Self-critique of frame-by-frame project

The title of my frame-by-frame project is Sounds that Prove that I'm Alive. The main idea that I started with was attempting to capture and record the real, everyday sounds that my body makes in order to prove my existence. This is something that I often think about, even since I was a child. Every now and then, I experience waves of existential crises- strong feelings that everything in my life is actually just a figment of my thoughts, in my head alone. Since I was a child, I have had the feeling that although the universe is huge, even infinite, I am only interpreting it through my senses. The piece, Sounds that Prove that I'm Alive, is about self-exploration, confusion, coming into one's being, and experiencing the uncanny. It's meant to question what is real and what exists only in the mind. Memory, emotion, sound, sight, feeling, etc.

I used a cut-paper collage for the visual aspect of the piece. It was shot one-frame-at-a-time. I recorded 4 different audio tracks of the "sounds that prove that I'm alive" and overlapped them to create the voice-over. Parts of it line up to what the animated character is doing, and parts of it don't. The reason I did this was to blur the line between what is real about the piece and what is constructed. The figure is obviously constructed yet exhibits human characterstics. The sounds might seem more real, but the outcome is a messy audio collage of everyday human noises. I want there to be friction between the real and the fake in order for the audience to question their own reality.

Initially, I want the audience to be drawn in by the aesthetics of the animation and overlapping sounds. I want them to wonder if the sounds are coming from the girl herself, from her thoughts, from an unseen character, or from themselves. I want them to be caught between what is real about the film and what is constructed. I want the audience to question the reality of the project, and ultimately question their own reality.

The main theme of the piece: It is a self-reflection upon existential crises that I've been experiencing since I was young.

Problem areas: I had some difficulty with technology. I accidentally imported the footage as "large" instead of "full size" into iMovie. I didn't catch this until I was done editing and ready to export. I plan on re-doing the whole thing in HD so that the quality of the video won't affect the content. I want the cut paper to be crispy clear.

In a post below, I included potential film festivals that my piece my fit into. As far as how it would be exhibited, I was thinking that maybe it could be rear-projected onto what looks like a mirror with a performance aspect: I would be sitting in front of that "mirror" doing the same things as the animation. Another idea is that a live-action video would be played across the room from it.