My Floating Head and a Reflection

I forgot that the backdrop was black and I wore a black shirt to film. It was one of those days.

Filming myself was hard. I was struggling to make coherent sentences about what I cared to say. I cringed as I reviewed the 20 minutes of footage of my floating head. However, I am pleased with the way the end product came out (thank you to Jane Schmid for having answers that shed some light on what MS actually is).

The original idea behind my re-mediation was to film strangers on the streets on Ann Arbor, asking them if they knew what MS was. I quickly decided that the idea terrified me too much and that it required a lot from me. I also had a feeling that the video would be a lot of, "Do you know what MS is?" "What?" or "Leave me alone, I am going to class." or *silence, looking at phone.*

So, I moved on to my next idea: interview students on campus who have a parent with MS and film them talking about their parent's diagnosis. Welp. I got one response. So I filmed Jane (again, bless her) and left myself to sit on the idea of filming my own narrative. The day came when I finally realized that I was going to have to sit down and film myself (see the night of this realization in my other blog post "Regretting the Re-Mediation").

I cannot emphasize enough how much footage there is of me trying to fix the hair on my floating head. I could probably put together another re-mediation on this alone. To give you some idea of what I was dealing with, here is a short documentary: "I Am a Mess."

In all honesty, I am happy that I decided to do a video. It was a lot of work and I do wish that I had more students to interview - just to talk to about MS, if nothing else. But, it is what it is. I wanted you all to see me and hear me, rather just read these words on the page.