reflection five

“Use a combination of video and text to respond to the conceptual brief. The text should be used through the work to communicate your response.”

This video piece utilises and shows the meaning of something when it is both considered in an everyday context and beyond. When considering something that can take me beyond everyday life, I often think of music, something I see as an everyday commodity. But when considered further, I find it so fascinating the way in which sound is delivered and transmitted to take its shape as a piece of music that can be so meaningful to us. Sound waves, a complex science are shown as a double entendre for the meaning of waves as they are shown against a more everyday representation of the idea of a wave.

The piece suggests that you ‘find your beyond,’ much as we have been forced to within the confines of a global pandemic. We have been forced to seek for things beyond our everyday lives, without being able to experience much outside of our homes.

Having the addition of text within my video, I wanted to explore the notion of negative space. This extrapolates that idea of finding something, which in this context is a word. I didn’t want the text to be an obvious, main element of the video but rather find a way that it could frame the shots and act as a complementing element.

What did you learn from the authoring and publishing process? 

Again, this week my learning was astronomical as I decided to deal with adobe programs that I am not overly familiar with. I knew what I wanted to do, but didn’t know how to do it so with my time little Photoshop knowledge I took a swing at creating the lettering. It took a lot of experimentation and trial and error in terms of both the design and the technical elements, unfortunately, this process was quite time-consuming but definitely beneficial for future endeavours, especially for the week six brief as I plan to make something on photoshop for that.

I also learnt some basic Adobe After Effects skills after watching some video tutorials on Youtube. I wanted to use the sound waves for the specific music I was using instead of sourcing copyright-free material to use for my video but this was a process I was unsure of how to tackle. After effects is a program I have never dealt with or really even heard of so it took me some time to get acquainted but I’m glad I persevered as I have a new skill set under my belt for future creative projects. Tutvid’s “Audio Waveform Visualization Effect After Effects” tutorial on Youtube was what gave me the framework and skills to then experiment and create the final waveform that is seen in my video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZaInjWInR0)

What went well? 

Something that went well in the process of creating and authoring this piece was the collaboration that I sought out. I was really stuck on ideas for what I wanted to do and I bounced around ideas with my others who are extremely creative. I found that through honest opinion sharing and workshopping of ideas I was able to come to an idea that I would not have usually gone with. Collaboration during the authoring process was also extremely beneficial as my work almost explored the aspects of graphic design, something that I am not overly skilled in. Collaborating again with people that I find inspiring allowed me to workshop ideas and come to a video that turned out to be completely different from its first draft.

What did not go well? 

One aspect of the process that in my opinion, didn’t go well was the amount of time I spent on it. Although there was lots of experimentation and trial and error, which is beneficial, much of this experimentation came from being unhappy. This made the process much less enjoyable and almost brought down my personal value of the final piece as it is something that didn’t come naturally. I usually love to try new things and explore ways to enhance my work, but this week it didn’t feel like I was making it better, it felt as if I was trying to bring it to an acceptable standard.

What could you do better? 

There are technical skills that I could acquire which I think will enhance the level of my work. I am seeing some really cool things from my classmates and often I am unsure of how they created their work with ‘fancy’ transitions and other elements that happen in the post-production phase. Although I say this, I also think that something I could improve upon is being comfortable in my creative process and creative style. My aesthetic and creative style is much more focussed on the pre-production and the exploration of an idea rather than relying on editing to wow the viewer (which I am not saying other classmates are doing whatsoever).

I think that being more comfortable in the process of failure will benefit me in my future work as a content creator as I know it is inevitable. Taking things as a learning curve rather than a failed attempt will definitely allow me to grow as a media maker and will force me to produce video work that I identify with and exhibit my skills.

Respond to the studio prompt question ‘How do the affordances of Instagram affect the way video content is authored?‘ What insights can you add in response to this question?

One thing I really struggle with when creating video content for Instagram is finding copyright-free music that I really like to accompany my videos. I think this is often because I will imagine the perfect song that relates to the idea or mood of the video and it’s difficult to find something copyright free to replace this. Even after two years of using music found on creative commons websites, I still find it one of the hardest things about the process and it made me think of ways I could use copyrighted content without being penalised for it.

There are some features of Instagram that allow you to do just this and I had originally planned to explore one of these features for my video authoring and publishing. Instagram reels is a new feature that I haven’t yet created content with and I had originally planned to make my video using this software to expand my Instagram software literacy. Instagram reels allows the use of copyrighted music material as an overlay for the video and credits the artist, similarly to Instagram stories.

As a ‘professional’ authoring process I found reels to be quite of a hindrance as there are very little opportunities for editing/post-production enhancing. Relating directly to this weeks prompt of including text in our videos, there were very few options of adding this to your video, which is why I decided to go in a different direction.

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