Project Brief

For the final project in the class 'Time', I had to plan, script and shoot a film/animation. The project, titled 'Remembering Your Future', asked us to envision the world in 2072. We had to travel to the future to investigate our imagined personal history in the form of an interview.

Design Process

I want the future world to fix all our human errors. My video is titled ‘Everything We Never Needed’ and followed my realisation about material use. When I had to pack my whole life to New York City in two suitcases, I was surprised by how easy the transition was. This goes to show how many unnecessary products we keep with us.

For my initial proposal, I imagined 2072 society to be of economic equality. In my imagined future, I wanted to show people paid the same amount irrespective of their job. They would be motivated to work for the benefit of society, not just for personal gain.

As I continued working on my script, my video evolved from a scene in a person’s house following their daily activities to something more abstract and open to interpretation. I did this so that the video could be read in more ways than intended: creating a growing, living piece of work. The content also shifted from conveying what the future work was to how we felt about it. I prefer this approach because, unlike my initial idea, it wasn’t shoehorning my idea of utopia into the viewer’s mind.

Water was a motif featured throughout the movie. In the beginning, the water took the form of thunderstorms representing our tumultuous relationship without environment. It was also used to show how people are constantly discarding resources. In the end, it was used to symbolise our penance. The transition to utopia is also seen in the natural elements: from thunderstorms and murky water to clear skies and birds chirping in the background. The other symbol used throughout the video was the objects on the floor.

These objects slowly kept reducing, depicting our progress and the passage of time. It finally ended with a sole object: the cup which was featured through the film.

Reflection

This project is a film that you know was made by a novice. As a fan of dystopic and sci-fi novels, I was ecstatic to commence this project. My proposal was centred around a false utopia: a world that seemed to be devoid of mistakes. My main takeaway from the process was learning the basics of film. I learnt about types of frames, creating a shot list, incorporating sound and editing the film. This film was shot in the middle of lockdown confining all my footage to 500m around my home. If I were to revisit the idea, I would increase the project scope: increase the duration, have some characters and traverse more space.