Separation Video

Making a video about separation, without spoken word, and only cinematography to get your point across can be very difficult. The different phases of creating a concept, shooting the video, and editing it all require thorough planning and attention to detail. Creating a concept is something that requires trial and error because of the absence of spoken word to contribute to getting the theme of separation across to the viewers. It is hard to create a concept that will not only make sense to the creator, but the viewers also. Something that is clearly representing separation to the creator may not even create the slightest idea of it to a viewer. The creator needs to find the medium between creatively displaying the theme, without being too literal about it. With separation, the creator is able to create a tone of being alone simply by having only themselves appear in the video, but again, it may be hard for a viewer to pick up on such a small detail such as that. Creating a concept is definitely the hardest part of making the video.

Shooting the video clips can also be difficult because a lot of the time, the creator needs to film themselves when they appear in the video. This will be much easier with the use of a tripod and a remote shutter. That allows the video creator to frame the shot, release the shutter, and act out the scene while being consistent. However, even with a tripod; the clips may not always come out as planned. The framing might be off, the shutter button could have not gone off, or the camera focus or settings could have been messed up. This requires a lot of precision and attention to detail. If attention is not given, the creator could waste a lot of time shooting, and re-shooting clips.

Editing is arguably the most important part of putting together a video, regardless of subject matter. If one were to shoot ten video clips, and then just import them into imovie in no particular order without trimming them, the video would make no sense. With the use of editing, the creator can take a bunch of random video clips, and make them into something that conveys a narrative. It is also very easy to spot bad editing, which ruins the video. If the clips are too long, too short, or if the sound effects don’t fade and fit well over the clips, it lowers the quality of the video by a lot. In the case of the projects we had to do, the hardest part about editing the video is when the creators have to mesh all four of their videos together. It is hard even when all of their videos connect to one another in some way. But if the videos don’t make sense when put next to each other, the combination of them will make even less sense than they would if they weren’t combined. The group members must communicate effectively and make sure everyone is on the same page when filming their individual videos. This is critical to making the final video legible.

Using video as a communication tool is the most effective way to show somebody something. Writing and photography are also great ways of communicating things to people. However, video is much more powerful than the other options. In order from highest to lowest effect, it would be video, photography, and then writing. The world that we live in today is more visually displayed than ever. And people are starting to read less and less. Newspapers are going out of business, Twitter only allows 160 characters because people start to get lazy and bored with their reading once they pass that point. Memes are taking control of our digital newsfeeds because they are images that display emotion very clearly. The majority of people prefer an image to words. All video is, is moving pictures. Video captures attention very well and people are stimulated the most by video. Attention spans automatically get longer when confronted with a video. People are able to sit through a movie that is three hours long and keep their attention focused for the entire movie; but they can’t read halfway through a 1,000 word blog post without getting bored and going somewhere else. That is partly due to the rise of social media, which is fast paced, tailored to the user’s interests and convenient. The fact that it is tailored to the user just makes it too easy for people to abandon a current task and run to it in order to see something that interests them. For some reason, video kind of negates that need to run to something more interesting. The movement involved in video is cause enough for most people to pay attention. Viewers may glance at a photograph for 2-4 seconds, but they watch a video for much longer than that because it is stimulating and they never know what is coming next.

The public nature of our video didn’t really affect the subject matter because our topic was separation. It doesn’t really need to be watered down for public consumption. If anything, putting somewhat controversial things in there can enhance the theme of separation greatly, which we actually did. One of our group members is a combat veteran, and he chose to center his video around how veterans feel once they return back home. This is a sensitive topic and could rub some people the wrong way; but we as a group felt that this would really display separation. Instead of keeping our video friendly to the viewers, we decided to throw in a somewhat sensitive topic to add to the theme.

The self-portrait experience was the most fun part of the video. Doing your own video is nice because you can do everything just the way you want it. Shooting your own video can be somewhat therapeutic if you enjoy that kind of stuff. It really allows you to be creative and try things by way of trial and error. There weren’t any issues with sharing the video on social media.