Week 7

Monday, 10.21.2019

Journal Entry

AH SHOOT it's already Week 7. On the bright side, I'm over halfway done with my Portfolio. On the not bright side, I still have 3 films left to make. On the brighter side, I've submitted both of my November 1 college apps, so I can (hopefully) dedicate more time to my Portfolio from now until November 1. I've started attempting to put together Chapter 7 but I really have no idea where to start. I also need to remember to interview Dr. Son and Dr. Roberts.

Tuesday, 10.22.2019

Journal Entry

I came to Polk tonight and wasted two hours doing NOTHING. Agh. I didn't do anything except literally just import my project files into a new Premiere timeline. Agh.

Wednesday, 10.23.2019

Journal Entry

Hopefully tonight will see more success than last. Sorted all of the b-roll from Ms. Wallner and the Sung Nam interview. I'm planning on interviewing Hanna tonight for Chapter 8. I don't really know how to even begin putting the documentary together--have clearly never made a documentary. Yike.

Journal Entry (Part 2)

After I got back to the dorm, I wrote questions for Dr. Son and Dr. Roberts and emailed them to try and schedule interview times. At least I got that much done! I also, as I tend to do, found myself in a "writing mood" and churned out a free write that has become a draft of my Artist Statement. Maybe it's because I've been watching a lot of spoken word poetry lately? Decidedly not an unproductive night.

Artist Statement Draft

The dedication at the beginning of Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club reads: “You asked me once what I would remember. This, and much more.” The first time I read her book, I realized that I, too, was being asked by the book what I would remember, and that I, too, would remember more than I thought. For the first time in my life, I was asking myself if there are things I want to remember that I have already forgotten, if there are things I can still keep myself from forgetting.

This Senior Portfolio stands as a monument to the things I want to remember. (Actually, the first thing I did when I embarked on this journey was make a Google Document titled “THINGS I WANT TO REMEMBER; this, and much more.”) Seeing as it has come in my final year of high school, it is a culmination of my artistic and intellectual work, but it is also a culmination of my experiences and my reflections upon them. Each piece plays a different role but serves the same purpose: to let memory & nostalgia manifest on the screen. Some films, “chapters,” discuss ideas of memory & nostalgia. Some are recreations of my memories & my nostalgia themselves. Some examine more closely the place of memory & nostalgia in our histories and our spaces. Some are simply to preserve a feeling, or the nostalgia for a feeling, or the memory of the nostalgia for a feeling.

I choose film as my medium because it gives me agency over the construction of my narratives and power over the way those narratives are presented. I have been asked what the point of making films that so closely mirror reality is, why I can’t just write essays, why anyone would watch something that they can just go experience for themselves in the world. My answer to that is simply that I am an artist and I want control over my art. Film as an art form has its inherent assets over other forms—the engagement of the senses, the combination of literature and performance, the recreation of life—and I seek to push the boundaries of the expectations of my art. In each chapter, my characters say exactly what I intend for them to say, do exactly what I intend for them to do, and even if what they say and do seems completely mundane and ordinary, they are doing them in the way that I have chosen. And that choice is what makes a narrative.

Tim O’Brien wrote in The Things They Carried that “What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end,” and like the chapters of my portfolio, the ones that have stuck are indeed fragments with neither beginning nor end. This, and Much More; these are the things I want to remember, the fragments of my life that have left me reaching for them time and time again. In making this Senior Portfolio, I have done for myself exactly what I intend to do to the audience. I have led myself through my own memories in the way that I hope to offer the audience a similar doorway into my mind. I have called into question the workings of other minds and fabricated, intertwined, and reassembled memories. I have given the audience a space to make a path through their own minds, their own memories. After all, a film is but a window into the maker’s thoughts, and the camera but an eye through which to see.

Sunday, 10.27.2019

Journal Entry

Went to Polk to work on Chapter 7 tonight. I actually got a lot done! I found the excerpts of the Sung Nam interview that I wanted, organized them by subject, and paired Frank Lin's documents with the appropriate interview excerpts.

Dr. Son asked me today if I could have the documentary finished by 11/8 for our presentation on Trustee's night. I'm planning on interviewing her and Dr. Roberts tomorrow during Conference and Skylar during fourth period. After that, I'll have everything I need, basically, to finish the documentary. I emailed Mr. Nam to ask for some photos this morning so fingers crossed that he replies! Pull through, Mr. Nam!