I am in the workings of shooting for a new video.
The project started out with an interest in the emotional attachment to fact vs. fiction. In my first shoot, I video taped myself telling a story in the first person. The story was not my own, but a constructed narrative based off of the character Jenny from the award-winning 1994 film Forrest Gump. It came of as a documentary-style interview. As the story unraveled it became clear that the story I was telling was not my own. Even if the viewers could not associate the story with that specific film, it was obvious that it was a Hollywood story (due to the number and extremity of events discussed). I wanted the audience to question which character (me as an individual who was telling the world a personal story of hardship or me as a fictional character performing for entertainment purposes) they could, or wanted to, relate to more.
I did not feel that the one take was enough to get my idea across. Some people thought it was purely a live-journal sob story, others thought it was too obvious that I was reciting a fictional story, all which was mostly due to my lack of acting abilities. So, in my next take on this project, I hired actors and actress to tell stories.
Here is the e-mail with the project description I sent out:
This email is to give you all a brief description of my ideas for this project. If you are still interested after reading, just reply an email back with "i dig it," and we can talk about the project further. If you feel it is not for you, feel free to delete.
So, as I stated in the craigslist ad, I want this project to be a collaboration. I am a video artist, not a director of scripts, so the character you choose and the story you would like to tell is entirely up to you. I am not at all asking you to write a script, but to simply retell a story (or a single scene if you want) of a character that you are already familiar with. The more you don't remember and the more you improvise the better!
What I need from you guys are two 5 minute monologues:
1) The first monologue will be you giving a first-person account as a character from your chosen movie, tv show, newspaper article, etc. (For example: If you choose to tell Jenny's story from Forrest Gump, you may begin your monologue by recalling how Forrest punched some guy at the strip club you were working at and the time when he beat up your boyfriend who was yelling at you outside your dorm room, or you might explain the famous scene in which you ran into the corn fields and pray that God would turn you into a bird.. You can focus on one scene, or you can string together a bunch of scenes).
**You do not have to be correct in an exact depiction**. Tell the story as you remember the character to be.
This is more a project on subjective memory and fictional identities than it is on an accurate depiction of a known character.
2) The second monologue will be structured the same, except we will choose a communal movie. So all 5-6 actors/ actresses will be telling the same story but with different versions. In an additional e-mail we can figure out what movie we should choose!
The monologues will be filmed with you sitting in a chair as though you were being interviewed for a documentary.
Because there is no predetermined script, the structure of the project is likely to change again and again. As of now my idea for the first monologue is to combine all the footage I take of your multiple stories and thread them together to create a new fictional narrative. As for the second monologue, I am hoping to recreate an event that is entirely subjective.
I am not sure exactly how it is going to turn out, but that makes working on it together way more interesting.
So, my hopes for this revision is to really blur the lines between fact and fiction, to have the audience have to dig further into their memories to examine which is real and which is not and to then to further build a relationship with them based on that assessment. I am also interested in the new story that is created, a story that more closely resembles the confusion of actuality. A story of truth.
