The Personal Camera

How to film my project? I have no idea but todays session gave me more options and more ideas on how to capture my film. One of the most personal items to someone of the western world could own is their mobile phone. The camera on a mobile phone has upgraded incredibly in the last few years and as it continues to get better more and more people are uploading, sharing, vlogging everything and anything all at a click of a button. For that reason I will not a make a film on my mobile, I have nothing to say, I have nothing to share and so I will find something that means much more to me. Webcams and archive footage/photos are also good ways of bringing immediate personal experiences/ themes into a project but once again I don't feel that this style of filmmaking will benefit me.

Anyway, today we watched a couple of personal pieces. The first was created by Saddie Benning, at the time was a young teenage girl. A New Year, 6 minutes, 1989. The entire film was shot on PixelVision, which was a camera that had only 2 functions, off and on. For a young girl, she had a very strong opinion on greed and money, however I felt the film was something of its time. The issue she brings up is something that crops up every now and again. If I were to see the film before other similar content then it would be shocking. In my opinion I did not enjoy the piece of work, It was all a bit confusing and disengaging, I understood the point it was trying to make, but like I said it was something of its time.

The other film we watched in todays session was piece from American comedian/ director Annie Griffin. Out of Reach focused on her family answering a numerous of unknown and sometimes slightly uncomfortable questions. I do not know this family, I will never know them, but for a brief time in this film I understood and learnt many aspects of the family. It was very interesting to see the dynamic of her family, a pleasant one I must say. It was lighthearted, the use of younger family members enabled a comic relief to come from a potentially serious piece. I say 'serious piece' it was pretty much lighthearted throughout.


Towards the end of the session we were asked to create a family tree, anything we wanted. I decided to do the conventional family tree but only included the people who mean the greatest to me. While writing it I discovered that the people I am most closest to in my family are those who are most far away. My cousin who lives in Germany and my Great Grandmother who comes from Romania are the two most important people in my family. Annie Griffin's film was very interesting on how her immediate family are so close but they all live so far away from each other. The same goes with my distant family, if it wasn't for the Internet I would have little contact with my family from Germany. I would like to discover how my family views me and why they believe it is so important to keep in contact with me.  I have a few small ideas on how I would execute this idea, but I would need to plan the logistics and more importantly, if the film is interesting or not. My immediate thoughts is that I could use Skype and interview them in that way. I shall describe a stronger plan in my next post.