For my final project, I’m going to be making a short 360 video set in my grandparents’ home of 50 years, featuring mostly still photos (no animation) and my grandparents’ voices. Right off the bat, I’ll say: I am behind where I would like to be, because it took me so long to decide on a narrow topic. I still think I can finish it, but without as much time to polish as I’d like.
I decided to focus on stories from Christmastime, specifically of adapting family traditions for unusual circumstances. There are a few reasons for this. First, a hugely disproportionate number of our family photos and photos in that house are of Christmas celebrations. So I can really fill the space with these images, from all angles. Second, it’s a theme we have multiple interesting stories for, and one that feels very relevant to our current situation. It may not be Christmas, but families are adapting their rituals and traditions for the quarantine, often in ways that resemble the stories I’ve collected.
Once I landed on this theme, I set several things in motion that are currently still underway: I told my grandparents about this topic and arranged a phone call with them in which I will record their voices for the project, and I also reached out to my mom and aunt (who are in possession of all our old physical and digital photo albums) for ALL the Christmas photos they have. I should be getting those in late this week, and doing the editing early next week.
In the meantime, enjoy the following images of my family at Christmas, and recordings of my grandparents telling some holiday stories (recorded last semester for a different project, but I may just end up using them because the quality is pretty good).
I won’t likely be able to use all of the photos I’m going to be sent, but I bet I can fit a lot in. The film will be “set” in the living room, where all of these photos were taken.