Rethinking my Proposal/Academic Question
After visiting JHQ in the Christmas break, and starting to edit the footage since being back, I think it has become clear to me that my film is less concerned with ‘visualising an unfilmable past’ and more about reconnecting with memories. I guess the two aren’t so far removed from each other, but I think keeping the film focused on memories is a way I can keep the film more engaging.
What this means for technically: I think that this change from ‘unfilmable past’ to memory as the focus of the film won’t have a huge shift in the way I make the film, the past that I wanted to represent was my own anyway and my own memories had always been heavily involved with the experiments I had done in the first term. While I was in JHQ I made the decision not to film in any building or area of the camp I didn’t have a clear personal memory from, I think that this personal connection and element of homecoming that the film has is what separates it from other works about abandoned places and I think I should lean into this. While I don’t think it will change how I make the film so much, I do think that the theme of memories could lend itself to some interesting ways of structuring the film, I could possibly structure the film around remapping a clear routine or activity I remember; the school run, the walk to a friends house, etc.
What this means academically: Academically speaking I think that this shift will be more fruitful – it opens up other areas of academic research such as psychology and cognitive science. I feel that these areas of research will help me with the execution of some of the ideas I have – at the moment I am focusing on ways I can represent the, at times, overwhelming nature of reconnecting with memories, I am currently doing this just on my own instincts, but I feel that some more academic research into the topic would add a deeper understanding, which would help with this theme. I also feel that this theme of representing memory will be more immediately obvious to a viewer of the film, I had received some feedback that my academic question wouldn’t necessarily be clear to the audience and I agreed, it felt to me like the film was going to be about my experience of JHQ, and that the ‘unfilmable past’ element was going to be just an alternative way to read the film with the academic question in mind – but I think that it will be more obviously an exploration of memory and this will bridge the gap between the film and the academic research element.
Conor McBride 