First Impressions / Video Confession

Abstract

This paper is an account of 'work-in-progress' in which a documentary filmmaker contrasts his contemporary video diary with a manuscript diary written by his great-grandfather, a Victorian army officer - both diaries made during visits to Sierra Leone. Issues of the interplay between subjectivity and objectivity, and the private and the public, begin to emerge. First, the Video Diary is introduced as a sub-genre of the conventional documentary, with its own generic characteristics - in particular the self-recorded 'piece to camera'. Then some elements of his great-grandfather's diary are explored in relation to other examples of Victorian diary writing. The diary is seen to exhibit some of the same 'sober' characteristics as the conventional documentary film. The piece ends with an account of the author's experience of using the 'piece to camera' technique to excavate personal feelings and record them in his video diary - a contrast to the relatively impersonal feel of his great-grandfather's written diary.