These Ghosts Aren't Dead

This was the first video project for my Intermediate Documentary class where we were tasked with filming a location as our subject. With this in mind, I wanted to explore a place that is close to my heart. Highland Park in Rochester, NY is close to the house where I grew up. I visit most often in the summertime when the lilacs are in bloom and the yearly festival, accurately named The Lilac Festival, takes place. Never before have I walked through the park when it was covered in snow. Having this opportunity to explore the space in this way was a brand new experience for me, even for a place that should seem so familiar.

The other reason I wanted to choose this place as my subject was for my grandmother, Barbara Cole. Early in 2009, she passed away, and later that year a lilac bush was memorialized in her name. Since then, it has been a family tradition to go back and visit. Because of my subject being Highland Park and the place where I most frequently think of her, I dedicated this video to my grandma. 

With that inspiration in mind, I wanted to use one of her favorite poems as a way to tie this back to her throughout the project, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost. There was something about the way I wanted someone else's voice to do the narration of this poem that I thought would be better, so I enlisted the help of my friend Aneesah Karam. I wanted to give her an idea of what she was doing without giving the somber story behind it so it wouldn't change her inflection. Instead, I told her to think peaceful and mystical. After seven different takes, we finally got the audio that we were both proud of; we were going to be good at only five, but she begged me to do a few more because she started to really get into it and was enjoying the process.