(Documentary file size was too large to embed directly in blog post)
Documentary Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/102YyfQN6aX_EmftOx5SNGS81nb8ysha7/view?usp=sharing
In my final documentary, Homes Are Memory Boxes, I locate myself as the narrator, filmmaker, and actor in an attempt to convey to my audience that, from a philosophical sense, we are all personal documentarians who take and hold onto photos and videos of ourselves. As personal documentarians, we have a great deal of agency, privilege, and responsibility to use multimedia resources as a form of cognitive offloading, historical preservation, and digital storytelling. My documentary works simultaneously to inform others about the dangers of falling victim to stereotypes, societal expectations, and their own backgrounds, which generates a preconceived notion to what home means, feels, or looks to them.
Through the documentary, I explain how I myself have fallen victim to the stereotypes and negative connotations (from the predominantly privileged campus community) regarding the residence hall where I have lived for my on-campus residential experience the past two years. I discuss in my narration that home is not something that is given and permanent, but is rather something that you have to build and work for over time. I illustrate my messaging through providing visual representations of myself, making my dorm room feel more homey by hanging up pictures that feel like home (ex, family, friends, myself, previous dorm room, etc).
I believe that my documentary voice shapes the representation of my subject in a unique way, given that my subject is myself. Bill Nichols explains that documentaries “speak about the world through both sound and images”(pg 42), which explains the choices I made as a filmmaker to arrange sounds, images, and videos that aligned with my goals of producing a documentary with an aural storytelling focus. A majority of my time working on the documentary was spent researching. While my own story focuses on a sense of home during my college experience, I spent most of my time researching older generations relocating into residential care facilities and people with dementia moving into memory care facilities. Also, I spent time researching my own life by looking back at childhood photos and images that I can find of myself on my phone. While I used video to help myself illustrate and articulate the story that I wanted to tell, my main focus when producing the documentary was commentary. It was important to me to use my voice to address an audience directly, hence why I prioritized recording my voiceover/narration separately and before choosing images and recording video clips for the documentary.