W6. Critiquing own sketch vid.
Yeah, okay. I’m just going to pat my own back in this post. I really like this video I dun did. It has palm trees in it. Critique, here we go!
WHAT I LIKE: The creativity of this piece. The snappy editing. Quick cuts. The different framing of palm trees at the beginning. The creepy, super-close shots of the mouth-dude-person-thing at Luna Park. The grouping of certain types of shots (palm trees, Luna Park/colour, ground shots, moving shots). The second half of the video where there are more shots of things happening. Brief sounds of things happening to accompany the brief visuals of things happening. Things that flow on from one another. Shots edited to match up screen direction (e.g. the car approaching and getting louder, and then cut to wave moving in same direction, accompanied by even louder ocean sounds). Just quick moments. Slices of things happening. Life in motion. St Kilda.
WHAT I DON’T LIKE: The shot of the graffitied wall annoys me. It annoys me because it only really worked when it had a longer screen time – enough screen time for the viewer to notice (hear/see) and appreciate the water dripping through the pipes. Which made the shot. It looked/sounded really beautiful. But without that time, it’s kind of a bland shot. An empty shot. It doesn’t do anything. It gets lost in the whole piece. So do the two shots that follow it. The ground-level shot of the angled, wooden walking path. And the ground-level shot of the sidewalk on Acland St. They’re bland compared with the rest of the video. But, at the same time, you don’t really notice them. They’re just snippets, like the other shots. They still help to create the overall feel of life in motion. I guess they ain’t so bad.
I think I fulfilled the brief. “Make a six to ten second clip that shows a parts of a place or places that define you.” Yep. St Kilda is important to me. I mean, I wouldn’t say it defines me. That’s kinda reductive. I suppose I could’ve thought of something more symbolic. An imaginary place or something. But, meh. I showed parts of St Kilda. Not wholes. Which, I think, made it far more interesting. It was 8 seconds. That’s within the range. Yep. I think I fulfilled it.