This Post is Abstract

Filming anything requires a lot of planning and structuring. Since this process involves taking a concept and bringing it to life through images filmed on a device, an intense planning process is the best way to go about this. During this stage of the assignment, everyone in the group would throw out what their definition of the topic we were given was. The group was assigned “abstract”. This meant that they had to create a video that communicated something about who they were through the use of the theme. The planning was pretty easy at first since everyone was filled with ideas and different understandings of what the theme was. All four members of the group put in an idea about what their part in the video will consist of, and filming locations were discussed.

Through the time the group spent discussing the video, not much was getting done and class time consisted of everyone just putting out different ideas. This was frustrating to members because time was running out and not much was getting done. Another struggle faced by the group was the disappearance of one of the members. This confused the members because now everything that was being planned would have to be rearranged. The group decided to go about the assignment by filming their portions by themselves on their phones and just put everything together through editing.

Once things got to post-production, the struggle for the group came in the form of them not understanding how to use Adobe Premiere to edit. It was a new software to everyone in the group so they had to rely a lot on the professor and google to learn how to use it. Aside from the struggle of learning the software, the editing process for the group went well because everything the group did was coming together and starting to make sense. They were even more proud of it because it was a video that had little to no planning to it until they were in the editing process. Due to the setback of losing a member and having to make the video shorter, the whole communication of the group had to be changed.

Video is a very effective form of communication. Video is a more effective way to communicate feelings, thoughts, and opinions to an audience. While writing and photography are good ways to communicate, they have their limits when it comes to evoking emotion. Through video one can use visual and auditory elements to easily get messages across. Video also allows one to edit and put in some special effects that can help with altering reality. With this assignment, the abstract group had to heavily rely on angles and weirds shots to get across the theme of abstract. In the final product, you can tell that editing also had a big impact on getting abstraction across to the audience. For Eudy, filming a video around a subject was the more ideal way to get the message across to the audience because he was able to utilize sound to further the idea that he was in a state of confusion for his ‘self video’. He used the song Dazed and Confused by Led Zepplin to add an auditory message in conjunction with the visual messages that are present in the video.

Eudy would say that the public nature of the video really affected the subject matter which he chose to express. In his video he tries to get people to understand a sense of confusion he used to live through where he was confused with his identity, this can be understood from the confusion he feels when looking in the mirror. In his self-video, Eudy tried to get across how he struggled with finding his identity and discovering how to live life accepting what he finds. This is something that Eudy rarely publicly acknowledges and so creating a piece of work that would be seen by a class and then possibly the world through it being uploaded on Youtube scared him. He went through any other possible topics he could discuss in his video, but identity is such a big thing for him that he could not find anything else to talk about. It is also important to realize that by making something public, you are being accepting of the situation by acknowledging it.

The self-portrait can be the more entertaining part of the filming process. It forces the student to like inside themselves and see how they feel about their life and how they want to express that through video. For Eudy, this part of the assignment proved to be very fun since he got to involve his friends with helping him film some portions. Eudy also enjoyed using shots of things that weren't him to communicate something about him, for example, the door he sits in front of that has images of things he has a connection to. The experience of also finding a way to communicate a message without being able to use dialog or even word graphics on the screen forced Eudy to use the things around him and his environment as inspirations for visual communication.

The last part of the assignment was to upload the video on to social media, Youtube to be exact. Eudy did not experience any trouble during this process. Since Eudy already had a Youtube account, all he needed to do was export the video from adobe premier and upload it. This part of the process proved to be somewhat difficult since Eudy was not entirely aware of the correct format to export the video in, heck he did not know how to even start the exporting process. Through the some Google searches and some confirmation from the professor, Eudy was able to upload the video online. You can find a link to that video at the end of this blog and by clicking here (if the word ‘here’ does not link to a youtube video, then Eudy failed at creating a hyperlink).

Self Portrait video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5zvtG1HnmE