One of our class projects involved using archival footage in order to create an engaging story about a subject. Some examples include using footage from Charlie Chaplin films in order to tell the story of a scandal he had with someone in the past, another one involved telling a family story with mining.
Here is one example of a film using archival footage that Dylan and Clay (our professors) found great:
My archival footage was about abortion and I used most of my media from stock footage from the site Pond5. Looking back on it, I wish that I had utilized more archival footage of people telling their experiences and stories involving abortion and of the movement itself. The serious subject matter should have been paired with some serious footage and the footage I used made me feel like I delegitimized the subject matter in a way that didn’t convey the story as well as it could have been remembered. Oh well, a good lesson to learn in filmmaking early on! That’s one of my favorite and dreaded aspects of the class – through your mistakes you learn how not to make them in the future or how to improve in such a way as to make your filmmaking better. It’s wonderful learning better ways to do things, but then it’s awful making the mistakes. I’ve especially been learning that this week through shooting for my film – “Oh shoot I forgot to film something!”, “Dang I forgot to ask that question!”, “Augh, I should have framed that better!” – are all statements that I am glad but frustrated to have learned the hard way.
Right now, I have the strangest feeling of carrying gold waiting to be edited but knowing that there’s so much more work to do in order to make it shine. It’s an angst-y stressful time, but I know that this process will be paid off far too soon, but far too away from this moment.
