Tara project

STORY
Tara is a girl. Tara make a video blog about her daily life

IN REAL
Tara is a fictif caracter. I play Tara. The story is made by people I meet in the street. Tara is a collective story.

TO START
I tell them “I am working on a video project for my school, do you like to be part of it?”. usely they answer “ok”, or “I don’t know”, “it depends”. Then I go on: “it’s a fiction story. I play the caractere of a girl name Tara. We will improvise something together, 1 min, in front of a camera. You can be any person in relation with Tara. Maybe you are my friend since 2 years, maybe you are my boss, maybe we just met. You make the story. Do you like to try?”. Usely it’s the moment when they say “I don’t have time to do this finally, I have to go”, or “i don’t know if I can manage”. I realised that people almost never say a direct “no”.

THEN1) If people are still fine to do it, I take the time to reexplain the project and add that I need them to talk about a character not present in the scene. For exemple, if they play my parents they can ask me “don’t forget to go to the maths teacher” and the next time I will shoot with people, I will ask them to act as my teacher of maths.

2) I try to make them come up with an idea. Actually, it’s not really easy. If they don’t anage, then I ask them to think about something which really happen to them and that they like to replay.

3) I explain we will shoot twice: once with the camera on the tripod and a other time with the camera in my hands. I didn’t decide yet of the style, how it will look, so I am trying till different things.

PEOPLE WHO ACCEPTED TO PLAY AND BEING FILMED

The first person who accepted was a woman from surinam, 49 years old. She told me the story : she is friend of Tara since a long time. Tara broke up with her boyfirend 2 month ago and yesterday for the first time since she had a date with a guy. Then we did something else (I wanted to focus more on her than on Tara). We are friends since a long time but lost contact a bit. She tell me she quited her job recently.

Then I met homeless sitting and drinking close by my house. I asked them if they wanted to participate to my video project. One was really enthousiasm, the other was too drunk.

The last persons with who I shoot were tourists (2guys) from Germany, under spacecake 🙂 They come up with a nice story. One of them was name Alexeij like a caracter of a Dostoievsky’s book. In the book, he wants to go to the war. So we decided he will play Alexei, his friends’fake name will be Doui (a good friend of him) and I will play his sister. Doui and I will try to discourage him from going.

THOUGHTS 17-10-13
PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED

• Only few people want to play
• Only a certain type of people want to play
• It takes a lot of time to find people to play
• Hard to make them come up with their own story, but I get better at guiding them
• Limitated by the wether: rain, cold = less people outside, can’t shot
• The same locations will come back: parks, coffees maybe
• We don’t know exactly how to end up the play
• I can’t & play & guide & shoot myself. I need help
• Visually it’s not interesting yet. Bad quanlity

WHICH ANGLE INTEREST(ED) ME IN THIS WORK BEFORE & NOW

Before:

• Critique of the “stories” everybody spread on the net (fb…)
• Play with virtual identity
• Create a collective story
• Life & it’s represetation
  Make a fake video blog was I thought a goodt medium to play with all those elements

Now:

• Life & it’s represetation
• The meeting, the moment
• Make people aware of the aspect of play, performance of us in life
• Make them aware it’s just a story
• I like the feedback about the experience
• Create a collective story
• Create a nice story for the audience, that they lie to follow

IDEAS TO RESOLVE THE PROBLEMS & KEEP THE MAIN INTERESTING POINTS

• To get more people to play & more diverse places (ex: inside house, school, office maybe?) make a announce on the web. Something like “figurants/Extra needed for a shooting at ThisLocation ThisDate” (this way I keep the stories and experiences fresh and unprepare.
• have a extra person to shoot
• don’t need to make the blog something else than what it is, this way I can ask diretcly the audience to make input for the story.
• to make elvolve the story, if players like to play more, the story can focus on more caracteres (goal on long term)
• I still need to end up the moment in a clear way. Need to think about it more
• I decided to start the story with people I know. Thus, it will give a basic story to play with.

THE STORY
Created by a girl that I met recently, let’s call her “Girl i”. She is willing to play several time in the story.

She (still have to come up with a name) is a artist & a writter or a poet. She decide to realise a piece of art by writing to someone in jail (part of a comand by a 3rd person). She starts then to write to a young woman (my caracter) who will never get out of jail. But, one day, she hears from this woman that she is going out and wants to meet up.

She is curious about it but scared in the same time. Indeed, in the letters, she lies about who she really is and hide the fact that she is an artist.

“Girl i” thought that the story can start with Tara in jail, reading the last letter send by her and then to film the meeting.

We planed to shoot this in 1 month. Then I have someone available to film us. In waiting, “Girl i” is preparing the”last letter”, an dwe plan some repetitions. On the side, I go on meeting other people to build the story (a germain girl and a spanish guy for now)

9-12-2013

From her cell, Tara receives letters of a scientist who make research about women in jail. The researcher claims to want to help Tara to chope with this difficult time. Thanks to the talents of her lawyer, Miss Smith, Tara is released earlier than expected on bail. She asks then to meet in person the scientist. Surprise, the person is not at all what she pretended to be. In fact, she is an artist, who took advantage of the sad situation of Tara to make a work of art. The entire correspondence was exposed in an art gallery.

Tara, wrongly imprisoned for misappropriation of funds, decides to search for the person who reported her and to understand is thé artist doing in this story. With thé help of Miss Smith, who is also a  good friend of many years, she starts to investigate.

Episode 1

. Tara receives a letter, she reads it
. She meets  her lawyer who announces her that she is going to be released
. Tara go out of mail, call the person who wrote to her to meet
. they meet, tara is testing thé person to understand what she really know about her

Can be:
Then, Tara finds Miss Smith or somebody else who help her get back her life.
she go to search informations at thé company (what kind of company?, which name?) where she  worked. There she meets a former(old) colleague (Patrice, name?) that she believes to be on her side … but at thé end of their interview hé calls someone else to says she is looking for informations

Esthetics:
2 way of filming: a normal, an other just man will be on drugs subjective during the history(story) there, the characters blur marks, nobody is the one or the one that he / she claims to be. Put there abime the fiction her(it) even: use of would mime her(it) to give the impression of réel=fiction.

Questions to Patrice
1. Patrice, what’s the name of your character?
2. What’s the name of the company where we worked together?
3. What is your post?
4. What was mine? (A post where I could have access to the finances and still money, a company which has lawyers)
5. What’s the name of the “art sponsor”, the caractère is looking for?
6. What he / she is doing in his/her life
7. Can you talk about a other person, to who you send me looking for infos?