Atypical Learning - Autism documentary Behind the Scenes - video Dailymotion

MasinaT

Hi guys, in 2022 I was still doing my film directing course at Swinburne University. For one assessment, we had to pitch a film production for an assessment task, so I had an idea of getting other autistic people like me for a documentary to interview them about their experiences.  My documentary was then selected to be made as a short student film project, but how did I do it? How did I get other neurodivergent and autistic people for my documentary? And my documentary is a feature length film, how did I go about making that? So I compiled a behind the scenes video outlining behind the scenes of my feature length documentary Atypical Learning.   AUTISM FILMS AVAILABLE TO WATCH -Spectrum (2024) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C161TZHJIjE  -Signale (2024) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr4bX8qmed0  -Máscaras do Espectro (2024) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds9XNXSbYys  -This is Nicholas (2018) https://vimeo.com/266780988  -Jeremy the Dud (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFcFpWzIQNk https://vimeo.com/477707437   FOLLOW ME Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/masina.taulealo.3 Tumblr: https://masinat.tumblr.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/masinataulealo?lang=en   Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Transcript

00:00Between 2022 and 2023, I created an hour-long participatory documentary called Atypical Learning.

00:07Inspired by film directing techniques of Michael Moore, I talk about my experiences

00:11and aim to interview other autistic and other neurodivergent people.

00:15I wanted to give them a comfortable space to talk about their experiences as a neurodivergent person.

00:20This documentary was quite a massive project for me and it was a level up for my two short films

00:24Straight Home and Eight Steps. I had been thinking about autism representation in mainstream media

00:29and I wanted to take it a step further. I explained in my documentary that once I presented my concept

00:35it was selected to be produced at Swinburne and this is where my documentary story began.

00:54When I thought of my documentary concept, there were many factors that played into the pre-production.

00:59I was going to tell a story but how would I tell that story? So I first started off with an

01:04introduction narration and then thought of in-between narration segments describing myself and my experience.

01:16I also needed subjects for my documentary and I didn't want to look for people outside of university

01:21so I scouted for subjects within Swinburne. How did I do this? Firstly, I asked my teacher if she knew any

01:28neurodivergent students who might be interested in being interviewed and one person responded.

01:35I created a flyer looking for neurodivergent people to be interviewed and stuck them around university.

01:41I had five to nine students applied with some liking the idea with others feeling uncomfortable

01:46with being interviewed and potentially having their condition shown on the big screen.

01:50Later, I scheduled production meetings with the four interviewees to get to know them better,

01:55before the filming took place. I communicated with emails frequently during production and post-production

02:01with final four subjects attending most of the meetings.

02:06After my meetings and having finalized my subjects, I needed questions and a location to interview.

02:11I wrote about 10 questions and tried my best to not make them sound intrusive.

02:16I scouted the university to look for a suitable spot for the interviews, but my production crew

02:21thought of a room that would be the perfect spot. It was the factory of the future meeting room,

02:26a circular, spheric wooden room with curved walls, a screen, some windows and plastic panels. It was perfect!

02:33I scheduled interviews with my subjects, which turned out great. Aside from some minor issues, including a microphone that almost failed,

02:47video backups taking too long and a machine hum in the background during Callum's interview.

02:51I still managed to capture what I wanted. As it is a participatory documentary, my crew then decided to

03:03interview me in the room when our subjects weren't around. After filming, I was then ready to edit the

03:12documentary. I created some 3D line animations and arranged the footage interviews so that each subject

03:18got a turn talking. It was then edited into a 5 minute short film and I submitted that to the university.

03:24For the soundtrack, I used a symphony from Mozart as it was in the public domain. Many people might not

03:30notice, but Mozart displayed autism spectrum traits. So, in the credits, I pointed that out and listed some

03:36examples. The documentary was then screened at an event called Synesthesia and people liked it. However,

03:43I was far from finished.

03:51The interviews took way longer than I thought and I kept thinking about the stories my subjects were

03:56talking about. If I could include all of the stories in the documentary, I would genuinely be

04:01showing a lot more about autism and neurodiversity to my audience. I spent the next couple of months

04:06editing my interviews and creating animations for my soon-to-be feature length documentary. I sometimes had to

04:12wait for months as I focused on schoolwork. For each of my interviews, I planned to create many

04:17animations and b-roll footage to keep the story interesting and make the documentary engaging

04:22to my audience. Many of which I created myself, but I got some help from a family member.

04:27As Aiden talks about how his brain works, there is a storm cloud sequence I created myself. Not with

04:32software and not a smoke machine. In the 1980s, when 3D graphics were still being developed,

04:38film directors created practical effects of storm clouds. A layer of salt water and a layer of

04:43fresh water was poured into glass tanks inside a green screen room. Second, they would squirt paint

04:48or milk into the water which would disperse and expand resembling clouds. The cloud can then be

04:54edited into the sky in post-production. I filled a glass bowl of water and whilst filming the bowl,

05:01I would drop a little bit of milk into the bowl to generate storm clouds. I did this a couple of times

05:06and would sometimes shine a torch through the glass bowl to generate sunlight or daytime overcast.

05:12As I edited rough cuts, I kept showing it to my subjects and my family for feedback and refinement.

05:18This is an important aspect of my filmmaking as reworking and refinement is an important aspect of

05:23the overall project. For music, one of my subjects, Aiden, suggested lo-fi music for my soundtrack.

05:30So, I just looked up Neurodivergent Lofi Music on YouTube and found a video with a collection of

05:36songs from an artist, Purple Cat. Their songs had Creative Commons licences, so I decided to use it,

05:42but I also got my father, Setu Tao Le Allo, to compose some of the music for some segments,

05:47even using one of his tracks for my credits.

05:57After half a year of editing, I was ready to submit my documentary to film festivals.

06:02My documentary got into 10 film festivals, including the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival.

06:07It ended up winning an award at Oniko Films Awards in Ukraine and another award at Reels

06:12International Film Festival in India. The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival,

06:16it screened at Nova Cinema and it was a big deal. Me and my family got tickets and we invited relatives,

06:22friends and even my documentary subjects to the festival. It was a great experience watching

06:26my documentary on the big screen for the first time. I don't think I'll ever forget it.

06:38So, that is the story of my documentary film and how I got other Neurodivergent people to talk

06:43about their own experiences. At the time, I felt confident to write and think of stories about

06:48Neurodivergent people. I am also interested in setting a standard of Neurodivergent representation

06:53in mainstream media. This is probably easier said than done, but as a film director, I'm going to take

06:59a while to get to that point. I actually don't know what will happen to me in future. Thank you very much

07:04for watching and if there are any other documentaries made by autistic and other Neurodivergent people,

07:08it would be nice to hear about it. Overall, autism representation is more than just an autistic actor.

07:14It is also about collaboration with other Neurodivergent people

07:18and if an autistic or Neurodivergent film director themself is creating the film.

Atypical Learning - Autism documentary Behind the Scenes

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