I believe the singular most successful aspect of Issy and I’s sensory video project was how we were able to capture a wide range of videos that detailed in depth intricacies of our contrasting landscapes. I also think our choice to do an interactive video poem in order to present this footage was an effective way in demonstrating these ecology intricacies in an engaging format for our audience. What I found to be the singular most problematic aspect of our video work was our original research question and the overall message of our sensory video getting lost in translation. While I do believe our project is engaging and conveys similarities among contrasting landscapes, I think the overall impact Issy and I wanted our project to give to our audience didn’t really come through along with its message, in which it hoped to inspire change among its audience.
If I was going to develop this sensory video project I think I would have liked to spend more time on the videos that were incorporated and make them longer in duration and more of them so the project could go even deeper into the details of each landscape that is being conveyed. I also think I would have liked to develop the message I would have wanted the video project to convey so it would be able to have more of an impact on its audience, therefore I would have put more time into the execution of this project in order to improve it. If I was going to develop it into a different kind of work I would have done a similar idea but rather than making it an interactive video poem I would have just made it one large video made up of the smaller videos. I think it would be interesting to see how taking away the interactive component of this project would affect its engagement and how you could try new techniques to make one large video engaging. An idea I had was with an ambience soundtrack matching the emotion each smaller video is hoping to evoke from its audience. I think sound and visuals go hand in hand so sound would have been interesting to play around with and how it could ultimately enhance the visual properties of the project.
I have learnt many things about how you can craft ecological intimacy through a sensory video production. One of the most significant ways however is through the practice and process of attunement. By learning the art of attunement it has allowed me to be more closely aligned with the environments in which I am situated, therefore allowing me to notice its unseen qualities and further being able to capture those unseen qualities on camera. The second Dust and Shadow reader states that ‘attunement offers a way into deeper and closer connections with life, in all of its nuances and intricacies.’ I think the key part in being able to attune to an environment and capture it’s in depth intricacies allows for ecological intimacy within a sensory video production as a viewer can really feel as if they are a part of the environment in which they are being shown and even make connections between themselves and that environment. The filming technique which allowed me to convey this in a sensory video project was by filming most of my footage in close ups to really make the viewer feel as if they are immersed within these unseen qualities of an environment.
I really enjoyed working collaboratively throughout the semester, especially with Issy in our final sensory video project. I love hearing other people’s ideas and opinions on things which offer me a new perspective of thinking on how we can convey a message or approach a technique. Whilst working with Issy we met up on multiple occasions and talked about our progress and where we were at with collecting footage, those meetings were some of my highlights as we were able to get a lot of work done and communicate new approaches towards our project. Overall those meetings were super proactive and productive, which I enjoyed. I think moving forward working collaboratively in the future, in larger groups I tend to be less confident about my ideas and approaches towards things which can cause me to not speak up about ideas I may have. I would like to improve on this going forward so I am able to speak up within larger groups of people to be able to bring more ideas to the table.
The second Dust and Shadow reader states that ‘attunement offers a way into deeper and closer connections with life, in all of its nuances and intricacies.’
(reader_2 – dust_and_shadow [the libarynth], 2022)