to be an American. The project incorporates the American cultures history and contemporary influences of childhood food. It has engaged viewers to be able to interact with the local community. I chose this project is because the theme and the structure of it interested me and it relates my studio goals of exploring international students culture movement through food. In context, it engages me to do a documentary project about how do international students interacting with their own countries’ food culture in Melbourne? However, the interactive form of this project evokes me to consider the possibilities of the documentary.
First of all, Laura Nova and Theresa Loong keep the focus on food experiences through upon different cultures of immigrants were in New York around the 1800s, and then 1900. Unlike other traditional documentary films, Feed me a story is organized by multiple small-scale interviews of people who are living in America. They use interactive mode of documentary, it brings a new form of experience documentary. Audiences have to decide which small-scale work interviews they want to see. Interactive documentary required each interview is an induvial small- scale project, but also when those interviews cooperate together, the project has a new meaning as a whole. For instance, the collection of interview story includes a Chinese America who works in a market, and it also includes a native American who eat sushi on Thanksgiving. Each story is unique but there are all about food. Fox (2018) argues that the example The Love Tapes brings documentation to a different level, it involves individuals participant into her documentary, and it allows individuals to confess, to dialogue personal stories value. Feed me a story is also a good example of collecting individuals stories and building possible relationships of the documentary. It requests the participation of audiences to consider a beginning, middle, and end. It also creates more possibilities in the meaning of the documentary. The form of this project engages me to consider a documentary project could offer people’s own experiences into the public sphere. It is no longer just a visual project; it rather becomes an interactive communication between the filmmakers and audiences. The form of this project inspired me to consider my documentary project could invite international students’ own experiences into the public sphere. It will have different narrative interviews to providing technological shifts and cultural movement through their home country food. I will use the same way as Laura Nova and Theresa Loong by Direct and indirect Interviews to explore my project Food tells you. Fox argues (2018, p. 9) that ‘the meaning of a documentary doesn’t simply come from its informational content but also from its form’. Interviews are a good opinion to give the audiences a sense of realism. Filmmakers frame their interviewees using negative space and the background used to be people own food shop, their food market in New York. Those places are all about food and it influences the way the person is perceived. By looking for each interviews background that will reveal something about the food culture. The background becomes a strong strategy to present the idea of the documentary. Deeply, the purpose of this film allows audiences to have a self-reflection of our culture movement through food.
In content, Feed me a story inspires me to consider Chinese international students food experiences through their cultural background in Melbourne. I am an international student from China, and I used to cook Chinese food in daily life. Chinese food reminds me of the traditions, cultures, family in China and it also in some way explain myself identification. For example, my childhood favorite food could on behalf of my family in a contempt way. As an international media student, I care and interested in other Chinese international students in Melbourne. Do they miss their home country? What role does hometown food play in their lives? What kind of food can explain their cultural identity? Good interview questions will lead my documentary to become integrity. On the other hand, the interactive mode of Feed me a story provides an unusual medium to create non-liners context. In the project, interviews questions asked by filmmakers edited out, which the use of answer from the interviewees could be so that they can tell their story and give audience space to interact with the answer. Fox (2018, p. 64) mentioned interactive mode ‘is observational, reflexive, and participatory in its engagement of modes.’ It will invite audiences to be interpreting with the work itself, it more like a “Give and Take”, where audiences have the responsibilities to active engagement.
However, in my project, I might use Expository and interactive mode of the nine modes. Expository mode evokes a linear and overt argument of my project by adding imagines and video of interviewees memory. The primary aim of expository documentaries is to explain my subject, which is the Chinese international student, her experiences of food culture and self-identity. Rothermel (2011) noted a Documentary film in the twentieth century was as much about changing the world as it was observing it. I hope my project will help audiences interact with international student’s identity in a modern country. There is a lot of things we just pass through in our daily life, but the food is a central part of people’s lives. An international student is everywhere, even in our studio, but the connection between their cultures and self-identity through food is a different way of thinking about globalization and culture values of food.
References
Nova, L & Loong, T 2016, Feed me a story, _docubase, viewed 12 March 2019, < https://docubase.mit.edu/project/feed-me-a-story/>
Fox, B 2018, Documentary media: history, theory, practice, 2 nd edn, Routledge, New York.
Austin, T & Jong, WD 2008, Rethinking documentary: new perspectives, new practices, Maidenhead, England.
Murray, R, L & Joseph K.H 2014, ‘Contemporary Eco-food Films: The Documentary Tradition’, Studies in Documentary Film, 6.1, pp.43-59