“Yellow Brick Road to the River” Reflection

My sixty second documentary, Yellow Brick Road to the River, is a meditation on the odd contradictions that constitute my hometown and my experiences there. The choices that informed my project in a visual sense revolved around creating a dreamlike atmosphere, a hazy fog that made it all feel a little less “real”- I leaned on this feeling of unreality as I felt as though it would be the best way for my audience to connect with my hometown. With elements of surrealism, I intended for the viewers to experience nostalgia and timelessness- pictures that felt like they could have been taken any time to fit with my unique childhood experiences. The background music was also used to contribute to this atmosphere- I picked a song that was unobtrusive but felt vintage and carried a certain level of auditory cracking and fuzz, as if it was emanating from an old record player. The segment where I talk about the contradictions of my hometown was also strongly influenced by visuals, where I tried to pick images that created an unbroken split image, keeping the visual line in the same place in a way that made the fade-ins-and-outs psychedelic. It was this segment that inspired the title of the piece, as a “Yellow Brick Road” evokes fantasy lands while the “River” implies a never-ending stream of water- the unbroken line of constant changes and movement. The project reveals my location as the belief that my hometown is best understood as otherworldly- there’s a fantasy aspect to the things I describe that would feel better suited to a town from another era, so I represent it through these qualities.