Alice De Bruin – Dérive from Media Factory on Vimeo.

Reflection:

My finished project, ‘Dérive’, is finished and uploaded to YouTube. 

In retrospect, it’s a completely different film to what I had originally envisioned. But I like it. The scrapbook kind of feel to it – being messy, and inspired by what I see every day feels very personal.
It came from being a reflection on a home to a way of wondering about Melbourne – the way I see it now, as opposed to the way I used to see it as a child. The note taking aspect really encapsulated the way I record and soak up an experience, and I wanted to express it.
My idea of noticing in this film was being present in a moment. In being stationary and reflecting on a memory. It’s easy to get used to needing a distraction whilst being in transit, and too often I find myself filling my ears with sound, filling in time with mindless tasks on my phone, reading or catching a few minutes of sleep. I never seem to find people just merely being present anymore. I hope, upon viewing, that the audience is able to connect with these feelings, and get lost in a story for a while.

When it came to capturing footage, I employed a tactic I learned from another class – the art of the aimless wander. This art, called Dérive, was a practice used by professional walkers, in which they would move around a place without a map, companion or wish to be anywhere. They believed walking to be the best form of transportation, and that you never really fully understood a place until you had walked it. 

I have attached a text which explains the art of ‘Psychogeography’ well here:

Theory of the Derive-1-10etx3e

If it were to be remade, I would pursue the trip to Toorak first. I would find a place with significance and spend the day there, without the constraint of time. Then I would begin filming. What was special, what was interesting, etc. I feel as though building a story before the footage doesn’t always work – I didn’t want to cut to fill a story.
But in terms of how I ultimately feel about the film, I won’t know until I hear feedback on it. In my mind its just a snapshot of a memory, and I don’t know the little things I would do to improve it. Of course, the production can always be heightened, and my editing can always take another step up, but it needs to be viewed through another set of eyes to know its effect.
I’m glad I made the film alone and not in a group – it made it more personal for me to get the story out. Although I’ve worked in groups before, if I was taking on a certain topic like this again I’d want to do it completely independently.

I want to do this again though, this idea of psychogeography. It’s an amazing way to observe and record a place, and to understand it. 

Recollecting on the semester, I think I’ve learned a lot about being present in art. I’ve learned how much can be observed in one moment. I’ve realised the smaller details in an image or a sound can be the most beautiful, and most effective. These elements don’t always need to be part of a story – in fact, on their own, they allow the audience to make their own sense of it. For example, the film Leviathan did this brilliantly – by simply attaching a bunch of GoPro’s to fishing rods and parts of a ship, and seeing what they picked up. It was an eerie feeling, the sounds, the colours of the sea. It felt quite dark and menacing. But no part of the film told me to feel that. 

That’s the beauty of art, not being told what to feel but instead losing yourself in someone else’s world. I hope that’s what I’ve done. My scrapbook feeling to the film was very much inspired by how I normally record my thoughts. Earlier on in the semester, I was surprised to read David Shield’s ‘Reality Hunger’, and see the way he recorded his random, inner thoughts. I connected with it immensely, downloaded the PDF and spent a bit of time rereading them. I wanted my own work to have the same feeling. 

The News from Home film shaped my final projects a lot more than anticipated. It was helpful to see how someone could portray something so personal to a viewer, and it be received well, despite the fact that the voiceover and the images did not correlate. I thought that this kind of film changes your perspective of a place or person – for example, if the voiceover had of been of the woman’s experience in NYC, the film would have been completely different. 

I’ve certainly learned a lot and created better things as the time went on through the semester. The class gave me back a lot of confidence I’d lost in the art of filming. It can be disheartening, and I needed to retrieve my spark.