Documentary Major Project Proposal

Loss, Under the Lens

Introduction

As we grow older, we gain a deeper understanding of life. Like a camera finally gaining focus, many concepts that once felt so abstract and intangible gradually become clear. I’ve never had much experience with loss. I knew of it but never really understood it until this past year.

Losing my grandfather to the big C felt like I was grieving someone who was still alive. Chemotherapy and radiation reduced him to a husk, and it was painful to move forward with the looming threat of his inevitable end. I was torn between cherishing the time I had left with him and mourning the grandpa in my memories. When he passed, it felt so wrong to feel emotional about it. Subconsciously, I convinced myself that his death was a logical proceeding of events: a man lost his battle with cancer and died. We all saw this coming, so there’s no point in being sad or upset about our loss. We were ready for this, right? I thought I was.

It was only months after his funeral when the realization hit me. I was cutting my brother’s hair (a routine we picked up during the quarantine), and I remembered the last time I cut my grandpa’s hair. It was days before he was admitted into hospice care. He was so fragile, slumped on our kitchen chair as I tried my best to work the clippers around the swelling of his jaw and neck. His graying hair fell to the tiled floors like petals off a withering flower. My grandpa had always been a man of appearances: he was consistently dressed well, maintained a well-groomed appearance, and exuded confidence wherever he went. Remembering him so far removed from his usual sophisticated look shattered me. The grief I thought I had escaped caught up to me, and I was not ready. No amount of mental preparation would ever have prepared me for this.

I realized that he wasn’t just a ‘man’ who lost his battle to cancer. He was a caring husband, an enduring father, a gentle grandfather, a reliable brother, and a wise friend. He was more than what my rational mind summed him up to be. Thousands of cancer patients die every day, and even more die yearly. He was just a statistic in the grand scheme of things. In an attempt to protect myself from anticipatory grief, I had reduced him to a nobody. But he was somebody to me. It wasn’t right to remember him as a victim of cancer. I needed to remember him as the dapper war veteran who was unmatched in poker and doted on the young. He was my grandpa and so much more. I learned to be more appreciative of my time on Earth, of those around me, and of my health. My first lesson in loss is that it gives more than it takes.

Loss takes many forms. Whether it be emotional loss, physical loss, or existential loss, being human is about taking and losing. For my documentary project, I’d like to interview people and their experience on loss to put into perspective the different interpretations that exist. Inspired by personal experiences and shared experiences from family and friends, this documentary aims to highlight the highs and lows on the journey towards healing. I feel like loss is often an awkward subject to discuss, and I hope that by bringing together the many accounts of loss, I can generate a better understanding for both myself and my audience.

Methods & Materials

• An interactive website that tells (my) story of loss
• iPad & Procreate drawing application
• Adobe Photoshop & Premiere Pro
• Visual Studio Code (using HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
• Fifine condenser microphone

Time Schedule

• Week 7: Storyboarding & writing voiceover dialogue
• Week 8: Introduction scenes
• Week 9-12: Building an interactive website
• Week 13-14: Graphic assets & animations
• Week 15: Final tweaks

Research References

Web documentaries have been around for decades, but their versatile form allows creative exploration and integration. The “battle for the screen,” or battle for people’s attention, has called for new ways of reaching and engaging audiences. Essentially, what a documentary encapsulates is to deliver a message or to record information. Web technologies make it possible to distribute documentaries that reach extensive audiences as long as an internet connection is available. The interactivity of web technologies provides documentary filmmakers the chance to design new forms of documentaries. Methods combine various media forms, such as video, audio, and animation, to create new and engaging narratives. According to a case study of Audience Reception and User Engagement on iOtok, interactive documentaries allow the user to shape their own experiences, allowing audiences to learn on their own rather than it being a guided experience. iOtok is a web documentary composed of 13 episodes that was released in 2017. It tells the story of the last inhabitants of Biševo, a small Croatian island threatened by mass tourism, allowing users to click through a 3D-render of the town to explore and speak to locals. It offers a unique approach to documentaries that inspires me.

Another example is The Goggle’s Welcome to Pine Point, which documents Pine Point, a small town in Canada that no longer exists. The webdoc features videos, interviews, ephemera, and other artifacts gathered in a scrapbook format that audiences can collect as they move between the town’s past livelihood and its current state of abandonment.

Similarly, Michelle Mizner’s The Last Generation is a webdoc about life on the Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands is a low-lying island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that is increasingly becoming affected by the rising sea levels due to global warming. The story follows children who live on the Marshall Islands and tells an immersive story capturing the hopes, fears, and resilience of these residents.

Work Statement

I created an interactive web documentary that discusses my healing process from grief. Using a fantastical analogy, the art is hand-drawn using Procreate and edited using Adobe Premiere Pro. For the story, I made a little self-insert of myself as a photographer where the person I’ve lost is alive through my camera’s viewfinder and not in reality. It’s an analogy to how we see the person who’s no longer with us in everyday life, and it’s a slow process of getting used to not seeing them in those scenes anymore, but their memories will continue to live. The voice-over tells the story of my experience with loss while accompanied by my animation. I used my condenser microphone to record the voiceover and used free source audio for sound effects/music. Overall, I think the project does a good job of conveying my message using art and storytelling. Although my approach does not include informative video footage, I tailored my animations for that purpose. 

Sources

Ducasse, J., Kljun, M., & Čopič Pucihar, K. (2020). Interactive Web Documentaries: A Case Study of Audience Reception and User Engagement on iOtok. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 36(16), 1558–1584. https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2020.1757255