In my journey making the one minute oral history, we have met some challenges. In the beginning of the process, I was planning on filming a video about the gender issues and the gender specific rooms. I wanted to make an interview with some of the relatives to the Griffin family to find out more about Marion Mahony Griffin’s story and why she was not credited for her work with the Capitol Theatre. Perhaps supplement with an interview with some experts on the gender debate area and accumulate knowledge about when the change in attitude about gender occurred. But it did not seem easy to get in touch with some of the relatives and it would have been difficult for them to give a fulfilled answer on why – probably they would all have said that the issues were caused by the time the Capitol was built in. Besides the interview, I would have loved filming the whisky room in the Capitol but since (1) we were not allowed to go in there again, (2) the room was not even fully renovated, it was not possible to get footage. Even though it had been possible, my project had failed anyway because when the Capitol was built in 1924, they did not have any footage of the room in action. So, I changed my mind and decided to examine an easier topic.

My topic ended up focusing about the Capitol’s collaboration with ACMI. Firstly, because I wanted to study something present. Besides, I find it interesting to interview several people about the same topic and with my focus on the ACMI collaboration I am able to interview both people from the Capitol and ACMI. Earlier in this class, we have found out how oral history can change depending on whose being interviewed. In our study of oral history, we discovered how the answers from the interviewee is influenced by the way that he/she wants to appear. Therefore, I find it interesting to examine the partnership from both perspectives and perhaps discover some disagreements in their views. Another exciting thing about focusing on the partnership is that the focus enables a look on (1) how the partnership with ACMI helps the Capitol to recapture its status as an important building in the Melbournian culture and everyday life and (2) how the Capitol creates an exceptional setting for ACMI’s exhibitions and events. So after pitching my ideas about the partnership, me and my fellow students divided us in groups with the same interests. We contacted Kristy Matheson, head of ACMI, and Ghita Loebenstein, creative producer of the Capitol. We wrote to them about dates where we could interview them but after some writing back and forth, they both never returned on our mails.

We were limited on the interview dates which was caused by the fact that we were not in Melbourne to conduct the interviews before the deadline. Besides our tight schedule, our cast of the interviews did not reply on our suggestions of dates. Given that we did not have any to interview, our understanding of using oral history in our project had to adjust. Instead we recorded a voiceover on our own outlining the most important facts about the Capitol and ended up presenting the partnership with ACMI. In that way, our video performed as a trailer for our final project and we tried to create some dispense by keeping the audience in suspense. Without any interview, no recordings inside ACMI and not much footage from the inside of the Capitol, we were in deep water. So, we decided to make a time-lapse outside of both buildings. The lighting outside ACMI was really good and a lot of people walked by – which made the recording successful. But I cannot say the same thing about the recordings of the Capitol. The inflow of light contributed to bad lighting and nothing really exciting happened in front of the building which resulted in a quite boring video. Unfortunately, we did not have time to redo the footage so we had to stick to these recordings. We edited and clipped the recordings together with some of the old footage that our professor had provided. Luckily, we discovered that we had some short, cool recording of the ceiling from the inside of the Capitol. All in all, our video ended up being an okay representation of the Capitol and an indicator of what our final video will be about. For the next video, we anticipate bringing home the interviews with both the Capitol and ACMI and edit it together with some unique recordings from inside the Capitol. We expect that the workers are almost done with the renovation and perhaps ACMI has already set up some of their exhibitions. Otherwise it will be very hard to encourage people to visit the Capitol if the representation is not of good appearance.

Word count: 821