God Knows Where I Am

The depiction of Linda Bishop's conscious state was shot in film, using 35mm, 16mm, and Super 16mm for different reasons. The filmmakers employed a variety of cameras, including a 1939 Bell & Howell Eyemo (a camera used in WWII war photography) and a 1980s Aaton XTR Prod, each for thematic reasons to underline notions of dreamscapes, personal nostalgia and commercial memory. The filmmakers tried to elevate the visual quality of the film as a way to honor Linda, who was an extremely insightful and visual person.[7]

Linda Bishop hid in an attic in the farmhouse, trying to avoid being seen by neighbors, where she found magazines from the 1970s, many of which depicted advertisements for food. Those ads had a certain patina and do not feel like ads from today. The filmmakers tried to echo the nostalgia of the ads and turned to capturing the numerous recipes and food segments in the diary Linda wrote about, shooting those scenes in Super 16mm. When Linda writes about how hungry she is while she is starving and how she is dreaming of a Thanksgiving dinner, the filmmakers wanted to present the imagery of food in both an enticing and dreamy way. They wanted the audience to feel hunger but also feel they were seeing a dream. Many of the food shots were shot in Super 16mm with an Aaton XTR to capture a sense of nostalgia, but also a sense of unease as further enhanced by the graininess of the film. These were images that represented, to a certain extent, a distorted reality of a mentally ill woman yearning for and imagining food, but yearning for food as she imagined it from food commercials she had seen years before when she was more lucid.

When depicting what Linda Bishop may have seen looking outside the window of the farmhouse over the four-month period she was there, or within the room that she died, the filmmakers did not want to use a medium that felt too immediate or hypertransient, so they chose 35mm film, which requires patience and deliberation to compose shots. While in the farmhouse, in a metaphoric sense, Linda lived in a world of film, a world not completely rooted in modernity. There was no electricity or heat, and she spent her time writing in a diary, collecting apples and dreaming, not surfing on the internet. 35mm film image also has an extremely beautiful quality to it, and much of what Linda was looking at outside including rolling fields, a historic barn, lilac branches, a rambling brook, deer and birds, etc. was extremely beautiful. The 1939 Eyemo was used to help map the internal landscapes of the house as well as evoke a sense of memory. One of their Eyemos was also spring-wound which gave the images a sense of uneasiness in its inconsistent exposure uniformity and flicker quality.

When Linda Bishop was released from the state psychiatric hospital, she wandered through various paths in the forest feeling a sense of freedom until she arrived ultimately at the farmhouse. The filmmakers shot these scenes with a 16mm 1966 Bolex and a 16mm 1972 Canon Scoopic. 16mm was ideal to capture the vigor and agitation of her journey from the hospital which was helped by the grain of the film. The filmmakers wanted to free these shoots from any sense of formalism and they openly embraced the streaks of light, soft grainy over-exposed images and lens flares that naturally came with shooting in 16mm. They freed the camera without even looking through the viewfinder. In these 16mm scenes, the viewer does not merely see but actually experiences the act of Linda walking vigorously from the hospital, away out of town and through the forest towards the farmhouse.

The filmmakers conducted many of the interviews in the actual farmhouse where Linda Bishop lived and ultimately died. These interviews were shot in digital video with a Canon C300 to capture the truth of those who came to know Linda over the years and to create a feel of those interviewees being truly present or immediate. They used an Arriflex Alexa in most of the nature shots in the film. Linda lived through one of the worst winters in New Hampshire history. The fall and winter months play a prominent role in the film as Linda struggles through a frozen landscape to attempt to survive longer as she runs out of apples and water. Her desperation in running out of food is mirrored in the desolation of the physical surroundings around her. As she slowly approaches death so does the farmhouse and nature under the weight of winter. The Alexa was stunningly effective in helping us to search for nature's soul in the sun, clouds, snowstorms, icicles hanging from the farmhouse windows and frozen hills throughout this desperate New Hampshire winter. The filmmakers used the Alexa for the eye-of-God shots.

The filmmakers used a Technocrane with a 60-foot telescopic arm and remote-controlled camera on God Knows Where I Am as well. The extending arm allowed really smooth moves, which helped them evoke both the meditations of a solitary soul and the eye of God moving through the interiors of the farmhouse and landscape with a great sense of precision and composition. Near the end of the film, there is a beam of light in Linda's last room, which reminds viewers of the “camera obscura” effect when images of memory are pushed or even forced through a tear in the curtain. In addition, the death scene at the end of the film was shot with a Lensbaby. The lens was actually attached to a piece of accordion-like rubber giving the impression of losing consciousness just by moving the optics in and out between one's fingers.[7]

An early challenge for the filmmakers was how to present Linda's story in her own words. While they had no protagonist to interview, they did have Linda's words, in the form of her diary. Linda's diary was brought vividly to life by actress Lori Singer. Singer spent considerable time with the real diary, even studying how the pen was imprinted onto the actual paper for clues as to what Linda might have been experiencing. Singer created an entire character arc for Linda. The performance helps the viewer enter into the mind of Linda and feel for her, and she serves as the key guide, taking you on what becomes a tragic journey.[8]

Singer's performance has been praised by critics across the board. Greg Klymkiw of The Film Corner praised, "Singer's performance here is astonishing - she captures the pain, desperation and even small joys in Bishop's life during these sad, lonely days with a sensitivity and grace linked wholly to the "character" of Bishop.""[9] Andrew Parker of Toronto Film Scene said, "The actress steps inside Bishop so completely that it’s impossible not to sit in stunned silence listening to every word of the journals as they’re delivered."[10] Jessica Kiang of Variety wrote, “A chilling exploration-The diaries are not just read but vocally embodied by Lori Singer in a vivid voiceover performance.”[11]