This vignette was the product of a peculiar situation and collaboration. Although I had set up the green screen studio for a series of booth interviews due to a number of factors none of my interviewees was able to make it. Therefore, Brydan and myself found ourselves with a spare studio set up for interviews. I had foreseen this so had furiously tried to come up with an idea to no avail. Thankful Brydan had an idea so we started discussing, expanding and experimenting.
The idea itself focused around the creation of an audiovisual portrait. Due to the look of the booth interviews the portraits would be completely removed from an environment and focus upon the individual. We were both interesting at seeing how we could build a character from narration, and someone else’s perception of this perception. As we worked out approach shifted and expanding. The final vignette is comprised of a portrait of Brydan and myself with narration from the other. Both Brydan and myself have similar blank expressions but through narration two juxtaposing characters are present. This not only illuminates the disconnection between visual and audio (in this instance) but also how a third party can influence our perception of others. At the conclusion of the vignette both Brydan and myself are present within the same shot revealing how close our expression is, revealing that the differing narration provided the character development.

Both narrations were extensions of the truth with varying degrees of honesty. Brydan’s portrait was shot first and the narration is a fairly honest description of him. My slightly more abstract narration was born of wanting to construct a juxtaposing character. More thought was placed on the character created in the narration as we developed our idea around what the vignette was exploring. I think that this particular format could work with others; my only concern was that the juxtaposing characters format might become stale. The inclusion of other Portraits would be dependent upon whether they could stand alone as interesting characters, rather than forming a series of people drawn together based upon juxtaposition.