BACKSTORY – Joschka Laukeninks
An 8 minute short film that follows the entire life span of an unidentified protagonist, with every shot positioned just behind him, so every experience is seen from the back of his head .
I found the piece to be particularly thought provoking and poignant, and it was shot in a totally unique style that I had never seen before. As soon as I saw the film I fell totally in love with the cinematography and craft of it, the way that the sound, pacing and imagery worked together to totally entrance the viewer was totally inspiring. The composition of the shots were aesthetically pleasing and the way that it is shot from behind him, leaving the protagonist faceless, helps to convey the more universal message of how important it is to really experience each and every moment of your life. It also proved quite striking in some moments and gave the viewer a whole new focus on the environments that the film was shot in.
The style in which the shots of this film are composed heavily influenced my film for aesthetics & technologies, as i thought it would be effective in exploring the theme of identity, while allowing the theme to be explored both personally and universally. BACKSTORY also inspired me to really work on the sound design of the piece, as it totally controls the pace and tone of the film and it also encouraged me to focus on transitions between audio tracks will help the piece flow more naturally.
The Art Of Being Yourself (TedX Talk) – Caroline McHugh
I then started to research different articles, speeches and journals on the theme of identity. Despite it being such a huge topic, I actually struggled to find inspiration from all of it. Very few pieces spoke to me in a particularly thought provoking way and I wanted something that wasn’t just shallowly based around Oscar Wilde’s classic quote; “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken”, I wanted something that went a bit deeper than just simply telling people to be themselves.
I finally found this in the form of a TedX Talk by Caroline McHugh on The Art Of Being Yourself. The eloquently spoken McHugh doesn’t just theorise about how to better yourself or simply just celebrate the idea of being yourself as most talks surrounding identity do. She actually talks about what it could possibly mean to have this thing called an identity, what it means and where it comes from, also more importantly, how it is rooted in everyday life. I wanted to provoke thought and reflection through my film in a similar way that Caroline McHugh does in her speech, with one way of doing that being relating the theme to real life experiences.
PCA Isobel Wilkinson - BA Film 