My Last Words
My Last Words suggests that a person’s Last Will and Testament should be more than just a legal document and it should contain more than just details of how you wish to divide up your estate. Death can occur at any moment in time; we do not always get the opportunity to pass on our final farewells to our loved ones in person. The writing of your Will is an opportunity for you to express your feelings to others so that they know what they meant to you and why; both in its wording and in how it is presented. In putting my Will out there for an audience to see and read, I hope to ignite conversations about life and death and how we preserve the memories of the two.
My Last Words is an experimental 35mm black and white film that takes a look at the process of writing a Last Will and Testament. The film experiments with this legal document and personalizes the process. With this film I physically wrote out the words of my Will onto unexposed 35mm black and white film stock using a small pen light. I worked in complete darkness so that the only areas exposed to light are the areas physically touched by the light source.
The film has 7 sections to it and each section references a different area of my life and the people in it. Each person I wrote about has their own section in the Will and each section includes both text and images. I used a variety of techniques to capture the images in the film, from animating photographs, creating rayograms to animating a miniature drive-inn, baking 16mm film in an oven and filming photographs underwater.
During production I shot with both 35mm and 16mm black and white film and blew up the 16mm to 35mm using a Oxberry animation camera. I also hand processed all of the film myself; and the only part of the film that was completed at the lab was the final 35mm release print. I also created an experimental sound track to accompany the images.
My Last Words is an experimental 35mm black and white film that takes a look at the process of writing a Last Will and Testament. The film experiments with this legal document and personalizes the process. With this film I physically wrote out the words of my Will onto unexposed 35mm black and white film stock using a small pen light. I worked in complete darkness so that the only areas exposed to light are the areas physically touched by the light source.
The film has 7 sections to it and each section references a different area of my life and the people in it. Each person I wrote about has their own section in the Will and each section includes both text and images. I used a variety of techniques to capture the images in the film, from animating photographs, creating rayograms to animating a miniature drive-inn, baking 16mm film in an oven and filming photographs underwater.
During production I shot with both 35mm and 16mm black and white film and blew up the 16mm to 35mm using a Oxberry animation camera. I also hand processed all of the film myself; and the only part of the film that was completed at the lab was the final 35mm release print. I also created an experimental sound track to accompany the images.