‘Finding space and time for contemplation during Covid-19′
Introduction
This is the first instalment of my work that explores the theme of finding space and time for contemplation during Covid-19. I chose to focus solely on the aspect of space as for me it has been quite limited while I have been in self-isolation after returning home to South Australia. The contents of the post shows the space I have been inhabiting in a static way with the world moving around it.
How did you author the video you recorded for upload to Instagram?
I used the back camera of my iPhone 11 to shoot all of the videos and used the video function on the camera app to record each separate video. I shot the video in HD 1080 at 30 fps even though my iPhone camera has the capacity of shooting in much higher, 4K quality. I did this as I like the ‘amatuer’ esque quality that comes when you zoom the camera as it gives it more of a homemade/real aesthetic.
I recorded multiple shots throughout the process and did not think too much about composition or lighting or anything ‘technical’ rather than just capturing the space in its natural manner. I would see something that inspired me, or I thought looked cool and would take my phone out, point and shoot.
For some shots there were multiple takes and other shots there wasn’t. There were also multiple spaces that I shot that I didn’t end up using for the post.
the editing process was very simple as I used the iPhone gallery app to adjust the colouring of the videos
How did you publish the video you recorded for upload to Instagram?
I decided to keep the deafault square format that Instagram uses and cropped my videos as I selected them. I used the carousel feature of Instagram so that I was able to have each video as seperate to each other rather than editing them into one continuous video. I selected the first video as I liked the composure of the shot with the conjoining walls and it would follow the minimalistic theme I endevour to have for my profile’s ‘grid’. The rest of the videos were then selected so that no two videos next to each other would be similar.
I then muted each video with the Instagram editing feature as there was ambient noise behind each video, which I liked, but when swiping between them the sound levels varied drastically so I decided to have no music or accompanying sound.
I then trimmed each video to be around 7 seconds long with the Instagram editing feature and tried to trim out any camera movement or unneccesary content.
I captioned my post “my space of contemplation during a global pandemic” and geotagged Moana, where I am living at the moment. This was to highlight further the idea of space and make it slightly more personal
The studio prompt
In regards to the studio prompt of ‘Finding space and time for contemplation during Covid-19′ this, as explained earlier, is a first instalment that is focussing on the first aspect of the prompt. Over the three weeks I plan to explore the idea of ‘finding time’ individually and then to explore these ideas of space and time as a collective. I would love to explore other features of Instagram like IGTV in the coming weeks and take more of a professional viewpoint in content creation for Instagram, as I usually take a more homemade, flippant approach to creating content exclusively for Instagram as that is the aesthetic I like to portray.