Reflection

I’m still learning about who I actually am as an individual, and I actually am finding that these self-portrait briefs are helping me achieve this, or helping my attempt at it.

I’ve always loved the cheesy side sweep shot of picture frames to introduce a character, and I feel like that’s what I am, just a character in other people’s lives. That’s also why I wanted to include the video of my friend doing a blind portrait of me, to show that it’s important to me how my friends perceive me.

A more shallow meaning of myself in this video is the three videos of my three dogs, which I included because they mean a lot to me, as much as a household pet can mean to its owner. As well as the use of guitar and singing in parts of the video, show my love and passion for music.

I also knew that in order to create a self-portrait, I needed to include my best friend, because she has really shaped how I grew up and who I am as a person today, because I’ve known her twelve years.

Having received feedback after project brief 1, I learnt more about myself from others in my group. Most members of my feedback group actually said that they could really grasp my strong connection to my family and friends, which was really interesting to me, because I have never really seen myself as “family orientated” in any way.

I have never really been one to want to constantly surround myself with people, but as I grow older, I have more of the desire to meet people and become closer to people. I tried to explore the possible representation of this with the use of an audio clip which consisted of multiple conversations happening at a busy park I visited, and both with an audio clip with friends, that I also used in project brief one. The use of the still photographs also captured my love for film photography and using it to portray experiences.

Although I believe that this self portrait summarises aspects of my life, I do not think that this is exactly what my self portrait should be like. In comparison to the first brief though, I was able to include more depth by editing sequences together to show more of a mood and feel to who I am. I feel like the simple editing of the images worked well with the flow of the video, but I also believe that the mixed audio tracks and overlapped each other worked with creating layers, layers that represent a bit of chaos in my life and in my mind. But this chaotic feel could have been worked with more in editing, as I don’t think it portrays the amount of chaos I feel.