Storytelling

Storytelling

If you could suddenly document your entire life, what would you choose to document? Would it only be important moments? What are important moments to you? What if you paid attention to the moments of your day so that you noticed its beginning, middle, and end? How many combinations of moments could you put together to tell the story of your day in different ways? These are some of the thoughts going through my head in the quiet moments of walking the last couple days. In Burgos I stayed in a hotel with Gabriela so we could look through all the footage shot this far. Alburgues (the special hostels only for pilgrims) turn the lights off and lock the doors at 10pm, so by the time you get there, get clean, prep for the next day, and film, if doesn't give you much time to look over footage. So that's my reasoning behind my night of "cheating" on the pilgrim life, as Ron said.

Anyway, looking through all the footage set my mind on these questions. None of us have made a movie quite like this before, but two weeks in, we're all noticing patterns in the moments we gravitate towards. Lauren gets excited over "intersections," as she puts it, that moment when a few disparate elements come together to create a unique moment. Ron gravitates towards simplicity, the beauty of a line tree in a field, for example. And me? I'm all about details and conversations. I get excited when a tree blows in the wind just right, when I notice a ribbon left tied around a statues's wrist for no apparent reason. In interviews, I live for the moments when interviews morph into full-blown conversations, when everyone's words start overlapping because they can't wait to share their thoughts.

So here we are, bringing our instincts together to create a document of life on the Camino. Once you start paying attention to all the subtle textures that make up your day, it's hard not to shoot everything. Walking out of Burgos, I could have stopped a hundred times to document something beautiful. But there's also this very practical side to our lives right now. We have to wake up and walk at least 13 miles every day, and if you spend all your time shooting you'll get to the alburgue late and not get a bed.

So how do you choose to tell your story?