Brief 3 “KASEY”
VIDEO ANALYSES
When asking my friend to describe herself and how she would identify her own character, she found it really difficult even when asked to choose four words best suited to herself. So I decided instead of bombarding her with interview-like questions, we would just have an informal chat about each other. After doing this for the best part of an hour I discovered that it wasn’t out of modesty and/or shyness that she was finding it difficult to verbally portray herself but rather, out of a genuine inability to define herself. She doesn’t know who she is yet or how she wants to define herself. During our conversation she told me a story about how she and her mother almost died giving birth to her. I thought this story was the best representation of her nativity of self-awareness because she told me how these weren’t her own memories and that it felt as if it happened to a whole other person. To elaborate, even now, a nineteen year old girl, she still feels like a child and she still remains vulnerable to change and experience.
I decided not to show her face at the start so that the audience can create their own perception/interpretation of her through her story and her voice to add more effect at the end when I do show her face.
The ending has audio already heard throughout the film as a sort of recap so that the audience can now hear her voice paired with the actual visual of Kasey
The most problematic aspect of this brief was the acquiring of RMIT equipment. It was difficult to make a plan for when to shoot, thus, when to hire and to ensure the subject was available as well. Hiring for one night made it vital to ensure workable footage was obtained the first time so editing could begin asap. One other problem was working with sound as separate footage. I had three audio clippings (1. from the video recordings, 2. found footage 3. audio recordings). Clipping the wanted audio from the unwanted and making sound natural rather than suddenly cropped proved difficult but I do think I managed well with minor hiccups.
In terms of creative possibilities, I have never worked with found footage before and seeing how well my original footage (including the audio) worked with it (for my first time) really got me thinking about other projects I could do. I had to make so many creative choices and the biggest one was deciding whether I wanted to contrast the found footage with the atmosphere of the story or to compliment it.
