Usually, when the two word “film review” comes to mind, one would think of a Hollywood-stylised type of content – but no. In my case, I wanted to showcase a vlogger that I’ve recently just started watching. They are known as CatCreature, and I would say that she isn’t your typical Youtuber. Of course, she follows the line of what we know as ‘vlogging’ but she vlogs in a way that sets her aside from the rest.

The video I’ve chosen is called My Dearest,: 

To give a bit of context, CatCreature expresses her thoughts and feelings from a recent life event that she has experienced.

The angles that she employs in this video are all from a personal perspective, displaying her interactions with people in her life, landscapes. In fact, it’s more so of herself doing both stimulating and mundane activities that happen in our everyday lives.

My favorite part of the whole video is the monologue and what she had to say – even though it was coming from her perspective of her own life, there were moments where I found myself agreeing with what she had to say.

My analysis of this is that it is a simple home video, taken from an iPhone or maybe even from a point and shoot camera, however, it is a heavily edited video with filters over it to either compensate for the lack of well-prepared shots or maybe even for the aesthetics of the overall video.

She also really didn’t go out of her way to film from an incredible angle – it looked like it was filmed from the floor, her study table and was maybe even filmed by her family/friends and of course, herself.

Watching this video, it actually reminded of one of the short films we watched in class by John Mekas, who compiled several, fast, cut-away shots via FILM. It was interesting to see the comparison between the old-school version of editing with the authenticity fo film, versus the digital method of making a video with the same film aesthetics.

My choice of film or video for this task was my own creation – Movement and Light. The reason why I chose these two videos is because I believe that it will be easier to discuss and talk about the videos I made from my own will and creative perspective. Let’s begin with

Movement: 

For this video, it was actually edited right after my Light video and therefore, I wanted to go on a different route in comparison to the Light video that I have previously edited (I’ll get more into that in a second). I felt that a structure was needed for MOVEMENT because I thought that through my process of this construction, it enables me to catch my thought processes and what was going through my mind whilst filming. From the opening of the train’s movement to same ending, it established how the video started out and of course, how the video ended.

Light: 

As for light, it was really all about a matter of experimentation for me. I wanted to play around with Premiere Pro and my editing skills. I’ve had a fair amount of experience when it came to editing and really just wanted to test out my capacity and the extent of my skills.

For example, layering videos on top of each other, placing a white background, adding effects and transitions – those were all part of my edit for LIGHT. 

I also would like to make one explanation in regards to my experimental video – prior to this assignment, James went around the class and discussed what it is that interested us in the aspect of media and creating it. I expressed that I had a certain enthusiasm when it came to Asian Cinemas. Hence why, I decided to incorporate Japanese characters into my video:

I hope to replicate and maybe even create my own version of the Asian film aesthetics, which is why I attempted to combine my knowledge of Japanese into this experimental video.