For my Time final project, I wanted to make my video composite about the theme of a parallel universe for my final project as well. I was intrigued by the prompt of a parallel universe, but I did not want to make something cliché. A topic that has been on my mind a lot lately is my dad, who died last July, only a couple of weeks before I left to come to Parsons. A lot of my time at Parsons has really distracted me from the reality of the situation, and lately I have found myself having very lucid dreams where he is alive that are so lucid and seamless with my everyday life, that at times it is hard to discern what is real and I have to remind myself that he is not there.
This has been a source of a great deal of pain for me, and especially because his birthday (May 17th) is coming up very soon, I decided that I really wanted to make a piece that is in some way an ode to him or deals with my grief over losing him. The more I thought about it, the more I began to interpret through dreams and my processing of his quick death (which was from cancer, but only 5 months after his diagnosis) that grief, especially denial, creates a parallel universe in ones psyche that allows you to escape the pain of knowing that your loved one is gone.
To represent this in my video composite, I wanted to represent his image fading in and out on top of the image of my face. This was important to represent my experience because my dad and I have had a very complicated relationship because of mental health issues and demons he has faced (which I do not particularly care to go into)that made him a threat to my safety for the majority of my childhood in addition to splitting time between him and my mom. He became a lot better as I was entering my teen years, but it was not until the last couple of years that we began to really become close.
This is what has been really heart wrenching for me, because in many ways I had mourned my father figure in my childhood, but as I slowly opened up to him leading up to his diagnosis, we gained a bond that was unlike a regular bond between a father and son. In many ways we were friends in addition to our regained familial bond. Now what is the hardest is knowing that there was so much wasted time where we were not able to be close like we later became, and to have had a period where we were so close is such a blessing, but also makes the loss sting even more.
To synthesize the range of feelings that I have felt into my video, I wanted to focus on the voicemails that I have left from him on my phone in addition to seeing his image fade in and out on my reflection. The former was important to me because these voicemails are just about the last animate thing I have left of him, and some of the only things that I have left of him that are specifically directed at me. I included one that is very generic, just saying hi and checking in, in part because I did not want to start off with content that was too too heavy. The next voicemail is one that he left me on my 18th birthday (although he would always mix it up and call you a year older because, as he would explain in person, you were completing a year in his eyes because he knew you and by the time you are born it has been almost a year since you were conceived). This voicemail is equally painful and near to my heart for me because it was just after my birthday that he was diagnosed. In a way, my 18th birthday stands as a milestone of the exact moment when we were the closest before the threat of him dying existed. The last voicemail was the voicemail he left me after the last time I physically saw him, which was when we came back from a family trip together and en route he had a sort of rapid physical decline, and I had to physically get him off of our first plane, to the next, and home, including all of our things, all alone. This experience was very significant for me because it thrust me into a caregiving situation that I was not braced for, and also is a source of great regret for me, because a few days later I left to visit family of mine in Rhode Island with my mom, and effectively missed the last week of his life. My regret stems from having seen him so deteriorated and not pulling the plug on my trip. In many ways, I emotionally needed to remove myself form the situation, but in hind sight I knew deep down that the proverbial shit was hitting the fan, and that I should be there. As he began to have difficulty, which he communicated to me over the phone, I decided to come home to be with him, and to assist him. Unfortunately, as I literally was walking to my gate to come back, thinking about how I had made the right decision to come back and spend time with him, I got the call that he had died tat morning.
I wanted to show his face incorporated over my reflection because, perhaps because of our mixed relationship, I had never seen him in myself when he was alive. However, since he has died, I cannot stop seeing the aspects of him in my appearance, personality, everything. This last year I have had a bit of an identity crisis following his diagnosis and certainly his death, and it is through this whole experience that I have seen him for who he is at the core in a deeper way than I can imagine, and in turn I have seen his image reflected in myself, and see myself to the same depth I saw him.
So to make my composite, I took the image of my dad from my parent’s wedding picture, and edited it so that it could be used to blend well over my image using blending modes.
I then overlaid that image on top of a video of me that I shot
I then overlaid footage of water flowing to give the sense of a reflection
In my rough draft, I focused on combining all of these elements that I wanted together, although it certainly was a rough draft.
Michael Chamberlin Video Composite / Parallel Universe Rough Draft from Michael Chamberlin on Vimeo.
For my final, I focused on merging all of the elements more seamlessly, and I added more background music that I thought fit really nicely with my video. It is the instrumental of Grimes’ “Know the Way” with I chose because of simple the acoustic guitar melody, which reminded me of one my dad would play (he played guitar as a hobby).
Michael Chamberlin Video Composite / Parallel Universe Final from Michael Chamberlin on Vimeo.
I am very happy with how the final draft came out, and I think that it captures all of the emotions and sentiments that I wanted to pour into it. I think that it is also a perfect final project to build off of my other work in my Time class, which I have been very happy with, and have had a great time producing.