Glad to see that you four have already done so much on the technical and research side of things to get started with your project! I think your focus in the film on the memory of Dowling will really contribute something to the project–and the Internet as a whole–that hasn’t been out there before. As you proceed, however, I do have two important suggestions:
1. Have you decided, as a group, about the primary point or points you want to make in your movie? I see you have divided the topic of the film according to theme, but what’s less clear is what you hope to communicate to the viewer through these themes. Unless you talk with each other about this big question, I can foresee each section being somewhat disconnected from the others. Also keep in mind that if you don’t set out to make a clear point with your film, then you leave the viewer a lot more room to “read into” the film what they choose, or just to come away from it with their preexisting ideas or presumptions intact. If you want the viewer to learn something new from you, you need to do some tough talking with each other about what that something is.
2. Given the timeframe, I think it makes sense for you to focus your film on stills and audio, but one of the real virtues of your medium (as opposed to those of the other groups) is the ability to have video or moving images. Are there potential ways you could use shots taken by a video camera to take advantage of this strength of the medium? For example, if it was useful to you to walk down to the statue at the beginning of the semester and get a sense of the surroundings, would a video of what that area looks like also give a viewer of your film a sense of context and space? You’ve also talked about doing some interviews; that would also give you some moving images along with the stills.
If you want some ideas about other possible ways of incorporating a statue into film, check out the clip from Looking for Lincoln that I have posted on OWL-Space–especially with the section of the OWL-Space clip beginning around 5:55 minutes.
What you do, of course, is up to you, and you’ve got great ideas floating around already. Before everything gets finalized, though, I do want to push you a little bit to (a) think about the mission of your group and the purpose of your film and (b) think about ways you can fully utilize the advantages of your medium in order to fulfill that mission.