Week 9 Update - Rana

I finally got into the editing zone. I spent a couple of days during the holiday doing nothing but seeing my footage, writing about my footage, throwing clips in different sequences, etc. A story doesn't start with an opening scene or introduction. It actually starts with a big (welcome) mess. A bunch of thoughts, ideas, feelings, connections, interactions, politics, etc. Laying these out is visually helpful in terms of quantifying my material and knowing what I need more of.

I chatted with Rakan mainly about gaming, and he's lead me to a couple of other media clips. Funny, he mentioned in one of the chats that he'd like to see what I edit when I'm done, because he regrets having said something.. and that he'd like to be filmed/asked again to answer differently. I was so curious to know what that was, and interestingly (and cute) it wasn't the cop incident. It was when he was asked if his family knows about him JR. He said yes and mentioned an incident when his mom knew he came back home from JR (he was driving a rental car). He regrets saying this, because he worries about the possibility that someone would see this film and know his mother. He just wanted to save his mother from embarrassment! 

That was comforting, because I was worried about him taking back the story of his arrest. I'm starting to worry in general, about not fulfilling his expectations from this film. And about ethics in general. But I know he knows that every film is a process also. This film was supposed to be about him, but now it's about him through my lens. But then again, any film is really shown from a certain lens. In the class I TA for, today, we talked about feminist documentaries. I thought of my film, and simply the act of making this film, in the face of gender apartheid, let alone the high-surveillance fascist dictatorship. I remembered the issue of spatiality, power, knowledge, and sense of place. The typical "liberal" Saudi woman would actually find joyriders to be stupid (and yes, that's an assumption/judgement/generalization). I think it is a subversive act on its own to connect two plights of obviously completely different worlds.

I met with John and we discussed the animation I intend to include in this film (about the city sprawl). He agrees that my voice or narration would be more effective and layered than that of the experts. He advised me to work on those scripts which convey info/points taken from the experts.