I think that the most successful part of my project is the way that I edited the visuals to match what Nic spoke about. I tried my best to portray a sense of fluidity and movement, which is what I perceived of my subject in the way that he spoke and in his train of thought. This can be seen in the found footage that I picked of jellyfish and of the dancers.
I came across difficulties balancing the non-diagetic sound with the diagetic sound and the text at the end. The song that I used uses archival spoken text which I think draws attention away from Nic’s spoken answers and the written text that appear at the end of the project. I lowered the volume of the music at these points, but otherwise there was not much else I could do without editing Nic’s song.
What I learnt from making this portrait is to listen to the subject and interact with their answers/questions/movements. Nic is a very physically spontaneous guy, so we had the most fun when we experimented in the warehouse with improvised dance. Before this I conducted a typical interview and his answers were great, but I don’t know Nic through formal conversations, I know him through adventures and experimentation, so I wanted to show that in my project. After the improvised dance Nic was more open physically and verbally, so I think that he needed that intense movement to warm up creatively. I didn’t get to use a lot of the improvised footage that we created, but this project has spurred ideas between the two of us and we will definitely collaborate on more projects and use the footage that was left out.
I learnt about collaborating with the subject, and I also asked for his opinion on the drafts before finalising the project. Nic had asked me to leave some footage out, because of legal reasons, which was a fair thing to ask and I complied. I also learnt how versatile found footage can be in adding meaning to a piece.
