ad hominem

Ad Hominem is an important visualization of what it is like to live within a colonized world. Using archival imagery, stark cinematography, and an original score, our team wanted to replicate Chantal Gibson's relationship with colonization in her daily life.

In partnership with the City Poems Project run by Poet Laureate of Vancouver Fiona Tinwei Lam, I decided, alongside my groupmates Carlos Montoya (DOP/Editor) and Jerick Erice(Producer/Sound Designer), that I wanted to attempt to create a short film for Chantal Gibson's poignant poem "Ad Hominem". For the pre-production stages, I mainly focused on generating a mood board to use in the creation of our shot list and drawing up our storyboards. Also, as director, I helped to coordinate and run a majority of the brainstorming sessions for our film to ensure we were both engaging fully in the specialized art of video-poetry (highlighting its abstract nature) while also respecting the words and meaning behind Gibson's intense relationship with colonialism.

A page of our storyboard that I drew up for our film.

Reflecting on the process now, our rough cut, which was largely unfinished at the time of the in-class viewing, didn't entirely match Chantal Gibson's specific experiences with colonialism. I had initially envisioned that we could reflect different parts of the Simon Fraser statue, when Gibson speaks about them, through abstracted landmarks of Vancouver. Gibson, who was present for the rough cut viewing, however, was disappointed with this, as she wrote the poem with Simon Fraser University solely in mind. This was a learning moment for me as I recognized that adapting material is much harder than just doing what you think will work; you have to consider the author's perspective on a deeper level than just what they wrote.

After our reading break, we came back to our film with fresh eyes and were inspired to tackle this videopoem. We immediately found an actress to play our main character and sourced props over the course of a few days. We accomplished the majority of our shooting over one day, where I built out our development room set, orchestrated the lighting setup, and directed both our actress and crew to ensure the emotions of Gibson were felt through the screen.

Our lead actress, Welle Dias-Ouambo, in a pivotal moment before our film shifts from video to abstract montage.

As we wanted as much time as possible to plan out our shots, our last day of production was also the day we did the majority of our editing. Our team pulled a 15-hour day at campus completely reinvisioning our videopoem. As Carlos helmed the editing chair, I spent my time composing a soundtrack for our film, creating key graphics for use in the title and opening sequencing, implementing subtitles throughout the videopoem, and, creating the animation during our abstract montage.

Afterwards, I helped Carlos with specific sequences that needed an overhaul from our storyboards/shot lists. This specifically included our archival montage, which had never been fully defined but was always discussed as a necessary addition that could incorporate the theme of colonialism more heavily. We knew that, as the emotion of the poem built up, we wanted to reach a point where Gibson's words would almost explode through the screen, ignoring the standard rules of film. It was hard as someone who is used to directing actors to move into a space where I had to direct just the edits; there was definitely more freedom, but too much freedom led to long periods of indecision. Eventually, though, we all contributed to create an abstract montage that fits perfectly into our videopoem.

A piece of the abstract montage that I hand-illustrated. The words that Gibson says are drawn into the shape of the Simon Fraser statue.

Although I have directed other films in the past, I felt that this one meant more - I was quite happy with how the end product turned out. I feel that taking the dialogue out of film can be somewhat stressful, but for me, I think it was a great constraint that kept the narrative focuses. I am hoping to submit this short film (after a few quick edits are made) to multiple festivals to get experience in that process, and also to show the world the art of videopoetry.