Introductions and First Thoughts

Well hello there!

Welcome to my Anth 409 reflection blog! This is where I will spend the next four months reflecting on my class project; a short documentary on the Coast Salish artist Chris Paul. Hopefully this reflection will captures both my successes and struggles that I (and my group) will encounter over the course of this project. I look forward to seeing how things unfold over the next few months, and hopefully if all goes well, we will have a top notch doc that comes out of it in the end!

Thanks for reading, here goes! 
 

           
During our first class together we discussed the goals for this class and went over what the intended outcome for the films in this class. Although I did not fully know what to expect out of this class, I came prepared to make a film, even though camerawork makes me nervous. It was relieving to hear that we will not have to be interactive on screen in our films because I’m not overly enthusiastic about being on film. Andrea has picked three artists for the groups to work with. The artists are those that have worked with her Anthropology 305 class over the last few years. As I took that class three semesters ago, I’m only familiar with the Adam and Joni, the Salish Fusion knitters. I think it would be interesting to work with them because I learned a fair amount about the Coast Salish knitting history, which I found to be really interesting when I wrote my research paper for that class. I do not know anything about the other artists yet, but I believe that their stories will also be complex and exciting to learn about and film. I am really looking forward to getting to know the artists we work with in this class, and hopefully I will gain a greater understanding about their art forms and their personal stories and community histories.

Andrea had us do a group exercise which I thought was valuable as a starting lesson for this class. We were split into groups and given several photos (each group was given the same photos) and we had to create a basic story line with these photos and present them to the class. What was interesting to me, and evidently the point of the exercise that we all missed, was that our groups basically just described what was going on in the photos, instead of creating a storyline or creating any sort of depth to the photos. This was a good way to open the class, because I think it showed that we as a group need to change the way we think about film, stories and production if we want to create films with substance or meaning. Hopefully I learned something valuable from that exercise that can be put towards making a better film in this class.