This is my Media Portrait.

Written Reflection for Project_Brief_3

My Media Portrait was of Georgie Kemshal-Bell, a friend of mine. I asked her to be the subject of my assignment because I thought she was interesting and had a personality suitable for making an interesting video (I will also admit, partly because she is one of the few people I know in Melbourne).

I am fairly happy with the final product, although there are a few issues that I wish could have been improved. Producing the Media Portrait was troublesome, mostly due to scheduling conflicts which limited the amount of time I could spend with Georgie. This meant it was not really a true “interview” but rather quite scripted and filmed over roughly a week. Although in my opinion, this “artificialness” doesn’t negatively impact the finished product, everything in the video is still Georgie’s opinion, except that the wording was timed and structured around fitting it with the footage already recorded. I am happy with how the finished product turned out, as during editing it was a series of completely isolated clips, one technical flaw is in order to have footage match narration, I had to leave un-cut video run and I am visible turning off the camera.

My biggest regret is the lack of Found Footage, I found it incredibly hard to find anything that matched our narrative, so almost everything was shot specifically for this video. The Found Footage I did use, was various music clips, and some rain. The “Dance music” was needed for the scene, and the other audio clip gave an ominous vibe which was intended for the at night shot, but I felt it worked well enough to continue to the end of video. The Rain was in-actuality me desperately trying to find anything that fit in order to add more to meet requirements.

I also became quite frustrated with the limited editing software of iMOVIE, having to abandon much of my initial ideas of editing. I will attempt to acquire a more advanced program soon.

Bibliography:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A%D0%94%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B9%D0%BD%D0%BE_%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8C.ogg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFL_Studio_loop.ogg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A20141103Regen.ogv

This is my Media Self Portrait, my intention was to give broad glimpse at me, while using stylistic techniques that demonstrate my personality.

The opening “title” was achieved by drawing it by hand, and taking 62 photographs as my drawing progressed and inserted them into the video for a fraction of a second. I added the sound effect of rapidly typing because usually the title screen of a film is done in computerised text and the sound of typing was ironic and fitted nicely with the jerkiness of the paper moving around.

The next sequence, is not as good as I would have liked it to be. My intention was to have an overhead camera view (achieved by sticky taping my phone to the roof) and I wanted to narrate my self doing various things. However due to the requirement of no shot exceeding 20 seconds, I couldn’t do what I envisioned, as well as the slightly embarrassing fact that I didn’t like the thought of my neighbours hearing me do all the voice recording.

After that, there is a series of videos displaying things about my self, with a backdrop of some music I created using GarageBand. The first of which is me jumping into a pool, which is to do with my love of the outdoors and specifically swimming. The second is a close-up shot of injecting the needle of an insulin pump, I am type-1 Diabetic and although it sucks it is a large part of my life, with this shot my intention is to make the audience uncomfortable. The final clip is me playing Crash Bandicoot 2 on a handheld gaming console, this contrasts the previous clip because its something I enjoy. The music is the same track throughout, but I edited its pitch/speed to match the “tone” of each clip.

I ended my Self Portrait with “fin” which is a tradition of mine when making videos, because it gives a sense of artistic value and fanciness even when it is majorly un-suited. This ironic sense of quality appeals to me, as I like putting tounge-in-cheek humour in my work.

MEDIA SELF PORTRAIT

Videos:

This first video is me eating a Toasted Cheese Sandwhich from a POV shot. This represents my love of toast, and also I wanted to do something cool and different. It was much harder to film than I anticipated since I had to use my iPhone covering my eyes and held in place by a T-shirt wrapped around my head.

Media-Toasted Sandwhich from Sandy Jones on Vimeo.

This next video is of me jumping into my cousins Pool and doing a flip. Its not very meaningful about me, but I do however like swimming. I was mostly out of ideas and spending the day at my cousins house, so why not?

Frontflip into my cousins pool from Sandy Jones on Vimeo.

Images:

This first image is of a picture I drew, it is of a anthropomorphic giraffe. I like to draw weird stuff like that.

This photo is of some big buildings, because I moved from a small country town the “bigness” of everything is strange.

This photo is of my shoe, the orange spots are a reasult of spilling chlorine on them while I was working as a lifeguard over the summer. I actually like them better like this.

This next image is of me wearing 4 pairs of sunglasses, taken through a window at night. I think this picture represents my tendency to leave assignments to the last minute and do whatever idea pops into my head. Also my extensive novelty sunglasses collection. (Unfortunantly its on its side)

Audio:

I havnt had a chance to upload them yet.

But one of them was 20 seconds of traffic noise and wind, and the other one was me reading the text from the next section. So you’re not missing much.

Text:

“I suck at haikus

syllables are confusing

cat, dog, cat, cat dog”

This is a haiku I wrote, its pretty lame.