The Story Tellers
Documentary Film
After the passing of my Grandmother in October of 2020, I wanted to preserve her memory and curate the idea of her. The question of "How do you capture the essence and preserve the memory of a person?” became my central motivation and the intention of this film project.
The idea of story telling is what I focused on as it had been a focal point of my visits with my grandparents. Through the acts of curation, filming, and documentation of artifacts, people and stories I sought to create a film to put together the pieces of my grandmother not only for myself, but for my family and her great grandkids who only got to know her a short time.
This film showcases not only the impact my grandmother had on her family, but also the legacy she left behind.
outcome
Setting out on this project to document and capture the memory of my grandmother proved to be no easy task, and I didn't expect it to be. However it also has been an emotional, unexpected, encouraging, and even quite amusing at times. While going through my grandmother's things we found my Mom's old Prom dress and we coaxed my dad into trying it on. My older sister Cassady also found a beautiful yellow jacket that belonged to my grandmother but she found a slightly used cigarette and very used tissues in the pockets. Now you understand what I mean by amusing (see photos contained in the case study link).
The real unexpectedness of this project came from how much and how quickly it naturally developed into this form of compiling memories and telling stories. If I hadn't been the one to spend countless hours editing I would almost think it came together on it's own. I expected to feel connected to my grandmother through her stories and things, but I did not expect to find out that her legacy of story telling, traveling & filming lives on through me.
Overall, including the hours spent on researching other topics, this project ultimately was a compilation of 174 hours of time between researching, writing, developing, filming and editing. The final outcome of this effort is a documentary film that is under an hour long that was created to capture the memory and essence of my grandmother and also the storytellers she left behind.
case study
Click on the image above to view the entire Case Study as a virtual PDF
Throughout this Project I tracked my ideas, progress, goals, challenges and solutions. I then compiled all of this information into a Case Study which gives in-depth insight behind my motivations, intention and what I learned in creating this short documentary film.