Reflections film pitch
9.2.15
'Human Memory is in a constant state of renewal'
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| Jonathan Safron Foer at an introductory seminar welcoming new students to Middlebury College |
TREATMENT
A 5-6 minute film exploring how digital storage is simply delaying the inevitability of forgetting
This film will be compiled from archive footage assembled from old hard drives acquired off of friends and family, accompanied by a voiceover providing thoughts on the fragility of memory, and how easily it can be lost.
The film will begin with a shot of a piece of home video, perhaps a child opening a gift, or a family spending time together on holiday. After about thirty seconds the frame will zoom out to reveal 2 or three more clips in addition to the original. As we zoom out further this pattern will continue. We will see hundreds of different shots, each one getting smaller, and the sound of them becoming more and more faint and distorted the farther back we go. Eventually we will be so far zoomed out that the clips will become out of site and out of earshot, fading into a white/gray solid colour. It will remain this way for a few seconds and then the zoom will continue going backwards, revealing a grey hard drive sitting in a derelict attic in a cardboard box. It is in this continuous motion that the viewer will realise that the video clips (or memories) were files stored in the hard drive, and will hopefully realise how easy it is to upload our memories onto digital devices, and let archivesfootage build up and then eventually forget about them.
CONCEPT
Due to the fleeting nature of memories, we are compelled to document them using the technology at our disposal, and archive these moments on storage systems (such as the cloud, or external hard drives).
We do this in the hope of retaining some of the emotional significance we felt in that moment because, above all, it is human to want to remember.
Yet human memory is in a 'constant state of renewal', meaning that we are always creating new memories and constantly building up nearly endless archives of memories that carry 'fleeting moments' that we wouldn't have remembered if we hadn't documented them.
"If a memory can be retained forever, captured in a string of ones and zeros hovering above in an always accessible cloud...the memory is already on its way to being forgotten."
INSPIRATION
I am kind of inspired by the visual style of 'the power of 10'. the gradual zoom out and the matter of fact voiceover guides the viewer through a journey of our known universe.
Failed Memories, by David Szauder is also a favourite.
Szauder draws parallels between human and digital memory, suggesting
‘Our brains store away images to retrieve them later, like files stored away on a hard drive. But when we go back and try to re-access those memories, we may find them to be corrupted in some way.'
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