‘I see myself emerging visually’

When Isabel Miranda ’17, M.S./GIS ’18 dove, into documentary filmmaking, she thought the narratives she was creating would harmonize during the editing process, after filming was completed. Instead, she quickly discovered the beauty and value of pre-production — where it was essential to plan out her storytelling approach before heading out with camera in hand.

“Documentary filmmaking is very much like narrative filmmaking. You still need to know what your character wants, what obstacles they’re going to face, and how they will overcome the obstacles,” Miranda said during the Conferencia Internacional Mujeres Cineastas Hispánicas (International Conference of Hispanic Women Filmmakers, CIMCiH) at Clark. “Ninety percent of all filmmaking is pre-production, determining how each scene will move the story forward.”

CIMCiH is a biannual conference that highlights the work of women directors whose films are created and presented in the Spanish language.

Miranda, who majored in studio art and geography and is now in the MFA Film and Media Studies program at Emerson College, returned to campus on Oct. 20 to present clips of her films “El Tío Viajero” and “So Powerful” at the conference. During a question-and-answer session with studio art  professor Toby Sisson — one of her former teachers — Miranda explained how her nomadic childhood and experimentation with mixed media art at Clark inspired her creative journey.

“I’ve always been a visual communicator,” she said. “From a young age, I always gravitated toward drawing.”

Miranda felt a strong pull toward art as her family moved from South America to Southeast Asia to Southern Africa. During her first year at Clark, Miranda worked in different mediums, and Sisson’s Drawing: Eye, Mind, and Hand course made a lasting impact.

“I was experimenting, taking mixed media and graphic design classes,” she recalled. “It really let me see the world without labels and attributions — just through line, texture, and form.”

Now, she creates hybrid art, fusing animation with documentary filmmaking. She’s drawn inspiration from the 2021 Danish documentary “Flee” (Jonas Poher Rasmussen), which uses this novel technique.

“It was pretty amazing to see a documentary almost fully animated,” she said. “They use two different styles, one that’s very realistic and another that’s more sketched out with charcoal or pencil.”

The latter form is used in the film to illustrate what the narrator is describing from his perspective. Miranda said this encourages the audience to imagine the scene and fill in the blanks. She is interested in techniques like this that grab the audience’s attention with abstraction and necessitate a more thorough and active engagement with the work.

Asked what advice she would give to young artists, Miranda encouraged students to keep working and track their progress.

“Ten years later, I’m looking through all these notebooks, sketchbooks, and photography, and I start to see patterns,” she said. “I see myself emerging visually through the work.”

Miranda is currently in post-production of a film that documents conversations with her father, exploring the question, “Where are you from?” As someone who grew up in many different places, Miranda often found this question hard to answer.

“My thesis is about finding my identity, finding who I am, activating that with my father, and trying to find out how he identifies himself. I’m also reflecting on my childhood memories and trying to make sense of growing up in all these places,” she said. “When you make art, it reveals so much about you as a person. It reveals your interests, your doubts, how you see the world. It’s a true representation of yourself, rather than what the art is depicting.”

Sisson observed that these recurring questions and curiosities may be Miranda’s life’s work.

“Very often, young or emerging artists feel frustrated because they can’t identify the themes that really interest them and that they want to follow,” Sisson said. “But you’re already ahead of the game on that.”

Miranda hopes people watch her films and reflect on the commonalities humans share.

“Growing up, people tried to fit me into certain groups or boxes. But at the end of the day, we all have a shared human experience, even if it’s in different contexts,” she said. “We can empathize with one another and find common ground.”