During the early process of creating my film I decided to use photos from my parents’ travel archives rather than current photographs of myself and adapt the story so that it was narrated from my dad’s perspective. This was because I believed in the emotional strength of the story and its linear progression, as well as the aesthetic film photographs with their idiosyncratic smudges and time-aged stains. I had trouble connecting small aspects of the story to larger pieces because the nature of film photography makes the user (my parents) tend to save rolls of film for large, important events, not small ‘in-between’ things that might help to fill out a narrative story. To get around this, I took my own photos of my parents’ maps, books on mountaineering, and other stylistic photos and videos in order to fill the gaps in the visual narrative. By adding certain colour grading and grain effects to these, I was able to get them to match the film look of the archival photos in a way that I believe was effective and added to the visual experience. I also decided to change the aspect ratio to an unusual 2454 x 1648 because this was an optimal size that fit most of the archival photos, and since many of the photos are landscape related, I wanted to allow their full composition and array of detail to be seen.

 

Another mentionable stylistic feature that I utilised was constant sound effects. My vision for this film included an extreme sensory experience, and I wanted the audience to be able to feel to the heat or the harsh sounds coming from the narrative environment. For every ‘scene’ or section of the story, I implemented immersive sound effects, for example traffic or dance music, that was relevant in heightening the most dominant senses at play during that section. In addition, I added sounds that were not technically in the narrative, but still heightened the sensory experience by association. For example, the ‘heat wave’ sound is made from sizzling bacon, or later, where the printed information about altitude sickness is overlayed with TV static. I believe the non-diegetic sound could have blended more together to unify the film and make it more cohesive. The finished product feels more episodic than I had envisioned, which is not as effective in such a small time limit, and in the future I hope to work towards more seamless transitioning between non-diegetic sound in my films.