Five Gigs

digital video and performance lecture

2023

Drawing from my own experience as an actor in true crime reenactment shows over five ‘gigs’ in 2021 and 2022, True Crime is a project based on my own participation and related research in the “true crime entertainment” industry. The project is a way to consider the implications of the true crime genre as entertainment and its popularity in this time of constant content and storytelling consumption through seemingly infinite streaming options.

I was initially driven by curiosity and the extra income to be a reenactment actor, but after one episode shoot I became fascinated with the theatrical process of the production. In television specifically, there is a “close but not exact” strategy employed across all forms of portrayal, and a blur effect in post production used to hide the inaccuracies and emphasize the idea of memory. I am curious about the implications of this approximation, and what this means for a medium so widely consumed and referenced as “true”. I wonder about what this narrative representation strategy reifies and perpetuates, in a genre so closely tied to perceptions of the justice system.

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