Week 8 | Process

[Previously in this series, a summer internship with the LGBTQ History Museum of Central Florida: Intro/Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 9.]

EXPERIENCE = RESHOOT

After filming the pilot episode three times, I learned I need to film again. I worked with a small team to discuss environment and equipment. We approached this with an Venn diagram of intersecting resources, constraints, and methodology. [See Week 7 post.]

POSTPRODUCTION PLANS

As I develop the next two scripts, the first Pride Picnic/s in Orlando and the UCF GSU / Equal, I am editing and refilming the pilot. I anticipate a multi-step process for these episodes as well. I am not certain what the comprehensive route is to completion — I suspect the variations in the central artifacts will lead to some variations in the process of each. I do continue to expect to build and execute complete, turnkey episodes ready for publication during this semester, though I am more aware now of the possibility that there may be some final stages to complete outside of that timeline.

RESEARCH OBSTACLES

The ongoing research process is both inspiring and frustrating. The personal collections that have accumulated into curated, searchable archives documenting the spectrum of human experience within the LGBTQ community make evident a historical record of an oppressed and suppressed group.

The digital repositories and databases are misidentified as disembodied. These collections, and even single artifacts, are themselves sites, locatable and material. A significant challenge is the site of memory and its malleability. In the absence of a verified, multi-source, institutionalized record (different sets of challenges come with those), there are conflicting remembrances. To illustrate, setting the date for the first Pride Picnic in Orlando has proven difficult. Collective memory has the date in June 1979, though the first evidence I have been able to locate states that the first one occurred in 1983. As these events were intentionally kept out of mainstream channels, it may continue unresolved for some time. This experience indicates the shifting degrees of uncertainty inherent in academic scholarship concentrated in communities that have been marginalized. It also strengthens the justification for the argument to rigorously establish more apparent research sites, specifically of LGBTQ histories, and generally of non-dominant groups.

NEXT: MORE SCRIPTING + FILMING

AUDITING + EVALUATION