Jacob Johnson and Dr. Dean Duncan, Department of Theatre and Media Arts

Our project is a creative approach to documenting French culture through the words and experiences of its citizens. We traveled to France and interviewed many people, learning a great deal about what happiness means to people from this country. Our questions were simple: Could you tell us a story from a time in your life when you were happy? And could you tell us one from when you were sad? Overall, we found both great variety in their responses, as well as common themes throughout many of the stories they told. The most common element that the people interviewed connected to both happiness and unhappiness was the theme of family and interpersonal relationships.

Unfortunately, to reach an acceptable length for the film, we won’t be able to include each interview that we conducted, so we’ve selected nine stories to showcase in the form of nine short vignettes. Each of these vignettes will be connected by sequences to help make the film become a cohesive whole. Additionally, these sequences, shot from various areas in France, will provide the viewer with a more nuanced and intimate look at France, as it focuses less on typical tourist areas and more on everyday life and regional particularities. This will help us achieve our goal of painting a broad, non- stereotypical picture of France for those who are unfamiliar with the country. Through the personal stories portrayed in each vignette as well as the unique imagery in the connecting sequences, we hope the viewer will walk away from the film feeling more closely connected to French culture and people.

Each of the nine vignettes will portray a different style to describe cinematically the emotions of each person’s story. Some include abstract editing techniques or rely heavily on music, while others employ animation, photography, and other media.

Our efforts thus far have involved over two-dozen students from a variety of fine and performance arts majors including dance, theater, animation and music. We are pleased to report that we have completed six of the vignettes, with the last three well under way. Our goal is to have a final product completed by the Final Cut film festival deadline at the end of February. The following images show a glimpse of some of the various stylistic approaches we are undertaking:

To view a trailer for the film, please visit the film’s website, www.chronicleofacountry.com.

You’ll notice that the site says “Coming Fall 2012”. This was our original deadline, but we had to push that deadline back. While we’ve had in large part great success putting together each vignette, we’ve run into many roadblocks and even complete failures regarding the animation sequences. We are not animation majors, and we were unfamiliar with the processes involved to create quality animation. Despite counsel from animation professors, we’ve been up to this point unable to satisfactorily complete any of the vignettes with animation. This has been largely due to the time-intensive nature of animation, which has discouraged many animation students from helping with the project without remuneration. We have worked diligently to find talented artists who might be willing to work within the budget that we can afford. Fortunately, we’ve recently been able to find a number of gifted students, and with their assistance, we are fully confident that we will meet the above-mentioned deadline at the end of February.

We will correct the release date on the website as soon as possible, but, as we are not web developers, we again must rely on others to provide us with such services, as we are unable to do them ourselves. This, as well as the animation problems we’ve had, have shown us just how difficult it is to manage a project of this scale with this many people involved, especially when working with volunteers. It has been invaluable for our education, and we will draw upon what we’ve learned here for all future projects that we undertake.

We would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to the ORCA grant administration for their consideration and belief in this project. We feel that it will be of great benefit to those who participate in its creation as well as those who will see it. It has been an incredibly rewarding and educational journey for us to be a part of, and we in no way could have accomplished what we have done so far without your assistance. Once again, thank you very much for supporting this project.