Yalou's Draft Project Proposal

In Progress!

1 What do you want to make?

2 How do you plan to make it?

3 What is your timetable?

4 Why do you want to make it?

5 Who can help you and how?

6 Relation to previous practice

7 Relation to a larger context

8 References/bibliography

Steve Suggests

[It works well to bring the reader back to the field, to situate the reader in your imaginative space. It is great that the text is in the mode of address of a memoir. I like the way it unfolds, but the beggining needs to be tighter

The proposal is a very practical document so in the first few sentences the reader will get a good idea of what you propose. The current draft is thin on material information at the start, where it is most useful.

Please answer these questions

What will you project be? Is it a film? An instillation? (one sentence)

What will it be made of? Found footage? Archive material? (one sentence) If so, what archive material?(one sentence)

Why have you chosen this material? (one sentence)

Will there be a text with the film? What form will this take? (one sentence)

What part does your grandmother's music play in the proposed piece? (one sentence)

What do you want to do with the soundtrack? (one sentence)

Answering these questions at the beginning helps the reader understand what you want to do (I know these elements are covered later in the proposal in some detail, but they need to be at the front). Once we know this your motivation makes sense so the proposal can continue in a more "poetic" fashion:]

I am standing in a field

I am standing in the middle of this field. It is a bright day so with squeezed eyes I am observing this field that I am standing in the middle of. My eyes stop moving when this clear thought comes to mind: a memory of the past. A memory that I haven’t experienced but that I have been told about.

Eva and Martijn are my grandparents. They both passed away, and my memory of them is very vague. But I do feel this strong connection towards them and there are a lot of unanswered questions floating around in my mind.

And this unexperienced memory is one of the most interesting memories that I have. With so much curiosity and mystery to it, so why not make it into a documentary film? Why not make it into a poem? As that is how I love to share my memories the most.[ Note on style: please do not discuss what the piece will NOT be. Try to talk about the piece in positive terms about what it WILL be.]

This open field gives me the opportunity to focus on different areas of research, different questions and different moments. To analyze them and give them a place within the film:

·      My grandmother’s past as an Hungarian refugee, and how this influenced her being. (This is a research question that will be based on the material that I have, so this will partly be based on my own imagination and thoughts)

·       My grandfather’s artistic hobbies and passions. He was a writer and he loved to film and record audio.

·       The lost of contact between my mom and uncle and their father (my grandfather) as he removed and alienated himself from his children.

·       The happy moments, family moments.

·       The divorce between my grandmother and grandfather

·      My grandparents being pianists

·      The music

·       And how their being is still felt now-a-day

If all these areas, within this open field, will be answered? I don’t know.[I would cut this.

How do you plan to make it?

Planning is a very big word to me, as I often guess what obstacles there will be in the future. [Yes! Please stop approaching your work in negative terms. Forget "obstacles" (a term which you introduced, by the way), and talk about what planting seeds in an open field means for you. This describes your working method in positive terms.]

So in this open field I will start this journey with planting the seeds.

These seeds are seeds with my vision, but the seeds will grow where they want to grow.

My vision is the documentary film.

The seeds are the start of my vision, of the documentary film.

By the birth of these seeds I made sure that they knew what is important within the film.

Voice Seed 1 = Piano music written by my grandmother

Voice Seed 2 = Music based on the written music of my grandmother

Voice Seed 3 = Poetry written by me

Voice Seed 4 = Literature written by my grandfather

Voice Seed 5 = Recorded interviews

I really want to explore the poetic voice within the film. Poetry has always played a significant role in my life. And I think that the combination of music and interviews already open up some amazing poetic possibilities. So within this planting an growing process I will give myself the space and time to explore this poetic voice of mine.

[What is poetry for you? What is poetic, for you? No need to go to a dictionary to find a definition, it is more important to know what you understand it to be and how you want to use it. Please define poetry and the poetic in your own positive terms (please do not tell me what it is not). Clarity on this point will help you stabilise your mode of address in the proposal and the thesis.]

Within this exploration I already have some growing ideas:

-       Let the music talk and use different instruments that become a conversation

-       Mix my poetry with my grandfather’s poetry

-       Let the music become my words and let my words become the music

*These examples can be taken literally*

Visual Seed 1 = Archival footage from my family archive

Visual Seed 2 = Archival footage from internet archives

Visual Seed 3 = Footage recorded in Hungary

Visual Seed 4 = Footage at home

When it comes to the visuals, I am curious to explore different techniques. These techniques will be educative for me within the process but it will also add much meaning to the film. One important aspect is the meaning of the time within the film. So what is archival footage and what is new recorded footage? For now the new footage is shot in raw, so that I can explore the coloring of it. The new recorded footage will also be more stable. So it will draw a contrast with the archived footage, which is more shaky.

What is your timetable?

Stage: collecting, editing drafts and creating

Stage: editing and creating

Stage: editing

Stage: editing and presenting

Stage: presenting

Week 1 to week 16: Stage: collecting, editing/drafting, and creating. In these weeks, I focus on collecting material (shooting material), editing with a focus on drafting different possible storylines and combinations, creating the main story, creating a focus, creating the music and writing the thesis.

In this period, there needs to be progress in a certain direction. So within these weeks, it will become more clear what material I will use, and the edit will also come together more. So that in the 16th week, I am clear about what the story will tell and what edit choices I will make. But it does not have to be finished.

Weeks 16 to 20: Stage: editing and creating.

So in these four weeks, I focus on my editing and finishing the music with my brother. Also, record the last things that need to be recorded so that I can focus on my final edits.

See these weeks as the tale of the first 16 weeks.

Week 20 to 28: Stage: editing.

In these 5 weeks, I would love to finish the film and have the first final version. I don’t know if this matches up with what the school wants from me. But this would be ideal for me.

Weeks 28 to 34: Stage: editing and presenting.

During this time, I will be finishing up the film and getting feedback on it. And I will be busy thinking about how to present and exhibit it. A very important part of the final look.

Weeks 34 to 40: Stage: presenting.

The last few weeks are always the ones that feel the most stressful. For me, it is important to have space in this time to fine-tune the presentation. And have space to fix certain things that need to be fixed before the end of June. So I call it presenting but it could also be called presenting and fine-tuning.

Week 1 to 16:

September 18th - January 8th

Week 20 to 28:

January 8th - February 26th

Week 28 to 34:

February 26th - April 8th

Week: 34 to 40

April 8th - May 20th

Why do you want to make it?

By now I sat down in the middle of this open field. With this unexperienced memory in my mind. A memory that is one out of many, told by my mother.

[It works well to bring the reader back to the field, to situate the reader in your imaginative space.]

But the curiosity really started when I was much younger.

As we might all know, high school can be a very uncomfortable, in my experience. It was the time that I felt a lot of different emotions, and the best way to deal with these emotions was to write them all down. And that was the time that I got into poetry.

-       Poetry example from 2012    -

It was one of my favorite things to do: writing poems. I would send my poems through email to my mother. She enjoyed the little poems and when she noticed that I wrote them on a regular base, she told me about her father, my grandfather. She lost contact with him when I was around 4 years old, just before her mother died.

So my memories of him were very vague, maybe even invented because I wanted to remember him. My curiosity grew over time and eventually I asked my mother if I could get in contact with him? And if she was okay with that? But a month or 2 later, he died.

That connection and curiosity to my grandfather never went away.

My grandmother was a very particular woman. I remember her very briefly, as she died when I was only five years old.

She sat in a wheelchair and walked with canes.

She smoked plenty of cigarettes and spoke with a raspy voice.

I remember her as a gloomy person, not very happy at all.

I feel that this gloominess grew into her life. This life started in Hungary, where she was born. My grandmother being Hungarian made me feel so special. I would brag about that to everyone. The first four years of her life were spanned in the Mines in Hungary, to hide from the Nazi’s. She loved dancing as a young girl, but sadly at the age of nine she got polio. So she needed to use a wheelchair or canes to walk. At the age of 17 she and her mother and father fled Hungary because of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. That is how my grandmother ended up in The Netherlands. I assume that through all the misery there were happy moments, but those moments were never shared with me.

The rest of her Hungarian family stayed (as much as I know) in Hungary. So when I was a small child me and my family would spend the summers in Hungary, to see my great grand uncle. He was a goofy man, although I could not speak the language, I remember him positively. He had a little summer house at the Balaton river, where we would go every summer.

So this curiosity and all these childhood memories shape the base of this film. It is a way to find answers to what a family can be or ever was. I have always been fascinated by the fact that my mum often speaks negatively about her parents.

Why my mum and uncle use the first names of their parents?

There is a feeling of distance within these family conversations.

It almost feels like I am closer to my grandparents, than my mum and uncle are with there parents.

And why shouldn’t it be?

I haven’t really known them at all.

The not knowing, the mystery, the unanswered questions…nall feels so familiar in a way.

You don’t choose your loved once. And maybe, in some situations, a loved one can be someone you don’t feel connected with. Or maybe being so connected to someone, makes disconnecting unescapable…

I am still sitting in the middle of this open field. It is pouring rain, yet my body can’t feel the drips of rain that touch me. There are to many to decide witch one is the biggest. My vision is getting less and less, I do know that this is a good sign. A meaningful moment for the seeds to grow.

This film. My mother’s family, is a family. Filled with unanswered family questions that are similar to the rain. And this family is in a way still very much alive today. And I feel part of it and that is what I want to make.

But who knows where the roots will grow, where the flowers will bloom and how fast the branches reach the sun.

Who can help you and how?

While sitting on this empty field, I often admire this big oak tree. The tree is very big, so big that many could live inside of it. So this tree is already occupied by my family and their passions:

- Family tree -

The oak tree is my base and the place where I often go to, for more discovery. The residents of this tree play different roles within my research journey and film journey. But all very significant to the whole project, to the whole space of this open field. And I am very glad to introduce the residents of this tree, as I see all of them as my family:

First of all my grandparents: Evà and Martijn.

They will be visible throughout the storytelling and the visuals in the project, their human forms are seen in the archive material. Martijn will share his voice mostly through the books that he wrote, and the voice recordings that he made, but also as the cameraman of the archival footage. Evà will be most visible through the piano music, that will be her voice. But she is also visible in the many video recordings of Martijn.

The next inline are my mother (Isis) and uncle (Finley).

They will be visible throughout the storytelling and the visuals in the project. But also as the once who share their past with me. The once who experienced Evà and Martijn and the once with the most memories. Their voices will be shared through interviews and through music, as they are also musicians them selves.

Then we end the line with my older brother (Ernö) and younger sibling (Joran).

For now I envision them to be part of the production and research, and not to be on camera. But you never know. Ernö and I will be working on the music and how to make that into a voice of the story, the voice of Evà. And Joran helps me with filming and other practical and technical aspects.

And then the tree is filled with all these colored leaves. These leaves stand for growing sources that I will find along the way. Sources like Judit Elek, Marjoleine Zeick, Franz Liszt and Domenico Scarlatti.

Relation to previous practice

The most important connection to my previous work is the use of journalism.

Since starting this Master's, I have always kept my connection to journalism. I am also very eager to use my journalistic knowledge for this film.

The reason why this is important to me is that I am always curious about the Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? So, I want to know what the facts are and make these facts into a linear story (in this case, a story with poetic elements).

Thereby, I have a big love for documentary making, and after a few years, I have discovered all the different ways to make a documentary. The documentaries that are mixed with artistic elements are the ones that touch me the most. So, this mixture of art and journalism has always been very important to me and a way of filmmaking that I want to continue to discover.

I have also experimented with the mixture of Journalism and Art within my journalistic studies. My journalistic projects and pieces were always different from mainstream journalism.

A few examples are:

-       “The Impact Of Flavor” is a multisensory experience of the cocaine trading routes from Saoul Paulo to Rotterdam. The audience had to go through different rooms to experience the story, and the audience had to taste different flavors that fit this experience. Within this story, I would ask them questions to involve them more in the story and give them an active role.

-       “De Noordse Stormvogel” is a multisensory experience of how plastic pollution is measured in the fulmar. For this project, I made a video that told the story, and within the video, there were, again, questions to keep the audience more active within the piece. The audience had to wear pieces of plastic and eat a dish that had edible plastic on it. The audience became the bird in a way.

But also within my Masters I feel very connected to art and journalism. Let me explain the word art, as it might be vague or to brought. But the word art in this context means for me a personal expression of a feeling, story or imagination into words (in my case poetry), visuals (in my case film) and audio (in my case music or recorded poetry). And make this expression part of my own voice, of how I want to share a story.

Relation to a larger context

So this open field is just small compared with the whole world.

It goes beyond that.

With the film, I want to create a certain connection. A reason for the viewer to recognize a feeling, a tension that is connected to family. As I once wrote down, “Family is family. There is no choice, and there is a type of love that is so different than other types of love. It is where you see yourself and where you disconnect yourself from. Family if family”.

The story of fleeing your own country. I feel that Evà’s story is so important for the whole picture. How she fled Hungary in 1956 and why she made certain choices afterward.

Working from this archive and what this archive means. This is the heart of the story, and what can an archive give you? More than just a story. It is a way of reconnecting with the past. Reconnecting with ancestors and rediscovering your family. What does ´inherent´ mean to me?

I want to create a space similar to the open space I was talking about for people to come together. A space where you can ask questions about the piece but also questions about family and family archives.

And creating more journalistic art that opens up this new field of journalism. This is a way to show that journalism and art are so much used. But it also strengthen each other, and it would be a dream to give them more a pedestal within the journalistic field.

Rapid prototype:

So I simplified my Rapid prototypes, just because I want to take a moment to let my work rest:

1. Draw a tree that fits the text on practice draft
2. Make a screenshot of the family tree that you already have
3. Put the tree and the family tree next to eachother

1. Choose a screenshot from the new filmed footage
2. Choose a screenshot from the archival footage that fit the new footage
3. Put the two images next to each other

1. Choose a poem of Martijn
2. Draw a drawing with it
3. Put the two images next to each other