Imagining Reality #1 - Initial Ideas

11.11.19

Imagining Reality: People and Place Documentary

BRIEF:
- Create a fact based film exploring the theme of people and place
- Should be conveyed through cinematic language
- Imaginative use of non-diegetic sound
- Challenge conventional documentary form
- Interviews may be used but only for audio tracks

Group: Claudia Ndumiso, Ellie, Leah, Kaitlan

For this project, we began as a class to gather general ideas that fits with the brief to get main ideas flowing. We had 7 categories which we then created sub branches that narrowed down what we were thinking. Here are a bunch of things we came up with that I noted down:       

Then after much discussion as a group, we came with 2 initial ideas:

Idea No. 1

The idea that I came up with was inspired by one of our group members, Leah, who has a form of synaesthesia. Synaesthesia is a neurological condition that merges senses that aren't normally connected; an involuntary experience of a sensory input that stimulates a different sense. 

The questions we would be exploring are 

What is synaesthesia?

How does it effect your surroundings and every day life?

It works with the theme as it is a personal condition that can come in different forms. Therefore it would be a point of view documentary. In addition, it effects your perception of your surroundings, therefore fitting with 'place'. I also thought it would be a good opportunity to do some experimenting with how we could capture synaesthesia as it isn't a physical thing that we can film. I had the idea of reflecting the subject matter on to the cinematography by using colours and manipulating the audio. I thought it might be a good idea to include some form of animation as well as live action. Maybe looking at different forms of animation, using watercolour? 

When looking at the theme of people I also thought it would be interesting to look at how it effects creatives, especially when going to an arts university, what better place to do primary research and get first hand accounts. This means we would have to reach out on social media when finding these people.

Idea No. 2

The second idea was of Leah's, she came up with the very cheeky yet fun idea of looking at an adult sex shop and finding someone with passion and who felt strongly about promoting and normalising such a taboo in today's society. Questions we would look at would be:

Why have you decided to go in to this industry? / How did you come across this career path?

How do people react to your occupation?

We thought it would be interesting in looking at this as it is such an intimate topic which we could reflect in our choice of shots. We would have to act fast if we were to pursue this idea as we would need to find out if we would be able to film in the shop and if they would be up for being interviewed.

Pitching Ideas to the Class

The feed back we got after pitching our two main ideas were very positive. They all said they were both very strong ideas. In terms of looking at synaesthesia, some groups had no idea what it was. This gave us the impression that it was a good sign as we could take the opportunity to educate people on it. For those who did know, where interested in how we would visualise or reflect it through sound and said we could really explore those two senses.

When getting feedback on the adult sex shop, every other group thought it was a good idea as it was a fun topic and that you wouldn't know where it would take you as it seems very unpredictable. In addition, they made us very aware that there are lots of things we could explore and that we should narrow down our questions if we were to do this particular idea. We were given examples such as looking at it from a feminist stance and that women should be and feel more liberated. 

The class feedback was extremely useful as both Anne and other students were able to point us in the direction we should go. From this we chose to go with the sex shop as people seemed very keen on it. It was also really helpful as Anne was also able to give us an insight and some advice from her experience in documentaries revolving around the topic of sex.