As part of week 6 in Experimental Media, we were asked to create a project within our groups that addressed History. Within our group, we chose to look particularly at oral histories, and the possible falsehoods that come out of them.
We found it interesting that both parties involved in the same story or event could have different histories. It also raised the question as to whether it was possible or not to find one true history. I believe that a "true history" exists, but there is no way of conveying that truth because through an events portrayal the artist will always have some influence on how the event is conveyed.
This is an interesting thing to look at as a filmmaker because now it wasn't a question of whether we will influence the telling of the story or not (because obviously we would), but how much we wanted to influence the telling. We addressed this by having both characters having a dialogue, placing that dialogue as a voiceover (that took place at "present day"), but showing the event in question (that took place the previous day/ in "the past"). As a group we decided that we wanted to influence the viewer as little as possible. How we physically achieved this goal was through the use of one stationary wide shot - there were no cuts or edits, and no complex camera angles. The dialogue from the event was taken out, so what the viewer was seeing was just a "bare bones" display of the physical actions. You can find the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqSjdc8Gpz4
