When I sat down and went through the footage that everyone had shot for this assignment, I was struck by the range of different themes and ideas that people had explored. I was particularly interested in the images showing plants and natural things in the city, and the contrasting images of the buildings and construction. With this in mind, I decided to make my 2 minute film an exploration of the contrast between the natural images and the unnatural images.

I chose a funky, modern jazz song from an open source music site to accompany the images, because I thought it carried the images well and gave the film an interesting rhythm. However, I also really liked the sound of the construction worker banging his hammer against the steel framing, so i decided to open with that noise and then abruptly cut to a natural image and bring in the music. This was an attempt to accentuate the contrast between the natural and unnatural images, which I thought worked quite well. Then at the end, I decided to re-introduce the ambient sounds of the city in order to tie the film off, and create a kind of abrupt pull back to reality for the viewer.

Overall, I am happy with the film. I was really impressed with the footage everyone came up with, and I really enjoyed using their footage and incorporating it into my idea. I enjoy editing with music, and I am particularly interested in the way that the musical rhythm interacts with the rhythm of the editing and of the images (which is something I explored in a previous studio). I would really like to incorporate this in some way into my final film project for this semester. I think music is often critical in short film, so i will be very interested to see how it will be used in our projects this semester.