When I thought about who I am, I had to convince myself to be honest and that no one would ever watch this video. So here is who I am…

Brief 2: Sadnecessary from ceyda on Vimeo.

The title of my video is sadnecessary, which is a concept that means sadness is necessary for happiness. In my video, the white balloon represent the things that make me the happiest. On the other hand, the black balloons show my flaws, weaknesses and sadness. As I was making this video, I realised that in my life many of the things that make me sad, are attached to a good memory or have overtime become pleasant memories. The photo of my young self with my sister brings me sadness, but then the image of the matching heart bracelets we had reminds me of the better times in my childhood. And I live my life in this constant state of sadness and happiness, as shown in the image with the black and white balloons in my room. Writing is something that I have learned to love, a few years earlier and the balloons attached to my arms would have been black. Somehow typewriting makes my words feel solid, real and permanent.

The more ambiguous image of my shadow holding a ballon, signifies how we have emotional states of in between. There are times when we feel no sadness or happiness, we just exist but thats also necessary. As a lover of flowers, particularly purple ones, I had to include the flowers in front of my house because i see them everyday and they amaze me just the same. My baby nephew is a new form of happiness I did not know about until a year ago and a part of who I am has changed a little, theres a little monster who looks upto me. I believe as humans we are too complicated to be condensed into a one minute edit, but this is a part of who I am…

As a newbie on editing and film making in general, I felt like I lacked some basic skills that I need to acquire. However, I learnt some very useful tips from youtube tutorials, like RGB curves and colour grading. I realise now that pre production and planning is essential for any form of creative work and must be done. It was also challenging to be creative and to share my creativity without feeling any judgement. I’ve never really submersed my creative self into my previous school or university work, hence why I felt like I was doing something wrong and felt a little bit anxious. I have definitely learnt more about editing, using premier and filming. I made some mistakes, like not recording audio on my phone at the same time the camera records, I also did not have any  having extra photos or videos, but overall it was a process of trial and error.

 

A little more on sadnecessary

Sadnecessary is actually an album and title song written by the band Milky Chance. Their style of music intrigued me and hence inspired my own self portrait. They blanket dark lyrics with an upbeat tune, as they aim for a perfect balance of sadness and happiness, in a way to show that art does imitate life.