Blog Post 1

 While developing my capstone documentary Is This Seat Taken?, I realized that the project is not just about belonging, it is also about how I choose to tell that story. Because I am self-producing this film, every decision feels personal. I am directing, filming, and editing it myself, which means the tone and pacing are directly tied to how I experience the subject. Researching documentary filmmaking helped me understand that this level of control isn’t just practical, it shapes meaning.

Film theorist Bill Nichols describes different documentary modes, including the poetic and performative. These modes focus less on presenting facts and more on expressing emotional truth and subjective experience. That idea resonated with me because Is This Seat Taken? is not meant to explain displacement in an informational way. It’s meant to feel like it. The pauses, the stillness, the empty seats, they are not just visuals, they are emotional cues.

As a self-producer, I have also been thinking about authorship. Unlike large-scale documentaries with crews and interviews, this project is quiet and internal. Filmmakers like Agnès Varda often blended personal narrative with documentary form, showing that lived experience itself can be valid research. That makes me feel more confident in grounding this film in my own perspective. I’m not trying to represent everyone’s idea of home, I’m trying to articulate mine.

Research on independent documentary production also emphasizes intentionality. When you work alone or with limited resources, nothing is accidental. Framing, negative space, ambient sound, everything carries weight. In my film, empty chairs and transitional spaces are repeated intentionally. They reflect the question behind the title: if there are so many places I could sit, why does none of them fully feel like mine?

Being the sole producer also makes the process more vulnerable. There is no separation between filmmaker and subject. I am both. That overlap makes the project feel more honest but also more exposed. Through pacing and composition, I want the audience to sit in that uncertainty rather than resolve it.

Overall, researching documentary theory helped me understand that my film doesn’t need to “solve” the feeling of not belonging. It just needs to communicate it clearly and cinematically. Is This Seat Taken? uses stillness, repetition, and space to express what it feels like to have many places to call home but no singular place that feels permanent.