The video above is rough draft of the ideas I will be exploring in my final product. The piece opens with a farmer, Murray, who acts as the primary subject of the film. It then jumps to George, another local farmer who explains the importance of growing organically and what large agricultural corporations do to small and local farmers. The following segment is a reflection of my work over the past 9 weeks:
Until recently, I really had no idea where I wanted my film to go. I knew I wanted to tell the story of Murray, and to correlate farmers with consumers. But as I was putting together that short video, and looking over my interviews, I found that I could make a story much more compelling than that. I could not only tell the story of Murray with other farmers, but I could give an insight to the future generations of farmers, what it takes to be a farmer in todays world, and how specialized farming (such as growing organic) is so important to local farmers and the environment. Both the farmers you saw in that edit are organic farmers, and when you see the film, I hope I have demonstrated their views on the matter and why they take it so seriously in their work.
Communicating is something I’ve had a lot of trouble with this quarter. From the start of the year, I thought that I could keep up with everyone involved on a daily or weekly basis...and that just hasn’t happened. I’m lucky to have people like Murray who is willing to schedule an interview any time of the week and on whatever week, but that won’t always happen.
An anecdote: I have realized recently, when shooting the Farmers Markets, that it’s a lot harder to get interviews when theres tons of people around...I’ve visited the Durham and Carrboro farmers markets three times, and I’ve got three interviews from them, so being able to communicate and collaborate with these people on more than a customer base is hard and something I desperately need to work on. In my case, that may mean scheduling an interview ahead of time, even when I know it can be done in a matter of minutes.
There have been times where I knew I could go out and get footage, and I didn’t. I have realized over this project that one of the hardest things you have to do is actually get up and improve upon your work. When you have the timeframe of an entire year, the idea of putting off a piece of the project seems almost inevitable. This could partly be due to how I’m trained to act as a student, but I think it’s more correlated with the aspect of finding a topic that you are legitimately interested in, and know that you will be invested throughout the entire process.
Beginning this project last summer, I was uncertain about where I wanted the film to go, but I had an idea, and I had subjects, but it turned out that wasn’t enough. And over the Fall, I lost a lot of my interest in the topic of farming; it could have resulted from the amount of time I had put into its creation, but I think it was more a simple loss of passion. I went through a large dry spot of not getting much done, and not having the motivation to get off my ass. It’s hard to say exactly what I did to get out of the slum, but as soon as I started working again, (going out: getting footage, interviewing, and communicating with the people I was working with) the process quickened and I found myself pushing harder than any other project I’ve done. Concluding: What I’ve found is that unless you have some real passion for what you're doing (whether it be film, math, history, whatever), it’s not going to get done without a real effort and care on your part.
When it comes down to my actual process, it is the mindset of having that passion, but its also being able to internalize all of the goals and steps you need to get through in order to finish the product. I talked about how at the beginning of of producing this film, I had little knowledge of where the story would go, and I think that has to do a lot with internalizing the information I had, and being able to get a story out of raw materials. If I had not gone back through and watched all of my footage and made that little short, I probably still wouldn’t know where I was headed. Waiting until now to get this far, and create that trailer, it created a weakness that I had throughout most of my filming: which was not knowing exactly what I should be filming, what I should be doing to push myself. Fortunately, I got it done and at the stage I’m at now, I know where I need to go and I know what’s important for me to get done. And it turns out its nothing like the outline I had at the beginning of filming, it’s completely different, and I need to work through it and set new guidelines and topics that were not previously addressed.