Autobiographical Media Project – Development Blog 2 (WEEK 9)

Development Blog 2 (WEEK 9)

Being that the project is a first-person media making work and relating to the concept of authenticity and confessional media, I started to record audiovisual snippets of my daily life. According to Cuevas, “personally recorded movies add a strong sense of authenticity and attached true truth value because the film is not altered by commercial or corporate interests.” (19) Following that, when it came time to author the film, I combined some previously recorded footage and a few more recently recorded films into an editing software called VN Editor. To explain, the reason why I chose this software over Adobe Premiere Pro is that I found VN Editor to be a much more diverse, creative, and faster platform to work with. As a result, I decided to author the film using VN Editor.

In addition to creating a banal film work, Steph advised me to read Lee Humphries’ book, “The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life,” following the pitch presentation that we delivered during our last study session. From the recommended reading, Humphries’ recommended reading, “the act of sharing pointless things and documenting the moments of everyday life is a form of sharing intimacy, authenticity, and honesty.” (43) Overall, I accumulated over ten or more personally recorded video archives in total. On the other hand, upon writing the poem, I encountered some challenges and difficulties. The writing process was more difficult and time-consuming than I anticipated because, despite having so many things to say in my head, I found it difficult to express my thoughts through written words. In short, despite experiencing writer’s block, I completed both the archival collection and the written narration as planned.

 

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Reference List

Cuevas, E 2013, ‘Home movies as personal archives in autobiographical documentaries’, Studies in Documentary Film, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 17-29, viewed 17 May 2022,  Routledge Collection database, DOI: 10.1386/sdf.7.1.17_1

Humphries, L 2018, ‘Sharing The Everyday’, The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life, MIT Press, viewed 17 May 2022, <https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=5348982>.