This is a document I authored from 2021-2023, as part of my involvement in the collaborative feature documentary The Stimming Pool, a film that seeks to represent autistic experience, co-directed by several autistic artists. I propose a new manifesto for the camera as a tool for autistic expression, rather than just as a tool for documenting and storytelling, to be implemented as a key component of the film.

Introduction

Cinema is a unique medium that provides tools for pre-expressive articulation; that is, language to communicate feeling and sensation beyond psychology and thought patterns. Neurodivergent people, without suitable tools of normative language to describe our experiences, often look to cinema in order to glean from it their own ways to communicate, to find language that articulates the specificity of their experience. In this document, I am proposing the Camera, the lens of looking at the film-world, as an autistic body, as an embodiment of autistic sensation, as a scrutinised object of fascination. I am calling it the Autistic Camera.

The Autistic Camera is a character, a curious yet self-aware storyteller, an embodied manifestation of the way people with autism look and are looked at. This character of the autistic Camera represents not just the observations of the lens, but also the other technical elements that go into manipulating a scene, such as sound and editing, all of which can easily misrepresent an autistic experience. These elements have consequently become self aware, deeply entangled within the diegesis.

Profile/diagnostics

• The Autistic Camera can be restrained. It can be bound to cinematic conventions and codes (180 degree line, eyeline match, etc). It is masking through normative cinematic language.

• The Autistic Camera can be liberated. It can drift, moving through scenes and environments without being bound to a central subject, having the agency to move fluidly without being bound to conventions of cinematic language. The Camera’s liberation is a response to its restraints, becoming a de-politicised body with space to move and explore and drift.

• Tilt, pan or dolly away from the subject without any explicit narrative cue, exploring another detail in the scene (a character, a prop, an empty space) whilst the main subject can still be clearly heard.

• Experiment with depth of field, selectively choosing what it finds interesting and focusing on that, regardless of whether it is the dominant subject of the frame.

• Experiment with movement - panning, tilting, canting spontaneously.

• Become embodied - it can walk through crowds, sit down on benches, lie on the grass; becoming an independent character with agency to move.

• Shapeshift into different formats or mediums (eg digital, VHS, 16mm)

• Escape - it can exit a scene or shot when the visual stimuli becomes overwhelming, finding quiet spaces and focusing on smaller patterns/visual motifs.

• The Autistic Camera can exhibit atypical behaviours.

• It can become easily fixated on details, patterns and people, just as easily as it can be distracted by something else. 

• It doesn’t align or identify with a single character, it wanders and catches characters coming and going. 

• It can enjoy moments of sensory euphoria in some situations, and complete overstimulation and panic in others. In this state of panic, the Camera becomes aware of smaller and smaller details that trigger the need to exit the scene, disconnecting from the subject in focus and finding quiet, still spaces. 

• It can shapeshift - it can be a digital film camera, a VHS recorder, or an exhibitor of archive footage.

• The Camera can learn behaviours and practice mirroring, in which its movements and behaviours mimic that of the person, object, environment or sound within its focus/peripheral focus.

***It is important to note that the Autistic Camera is not restrained to these rules/diagnostic criteria, they are merely a guide to emulating autistic experience, which differs from person to person on a broad spectrum. It can be argued that the Autistic Camera paradoxically does not conform to a system of labelling and categorising, and should not be defined by a set of traits, but rather as a reflection of the artist/cameraperson’s experience subjectively.

States of the camera

• Masking: traditional documentary or narrative continuity style. Conventional subjects are in focus. Essentially, the Camera disappears, its presence isn’t obvious.

• Shifting: reclaiming its agency to an extent. Needs to push the restraints of masking and move more fluidly.

• Drifting away from the subject to focus on something new

• Experimenting with depth of field

• Becoming self conscious and embodied, avoiding eye-contact, sitting down, being passed on to a different operator.

• Melting: loses control, is unable to compute sensory stimuli and desires escape.

• Escaping scenes quickly and focusing on small micro patterns.

• Image physically burns/melts in the projection gate

• Stimming: finding balance and rhythm in things that move, repeat and circulate.

• Circling round a scene.

• Focusing on images that repeat or circle

• Constantly moving

• Less choreographed, more instinctual

• Resting: taking a break from its job, decompressing and destimulating. It remains still, focusing on a single image.

Examples of THE STATES OF THE AUTISTIC CAMERA in The Stimming Pool

PROLOGUE (approx 5 mins)

1. ROBIN AND JOHN AT HOME 

The camera starts off here by masking, then slowly shifting. Becomes entranced by objects in Robin and John’s home. Here we are softly introduced to the camera’s nature.

2. B-MOVIE FAN CLUB

The camera is masking here, becoming entranced by Robin’s introduction, disappearing into the audience.

PART 1 (approx 40 mins)

3. CLINIC WAITING ROOM 

The camera is masking, as if preparing to undergo the tests itself.

4. TEST 

Becoming overwhelmed by the tests, the camera starts shifting. It becomes distracted by what appears to be Chess in the window, and then focusing on micro details in the eye tracking test.

5. URBAN NEUROTYPICAL ARCHITECTURE/SPACE  

The camera is shifting, getting lost in the crowds, finding and losing the shapeshifter who it becomes fixated with. The cult of neurotypicality exhibited by the crowds is overwhelming, the camera seeks constant movement and distraction, avoiding eye contact with strangers. At one point, the camera is knocked slightly and sits down.

6. THE SHAPESHIFTER AT WORK / THE OFFICE building to MELTDOWN 1 

The camera is masking

7. THE SHAPESHIFTER IN THE WORLD 

The camera is masking again, following the Shapeshifter recovering after a hard day.

8. THE SHAPESHIFTER AT HOME 

The masking camera begins stimming, moving in fluid dancerly motions with the Shapeshifter, circling and swaying

9. SLEEPERS + CHESS

The camera is resting, then masking, blending back into the diegesis as Chess watches over the Shapeshifter

10. WILDLIFE SPACES featuring Chess

The camera is shifting, delighting in the micro details of the wildlife, becoming fascinated by one thing before moving on to the next. Following individual blades of grass, tracking an insect across a tree, delighting in the details.

11. LUCY PROJECT ART WORKS ART STUDIOS 

The camera is masking, but begins to shift as it becomes interested in pieces of artwork, details.

12. DINNER(S)

The resting camera begins to stim, delighting in the rotations it makes around the dinner table.

13. PUB  building to MELTDOWN 2

The camera begins this sequence in a masking state, blending into normative observational documentary mode. It becomes distracted by conversations, people, patterns on the carpet, beginning to shift and resist the restraints of its conventional gaze.

14. PUB TOILET

The shifting camera picks up conversations, following the shapeshifter but gazing around the starkly different environment of the bathroom. Upon re-entering the pub, twice as full as before, it starts melting, moving more rapidly, taking in the amount of sensory stimuli in the room, eventually turning and retreating back into the bathroom.

15. INTERMISSION - PUB TOILET the camera catches sight of mural 

The camera is resting, unusually still, fixating on the mural on the wall.

PART TWO (approx 30 mins)

16. PUB empty

The shifting camera repeats its movements from the previous pub scene, this time observing and taking in its emptiness

17. THE COLLECTIVE -  circling discussion, where does the film go next? Should it circle back? we rotate around the creatives. This is much like the dinners. They decide to go back to the sleepers.

The camera is resting, then stimming

18. SLEEPERS (Robin, Ben, Shapeshifter sleeping) 

The camera is masking, observing

19. NIGHTWALKING, incl chess, Ben, Robin, Shapeshifter

The camera is masking

20. URBAN ARCHITECTURE REVISITED - EMPTY SPIN CLASS, SUPERMARKET NIGHT SHELF  STACKING, Shapeshifter here too

The camera weaves between masking and shifting, slipping into and out of control.

21. TESTING  in ABANDONED SPACES - same characters as the 1st TESTING sequences, (rewilding, repurposed spaces) – building to MELTDOWN ??? 

The camera weaves between masking and shifting, slipping into and out of control.

22. CLINIC - EYE TRACKING REVISITED 

The camera is masking and shifting, slipping into and out of control.

23. WILDLIFE SPACES 2 - insects swarms hives 

The shifting camera begins to melt, focusing on the micro details of the wildlife, taking in too much sensory stimuli, embodied movement rushes hurriedly through trees.

24. ZOMBIE SWAMPS building to MELTDOWN 4

Masking

25. B-MOVIE CLUB 

The camera is masking, part of Robin’s audience

26. B-movie film club audience exits, THE AUTISTIC CAMERA drifts off 

The masking camera drifts away and begins shifting, becoming unfocused on one subject, finding and following people as they leave the theatre, avoiding eye contact

27. STIMMING POOLS including shapeshifter 

The shifting camera starts stimming with the shapeshifters, finding a rhythm in repetitive motions, circling round the pool.

Early concepts for The Stimming Pool (unused)

EXAMPLE: John and Robin

John and Robin are being filmed at their home in Hastings, in the manner of traditional, observational documentary. They are talking about an upcoming B Movie Fan Club event. They are framed in a wide, the wall of the room coming into the frame from the side. The focus gradually pulls to a shallow depth of field, and a film poster on the wall comes into focus. We cut to a better angle of the poster, from the front, and we notice that it is for a film called The Spiral. The poster is extremely detailed, containing interesting spiralling shapes, branches, and a dog named Chess as the central figure. We linger on this shot, whilst Robin and John are heard talking just as clearly as before.

OR

The camera is handheld, following John and Robin as they talk and discuss the B Movie Fan Club. They are framed in a two-shot. Slowly, the camera pans to the side until John and Robin are out of frame and begins to move to inspect the poster. It drifts and glides over the details of the poster, whilst Robin and John are still talking.

EXAMPLE B: The Pub

The camera observes two people talking at the pub (using AI generated script). The conversation is uninteresting and repetitive. The camera slowly pans away, following someone else. The person turns around, almost making direct eye contact with the camera. The camera tilts down slightly, avoiding direct address, following the pattern of the carpet.