Link of final work：

Mediafactory Vimeo：https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/556115415

Reflection:

In this project, our group focuses on the pollution caused by human beings for the vegetation cover and the climate changes brought by it. The main purpose that we formulated this theme is to project the pollution and climate changes caused by it in people’s daily life onto the screen through the production and practical technologies of media, which have been existing but are not emphasized or have been ignored, so as to arouse the attention of viewers to climate changes and environmental problems. In the work of our group, with the scenes of vegetation as the principal line and people’s daily life as the branch, pollution brought by human behavior to vegetation has been amplified, e.g. garbage pollution, industrial pollution and daily emissions, after shooting and editing those scenes through different methods, the climate changes caused by pollution are finally alternately presented, so as to remotivate the cognition of viewers of climate changes and environmental protection. We hope that viewers could feel the damage and pollution caused by the other role of “human beings” to vegetation as well as the final result of climate changes caused by such pollution immersively from the perspective of the parties instead of onlookers when appreciating this work.

Through rethinking of our work based on details, I summarize the best advantage of it as the selection and use of shooting and audio track. The aspect of shooting is reflected on the completely detailed shooting of materials and frames, which has been closely integrated with the theme. Demos, Scott, & Banerjee, S (eds) mentioned in the book that non-linguistic coordination and communication could be realized through the production of non-fiction films. In the frames of the work, our group members have shot various different scenes of plants through extremely close, which have been presented from the perspective of the creeping of insects. A small world of plants is created in the 8-minute work, in which the tiny plants are exactly the lives that might be ignored or hurt by the human behavior of viewers in daily life. Because of the application of diversified materials and frames, I think that we have well presented the concept put forward by Gibson on the screen, that is, there are continuous changes and entry of new elements into the environment, which exist and then disappear. In the constantly changing dynamic, various kinds of plants are performing their own functions in the nature. Before the warning or remindful meaning appears, a good sense of beauty is granted to the work to attract the interest of viewers. In our post-editing, some instability of frame or imperfection of image quality is retained, which highlights the characteristics of those plants. Lam also mentioned in the book that the insufficiency of image quality was a necessary link to reflect the creating environment and appreciation of a work. Therefore, I think that those imperfect images can be connected to the human behavior, nature and pollution contained in our theme, which are also a caution for viewers. The second is the addition of audio track, during recording, our group members represent the rush and stress of people in daily life through the sound of dididi when passing the traffic light, while the sound of ‘didid’ given out by telegraph is used for frame containing human beings’ hazardous behavior, which is different from common background music, instead, it is an urgent and warning sound to appeal to viewers for their emphasis on climate changes. In addition, through my reflection, the most problematic part of our work is the unclear relation among themes. We have not presented the deeper relations of the influence brought by climate changes after the vegetation is damaged, instead, we simply linked to the phenomena caused by climate changes, which is an omission in our work.

During the production process of the work, the most important point that I learnt is to diverge my own thinking and thoroughly change the observing perspective, so as to arouse the attention of viewers to environmental changes. As the role of human beings in the natural ecology, my observing perspective and the things I notice are the same as others of the same kind, while when I need to attract and arouse the same kind of attention through the theme of climate change from the same perspective, I think it a complete change of perspective. In the work, when observing from the perspective of an insect or a reptile, I can see the increasing decrease, perishing and ruination of plants, vegetation becomes a huge object that I can rely on in “my” eyes, while when realizing that it might decrease or even die out because of human behavior, “I” will have a serious sense of constriction, so that I will pay attention to this problem. Then “I” will present the above to human beings from the perspective of insects to pursue the same effect. The switch of observing perspective makes me more creative during the present and future media technology production, so as to produce works more abundantly and appropriately.

Reference

Demos, T., Scott, E. and Banerjee, S., 2021. The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change. Milton: Taylor & Francis Group, pp.139-148.

Gibson.R, 2015. Changescapes – An Introduction，in Changescapes: complexity, mutability, aesthetics. Crawley, Western Australia : UWA Publishing, pp.1-21.

Lam, S., 2015. IT’S ABOUT TIME: SLOW AESTHETICS IN EXPERIMENTAL ECOCINEMA AND NATURE CAM VIDEOS. In: S. Lam, ed., Slow Cinema. Edinburgh University Press, pp.207-217.

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This week we presented a short rough cut. The theme is that our group hopes to finally show the impact of industrial pollution on plants and thus climate change. We cut together the shot of plants and the destruction of the surrounding environment. From the low perspective of insects, we show the damage and pollution of the vegetation in the present. Together with the music related to natural breathing, we aim to bring a sense of oppression to the audience from the low perspective. When pollution and destruction appear so close to our eyes, it may inspire the audience to think about environmental pollution and climate change, and thus appeal to them to protect the environment. This is what our rough cut presents and hopes to achieve. The problem that our group’s rough cut faces at present is that the footage we shoot is still unfinished. Therefore, the angle of rough out is relatively single, and the scene of industrial pollution is missing. As a result, our rough cut does not show our theme more prominently. This is a part of our group that needs to be adjusted quickly.

The feedback we received was that the picture should be shot and edited as soon as possible. At the same time, industrial pollution should be more prominently reflected in the work. Only by making stronger contrast can the theme be more prominent, and then attracting viewers and triggering thinking. After that, we had a discussion and quickly made a shooting plan to get all the pictures we needed for editing. As for the shots of industrial pollution, we plan to adopt some permitted data pictures to show the damage of pollution to vegetation, and the data pictures can provide us with better professional data support. At the same time, we plan to contrast the forms of vegetation after industrial destruction with those of good growth through editing, emphasizing the negative effects of destruction and pollution on vegetation, thus causing climate problems, to stimulate viewers’ thinking.

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In this week’s team work, we continue to work on camera capture and shooting. So our creative test content includes personal shot clips on the theme of the impact of industrial pollution on vegetation. According to our preliminary shooting and editing plan, our lens will be under a low angle. “Low angle” means shooting not from the perspective of a normal human but from a low perspective similar to that of an animal. The low angle is aimed to attract the audience through a different perspective, so as to achieve the goal of attracting attention to climate change. Our plan for the final clip is based on an abstract kaleidoscope of low-angle shots focusing on the vegetation problems caused by industrial pollution.
Our creative test is mainly a clip of wonderful scenes shot by team members, and includes the shots taken by individuals and the editing methods used by individuals. We do this as we want to see the team members’ actual manipulation and ideas and practice of the work directly before though cut. We think that this can better integrate the editing advantages of each of us to complete the work, and we can also have our own understanding of our shot. The shot I contributed included the forests and lakes along the road during car driving on the highway. These include sparse and dry vegetation, as well as working quarries and cement factories. These shots will serve as the groundwork for the background shot in our final work to directly illustrate the impact of industrial pollution on vegetation.
By creating the test, the feedback our team hopes to get is, first, whether the shots we have shot so far need to be changed or improved in terms of angle and atmosphere, and second, whether our theme and the interest and freshness of the clip can be detected from our shots, and we also hope to get some feedback on editing techniques to improve the completion of our editing.

The feedback from our group’s presentation on the relationship between man-made air pollution and climate change suggested that our team should combine the results of the study and focus on a co-filmed theme. After getting the feedback, our group had a quick discussion and adjusted our theme and shooting plan. In the presentation, we separately displayed the research results and the desired shooting results. I think the significance of this to the work is very low, because we did not integrate the research results of the whole team to analyze the focus of the team’s research and summarize a complete shooting effect and plan. This kind of non-integration and dispersion will make it impossible for us to have a deeper understanding of everyone’s research results but stay on the surface, which will make our works unable to achieve integrity and can not give full play to everyone’s strengths. Therefore, decentralized research is harmful to teamwork. We should integrate and refine our themes and central ideas to focus on the more detailed side of the theme, which contributes to the integrity of the work. At the same time, it can also come up with more creative ideas on a fixed center without making the work look cluttered. The dedicated and cohesive theme formulation and the summary and refinement of the research results can make our works more complete and novel, as well as include the research and characteristics of each of us.
After receiving feedback and reflection, our group quickly decided to refine the research direction after our discussion and integration, which adjusted the theme to the comparison and relationship between industrial pollution and ecological greening.We will work on the ecological problems caused by man-made industrial pollution, such as overexploitation and overexploitation, and focus on vegetation, such as pollution, logging and lack of vegetation caused by industrial development. We will shoot some static shots to look at it from a low perspective rather than from a human perspective. It’s as if outsiders in this environment observe and tell our scenes. At the same time, in terms of editing, we hope that the picture between vegetation and industrial pollution is strong and attractive to the audience. Next week, our group will mainly focus on shooting and lens arrangement, so as to turn our ideas into real works as soon as possible.