Memory Series

Memory Series

My work is primarily about site specific and the memories linked to the site. To try an progress from documenting and capturing the site using photography and sound I decided to try video.

When using sound I carried out a number of walks that reflected the difference of urban and rural landscapes, each walk I took had a memory linked to it. With the photography series I did the same, but captured different aspects of the walk that interested me.

I notice that all my work was based around my memories, so I decided to experiment with other people’s memories that was based around a site. When planning the filming I wanted to ask people to recall:

- A happy memory

- A sad memory

- Something that interests them at the moment

- A relationship that they feel is important/affecting them at the moment. (Could be about a past relationship of a lost friend/current relationship with a family member etc etc.)

- Something that they are passionate about.

I wanted the filming to take place in a location that is personal to the person so that I could film shots of the surrounding environment that either related to the subject or would show an insight to the person’s life.

After thought and consideration I broke it down into 4 films

Jane – Talking about alopecia

Joe – Talking about his passion for football

Ello & La – Talking about friendship

Matt – Talking about music

When I first drafted the films, I decided that I wanted it to be a silent film with shots of the surrounding environment and with the person talking. I then wanted to subtitle parts of the film that I thought summed up the memory and conversation. When trying this out though, I decided that I didn’t like the effect of just a few sentences, as the rest of the film seemed uneven. The film is based on memories yet I was leaving out so much by leaving it silent. When first editing the ‘Jane’ film, I subtitled some then edited it to subtitle all the film. However when I got to the ‘Matt’ film, I decided that I liked hearing him play the guitar as he spoke as it showed the main reason of the film that was his passion for music. With all the films I found that the background noise interested me as it reflected the subject matter and went well with the film.

This proved to be difficult to change as I had first planned to subtitle the whole film so therefore when filming you can hear conversations that happened between the person and I. Although I used a h2 Zoom recorder, I couldn’t match up the recording with the filming exactly, or some of the recordings came out too quiet. Therefore I resorted to using the sound recorded on the camera. The sound is ok, but I can still hear the tape so in the future I will use a better microphone. I think these mistakes were due to the plan of using a silent film and then changing my mind.