MEMORY_MANAGEMENT is A 5-6 MINUTE FILM EXPLORING HOW DIGITAL STORAGE IS SIMPLY DELAYING THE INEVITABILITY OF FORGETTING
In this film I wanted to explore digital memory and it's fragile connection to the thing it is recording.
After a bit of research, I came across a speech given by Jonathan Safron Foer at an introductory seminar welcoming new students to Middlebury College in America.
The speech, being about 24 minutes in length is mostly quite droll, however, around 9 minutes in, Foer begins to talk about the relationship between human memory and digital memory. He states that
"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."
Foer goes on to say that:
"Human memory is in a constant state of renewal"
He also states:
"A single computer can remember more than every human on the planet put together, but no computer can remember something by heart"
In summary, I wanted to focus on the idea that whilst digital memory can store all our memorable information, it cannot replace the memories themselves. When we put stuff onto a hard drive, it is just our way of trying to hold on, when in fact it is just another step towards the memory being forgotten.
I wanted to make a film that focusses on human memory, the emotion it invokes and the ephemerality of it. I intended the film to show how fast memory can dissipate, and how digital storage can help retain that memory, but then eventually let it fade into the infinite mass of digital storage, lost to human input.
TL;DR:
TL;DR:
- Conveying the scale and reach of data, by showing the sheer mass of it.
- Increasing in speed at an increasing rate, complimenting the idea of more data being produced.
- Montage consisting of the content of personal archives.
Inspiration:
Power of Ten (1997) - Charles Eames, Ray Eames
Tarnation (2003) - Jonathan Caouette
Watchtower of Turkey (2014) - Leonardo Dalessandri
Assembling Footage
- The archive footage was comprised from 8-10 hours from the filmmakers’ personal archive spanning from 1994 to 2005.
- One problem we ran into when dealing with older footage is gathering the data off of the DVDs that the original data was recorded on. This left many of the clips corrupted and/or completely unusable, although in some cases these glitches from the where the video had decayed worked in our favour.
- Interspersing shot footage with archive footage allowed us to advance the loose narrative, and in doing this, allowed us to set the pace of the film more easily.
However, because some the data we were using was so old, we encountered a few problems:
- The original tapes were damaged in places.
- Results included colour distortion illegible data.
- Further corruption occurred in the DVDs ripping process, resulting in a 90 minutes tape being compressed into 30 seconds clip which changes every time it is played.
- Other times the footage completely broke, and we couldn’t even access the DVDs with the data on them, meaning we lost at least another 7+ hrs of archive footage. (Luckily we already had 10 hours, so it wasn’t much of a problem)
Evaluation
- We could have used more diverse archive footage to enhance the overall message.
- The shoot could have been planned more thoroughly, and more equipment such as extra lights could have been utilised more effectively
- I'd have liked to spend more time composing shots that
- I would have liked to create a more progressive soundtrack to increase the pace of the film to make it more tense.
- The opening sequence could have been filled with something visual (We just couldn't figure out the best way of doing that).
- Delegated specific roles whilst editing, as quite often 2 of the three members would be sitting out/on the sidelines.
- More visual planning could have been done, as the visual style of the film (although roughly developed) was not developed until at least halfway through the editing process.