Likeness
After just over a year, it’s finally finished.
This is a film I started making not long after I moved to London in September of 2018. I found that almost everyone I met was not only very different to the kind of people I had met outside of the city, but that they all had very interesting things to say because of their differences. So, I began asking the people I connected with if they’d let me interview them; the only terms being that the interviews would be totally anonymous and that I would send them the edited audio clip before I put it in the film so they could opt for a different one if they wanted. Then I wandered around London’s busiest areas with my camera, filming anyone who caught my eye. The project was born out of those two elements.
Technically, my main problems were that when I started I really had no idea what I was doing; I knew what kind of film I wanted to make, but I didn’t really know how to make it. Then, by the time I was getting close to finishing, my skills had developed to the point that I didn’t think a lot of what I had shot/recorded at the beginning was good enough, so I kept going back and re-editing/re-shooting. This made it very hard to decide when the film was “finished” (a problem everyone in my life is also very aware of, as I have been saying “it’s almost done” since September). I do think making the shorter fragments helped me a great deal, though, in being able to gently practice all the skills that are required for a larger project such as this one.
Despite all of the fumbling I think the end result represents what I wanted to make at the start, which is good. I’m also very grateful to everyone who helped me with the film and who listened to me talk about it. I met my girlfriend and most of my best friends making this film, so it will always be a very special project for me. Now, onto the next one.