Admittedly I had been struggling with this assessment as the deadline slowly draws closer. My plans have significantly changed from my initial presentation on the subject, and it feels overwhelming when trying to adapt and adjust.

In the end, I decided to focus on three invasive species, in particular, Feral cats, the cane toad, and the crown of thorns starfish. This keeps the footage I need to collect focused and covers the broad range of invasive species and their reach; land, rivers and the ocean.

Challenges
The main struggle came down to footage. When creating a video-based around found footage, the creator is more or less at the mercy of the footage they can collect. This is frustrating when you have ideas for a film but can’t find the correct footage to convey your meaning. I searched many websites for the footage I needed. It, in turn, made me very thankful for deciding to broaden my scope of invasive species from only feral cats. The primary sources I required my footage from were Youtube and various stock footage sites like Pexels and Pixabay. I struggled with Shutterstock frequently offering useful footage but all with a large watermark, something I was adamant about avoiding.

Fortunately, I managed to come across a lot of documentaries that provided useful footage detailing the damage caused by my chosen species. The importance of this is as Wallace explains that the cognitive dissonance created by the public to the various issues of the Anthropocene has created ‘an ambivalence of denial and acceptance, complacency and horror.’ (Wallace 2017, pg 572)

Concerns
A concerning matter that came up was how violent my topic is graphic content. Invasive species are responsible for the eradication of many species and to visually demonstrate this without statistics images of the animals and environment eradicated is the best route. Elaine provided helpful feedback to this that a content warning would be best in the beginning regardless of the footage I use due to the heavy subject I am discussing. I still tried to avoid content too heavy. For instance, I used footage from this Video to gather footage of feral cats in the wild. I had to be careful in cutting footage to avoid showing anything too graphic.
(Please note, I am only including the link and not embedding the video on purpose due to the disturbing content. View at your own discretion as feral cat hunters took the footage.)

Sound
Finding various diegetic sounds was difficult at first. As someone that prefers using music or voiceover to convey a message, it was a challenge to avoid them entirely and rely only on diegetic audio and the visuals on screen to convey my message. I wanted to use a multitude of sounds from the various animals I chose. I took on Ash’s feedback and suggestion of a heartbeat to add suspense. It helped give me focus on the footage and rhythm to work and time myself. I also decided to use only ambience sound from my chosen species environments to keep the overall tone of the video the same.

References
Wallace, M 2017, ‘It’s the End of the Field as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)’, American Literary History, vol. 29, no. 2, p. 565-578.