Unit6

Initially I wanted to make interviews/conversations with people where they tell me a personal story. The basic idea was to have this story be a time the interviewee stepped outside their comfort zone. Inspired by the podcast I mentioned before(Source), I thought it would be interesting to talk about overcoming prejudices.
I knew that I had to set up my interview partners with this concept and give them time to think about this subject properly. The most logical start to this conversation would be to start of by telling a story about a prejudice I overcame myself. This could engage the person and also lead to possibly more vulnerability.
Finding a story of overcoming a prejudice in myself however, turned out to be much more difficult than anticipated. This is an incredibly sensitive topic, so while I was able to come up with some stories, I realized that it can be very emotionally draining to share these stories (or even search for one of them). Asking of other to share emotional things that deep with me seems questionable as I do not have a goal for what to use them. It would be irresponsible to question someone this much without any discernible use.
Thus, I went a few steps back. Taking a step out of your comfort zone. Recently I realized how much I am struggling with self-confidence and being paralyzed when having to do anything that requires courage. It is always inspiring of people overcoming their own fears. So why not ask people about a time they were scared of something, did it anyway and what they learned from that.

My process is quite straightforward. I have filmed my grandma, I asked her about Iraq and let her speak freely. I chose to film her hands, as I am interested in her embodied story telling. I also wanted to capture the surroundings, to give the effect of my grandma telling a story. I think her storytelling is really important in my identity and sense of home.

Having made my recordings, it was purely editting left.
Editing was an ongoing struggle.

In this process I worked through first editting the audio, being left with 8 minutes of recordings instead of 40.

Then I started composing the video, leaving the original video of the hands and her in the kitchen as much as possible while incorporating shots from the living room. In this process, I was struggling in getting into a "rythm" of visuals.

When I thought I was almost there, I realized I needed footage of "the homeland", and thus her home. I had a few videos myself, but they were not representative of my grandma's home. So I asked her to ask the people living in her home now to send her some videos. The quality was obviously not great, but the shots really add to the experience.

Lastly, I had decided to translate the whole video as it otherwise seemed to leave my grandma uttering without truly speaking. This turned out to be a lot of work especially in adding the captions.