I began this task by writing a story about my mother. But after re-reading the brief I decided to talk about something really personal to myself. It’s a story I don't share very often about meeting my little sister when she was two years old - and had been kept a secret from us since her birth. It was a challenging story to write as I feel like my memory can be muddled between the rumours I have heard and the truth. I looked through my archival family photo’s to find validation of the story I believed. It made me consider how photo’s both tell you lies but can also tell you the truth. Looking through the images, especially the images of my family altogether, they played to this stereotype of the nuclear family perfection.. the viewer, if a stranger, could not be able tell my father had a seperate family from us at the time of some of the photos. Just like I didn't know when I was younger - our smiling face concealed this truth. My intentions of this story to display these images of my family and construct this belief of normality to the viewer. I then will slowly introduce the darkness of my fathers secret by displaying images of my parents apart and lower quality images. Using my own story I want to break down this social constructed image of the normal family we are exposed to through film, photos, stories even advertising - as no families meet these standards of perfection.
Using only archival photo material I used bright images of my family together I will construct the normal imagining of the family, we are so often presented through film and stories. Slowly introducing images of my parents individually I will suggest the beginning of separation - I will also try to use lower quality images so the visuals sync with the darkening storyline. Once I have revealed the secret I will use some water damaged images to project this concept of the broken family and concealment of the truth. The video form links my story to common plot conventions of family film in which deems the turning point of most family film to be unrealistic. Hopefully this also makes the viewers aware that this is only my experience as a 9 year old - and other families experience situation’s like this all time. I want to avoid much movement and transition in my film because I believe the seriousness of the story should be focused on. I also pilled the images on top of each other - becoming more skewed as the story goes on - to relate to the brokenness of the perfect family image through the story.
