I love interview-driven pieces, but I despise “Talking Head” footage. The two generally co-exist in video stories, but in this beautiful piece by Bianca Giaever (Check out her stuff—she’s brilliant!) she couldn’t use Talking Head footage at all.
Amazing, right? It’s entirely possible that someone with a great story to tell could also be camera shy. You’ll definitely need all “that Hollywood stuff” to pull this off, but by shooting the “donut hole” and not the “donut,” it’s also possible to tell their story in an entirely different way.
If you can’t watch the entire video (Do it! It’s so good), check out 2:00-2:25, where Maia lists all the places where her boyfriend of over eight years could have said, “I love you.” The L-cuts between an image and Maia naming each place are perfect. (Wasn’t Paris so clever?)
How this video closes the narrative is wonderfully done. The private audio recording of Maia saying, “I love you” to her boyfriend for the first time (4:52-5:20) overlayed with repeated footage and illustrations answers the “unanswered question” (Will Maia finally say “I love you?”) and brings the story full circle.
This is soooo Angela style LOL! She has the smarts and the capability to pull something like this off. Anywho, this had to have been super difficult for the filmmaker to pull this out of Maia. Halfway through, I had given up on this girl. Seriously? You are a grown @$$ woman Maia, cut the $hit. I like the fact that the filmmaker gave Maia a recorder to be able to say “I love you” in the privacy of her own home. This was the icing on the cake. You have to be a creative person to make this short film work, and she did a great job.