‘Finding space and time for contemplation during Covid-19’
Introduction
This is my second reflection on authoring and publishing videos on Instagram. This week I focused again on the aspects of ‘time’ and ‘space’ for contemplation during COVID-19. With the restrictions of wearing a mask and staying at home set onto Melbourne as of late, most of the days in the week consisted of waking up and going straight to my desk and onto the laptop, for purposes such as online classes, readings, homework, etc.
That is why I wanted to focus this week’s video on my living room. The 3-5 hours where I’d get to hang out in my living room on the weekend doing whatever I like, free of anything university-related allows time and space for myself to get away from the tiring fixed schedule of uni, and to just think about myself. Everyone needs some “me time” once in a while to de-stress themselves from university, work, and the ongoing issue of COVID.
How did you author the video you recorded for upload to Instagram?
I shot the videos on my iPhone XS Max using the rear camera. To achieve a better camera resolution, I went onto the settings of my iPhone and set the camera resolution to record at 4K at 60fps. However, it did not come out as good as I expected; the scenes where I shot in the dark (at night) were very blurry and pixelated, even on 4K. I need to look upon how to shoot high-definition videos in the dark on my iPhone next time.
Instead of having my girlfriend hold the iPhone for me, I placed my iPhone on a tripod throughout the whole shoot. The reason being was that I wanted to keep the orientation of the background the same and to lessen motion and shakiness in the video. I also wanted to imitate myself teleporting around the couch over the hours I spent in the living room. Another thing I attempted to include in the video was to portray the couch as a superior landmark in the video to show the activities I would do on/around the couch to find time and space to contemplate during COVID. Another reason why I wanted to portray my couch as a landmark in the video was due to the Zoom meeting we had with McClelland talking about their sculptures being superior landmarks/attractions at McClelland’s gallery.
However, I noticed that the placement of the couch in some videos were different and shifted. I had to manually straighten the orientation of the videos (on the iPhone gallery app) to align it with the rest of the videos.
I airdropped the videos onto my laptop and edited it on Final Cut Pro. I added the clips, muted them and placed a copyright-free music over the video. I took advantage of the beats in the music and used it as a mark on when to change the clips. This is to create a sense of rhythm and tempo to showcase the peacefulness and compatibility I have with what I can do in my free time during COVID. The resolution of the video was set to 1920 x 960 (H.264). I did occur a problem where some videos fit the dimensions of the video, but some were smaller (even though I shot it all on the same iPhone). To achieve the idea of the background being in a still position, I scaled the videos which were smaller on Final Cut Pro, to replicate it with the correct-sized videos.
I airdropped the video back onto my iPhone and wanted to use the Instagram Square format instead this time. I came across a problem where some shots were out of frame, due to the square format. I then went back on my iPhone gallery, cropped the uploaded video to square format and airdropped back onto my laptop for further editing on Final Cut.
I re-positioned the videos that needed to be revised to fit in the square format over the edited (landscape orientated) video.
Although it defeated my purpose of having the background staying in one stationary position, the shift in position when I’m on the edge of the couch (causing the position of the background to change) created a sense of pseudo-meaning. The act of how there is a little adventure/story conveyed when I lose track of time having fun with my alone time during the hectic uni life.
Lastly, I used the PREQUEL app on my iPhone and selected a template effect. The effect (Story) created an early 2000’s film-reel effect with the title “Keep your distance”. This came off as a cool infomercial type of video, educating viewers to social distance, while a video of me staying at home is playing.
I was pleased with the final product, but I knew that I could have done better, in the technical sense and quality of content produced and published. Some bits in the video felt awkward, I had doubts if 40 seconds for a video might make viewers lose engagement, and also if some clips were just forcefully placed in the video for quantity instead of quality. Furthermore, I also had second thoughts about adding music over the video, as I had another concept where I would recreate realistic sounds of the scenes in post-production (foley) and placed them over the video to present the peace I had spending time at the living room.
How did I publish my video for Instagram?
After all the editing on Final Cut Pro, I exported it at 1080p, 16:9 format and finished the editing on PREQUEL on my iPhone. I then uploaded the video onto Instagram with the square format, and I did not do anything with the filter since I already added a filter beforehand on PREQUEL. Furthermore, I took a quote from Roy. T Bennett to use as my caption for the video as it fits well with the type of video I was trying to convey. I also chose a thumbnail for my video as well as my location and hashtags related to the topic of the video to further broaden my work to more people on Instagram.