Music & Clowns (2018) 7.23 minutes
Music & Clowns is an animated documentary which functions as a rich portrait of my family, which includes Jamie, a person with Down syndrome. This film was conceived as a response to a polemic documentary by Sally Phillips the UK’s leading public advocate for the Down syndrome community. A World Without Down Syndrome (2016) addresses the UK’s introduction of Non-invasive Prenatal Testing and the likelihood that it will increase the abortion rate of Downs fetuses. It could be argued the significant drop in birth rates of people with Down syndrome fits Rob Nixon’s characterisation of ‘slow violence’ as gradual and often invisible. The medical establishment argues these tests simply provide pregnant women with more accurate information. However, a diagnosis cannot describe the life of someone with Down syndrome, like my brother Jamie. I am tackling the critical under-representation of the ordinary lives of people with Down syndrome by first directing a film that provides qualitative evidence of my parents experience of raising Jamie and speculating what life is like for him. Phillips was criticised for focusing too much on high functioning people with Downs and building an argument based on their ability to contribute to society. My film illuminates Jamie’s human worth irrespective of his profound limitations.
Ethics were my first concern. Luckily Jamie offered on tape what I inferred as consent. However I cannot assume he understands a film like this might be watched by thousands. Our parents consented to this on his behalf. While my family are all identifiable, the potential for my brother to be subject to unwanted attention is minimal as he has no engagement with social media. Jamie visibly liked elements of the film featuring clowns or music and was able to recognise family members, however the pacing was too fast for him. He is not the intended audience and if he were the film would be very different.
During interviews with my parents it became clear there were discrepancies between our speculations on Jamie’s inner life. I chose to manifest these perspectives symbolically through shifts in aesthetics. A baseline of 2D digital realism functions as the filmmaker’s perspective from which others deviate. These symbolic modes are the result of experimentation with printing, hand-drawn and animation techniques. I also traced Jamie’s drawings to build a scene from his perspective.
This multi perspective approach was extended by secondary interviews, in which I recorded participants responses to the animatic. The result was a critique of the perspectives of other participants as well as my own interpretations. These secondary layers of dialogue were then incorporated into the film, augmenting it with reflexive elements, most notably when my father disputes my mother’s inference that Jamie wishes to be a Clown.
Throughout the film I disrupt the temporal space of reenactments by suddenly appearing, shifting the scene into a lip synced interview. Similarly the contrived assembly of microphones stands draws attention to my role as documentary maker. These elements help distinguish Music & Clowns from the “personal story films” which appropriate subjects perspective in a total simulacra.
My film, Critical Living (2017), drew criticism regarding an imbalance between visual and verbal storytelling. Redressing the show and tell relationship has been a crucial point of development. In the past I avoided illustrating someone’s words through heavy handed application of a metaphor or steering the imagery into abstraction. For this project I have developed a more nuanced approach, sometimes delaying descriptive imagery till after the correlating testimony. It was argued that Critical Living could function without the visuals. However, Music & Clowns features entire scenes without dialogue and consistently emphasises character animation to illuminate family dynamics. I have also addressed other weaknesses including static compositions, avoidance of colour and impenetrably academic documentary subject matter.
The second significant development was the introduction of comedic elements. Shelley Page, Animation Talent Consultant, emphasised the value of humour in the animation industry and the filmmaker, Michael Moore, also argues that comedy is significantly under used in documentary. My family’s sense of humour proved ideal material to test my skills as a comedic film maker.
Music & Clowns was exhibited at the Royal College of Art’s School of Communication Degree Show, 2018. The film was played on a television in an installation built to resemble Jamie’s bedroom. Visitors were invited to sit on his bed to watch the film. When Jamie visited the exhibition he seemed to feel very much at home. As he sat on his spare bed sheets, surrounded by posters of ABBA and his old clown dolls, I think enjoyed the film much more so than the first viewing. I don’t know if he recognised that he was a minor celebrity in that room but he certainly enjoyed the attention.
Documentary Animation Discourse 