Some more inspiration

Something I remembered over the summer while I had this idea floating around was an episode of the television series 'One Tree Hill'. I remember it looking at self image and one particular scene, so I rewatched it.

It was while the characters were still in high school and they were split into pairs to do a class assignment. The school recently suffered a tragedy and the assignment was to look at their deepest secrets and desires. The idea stemmed from the teacher telling them that they were what their classmates thought they were in terms of stereotypes but only until after graduation when they could start again or be who they wanted to. One character, Brooke Davis, who appears to have no end of confidence and is very popular surprises everyone with her warped view of herself. She also has to reveal something about herself she isn't proud of to someone that she had been trying to impress.

The standout scene for me was where they did the photograph to go with the assignment. The character wrote all of her fears onto projector paper and then projected them over herself and a wall. It's a great idea and one that I'd like to try on a larger scale. It's one way that I could incorporate the text into the project. Whether I focused the words only over the person or did it much larger, across a whole wall and then stood the person somewhere in the middle, I'm not sure yet as it will require experiment.


In terms of content, the episode was very relevant for my project as it looked at self-perception, self-image and also stereotypes. There were some good quotes in it and several characters got to know people that for various reasons, they'd just never spoken to and had their first impressions changed. I think it is the same in UK schools, but in America, people are portrayed as trying so hard to be the right kind of person in highschool. One particular quote from the episode hammers this point home, the character is always portrayed as dumb and is sick of her friend treating her this way, retaliating with:- "I think Carl's right, pretty soon we're all going to graduate and I can start over. But it'll be harder for the people who need this place to make themselves feel special. People who use high school to build themselves up and then find out that the real world doesn't care so much about who you were in high school. People like you."

This is the list of things that the assignment told the students they had to do.
1. Share something personal;
2. Lighten up. Do an impression of a celebrity or famous character;
3. Admit something that worries you or you are afraid of;
4. What do you want to be in 10 years?;
5. Tell your partner a secret.

I was wondering if it might be worth me taking that list and geting people to do the 5 things on there that result to me making the portrait of them at the end (or during in some cases). That particular idea may transfer more easily for video than photographs but does interest me.