PechaKucha

In this exercise, I tried to be extremely selective in my collection of 6 second clips, as I wanted to challenge myself to construct a clear narrative, even with the assignment limitations. I chose to focus on the relationship between co-lead guitarists David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tubnel, as their falling out makes up the main conflict of the film. I then chose the “lick my love pump” bit as the accompanying sound because it both matched the somber mood of this particular exercise, while also providing the opportunity for a lighthearted joke at the end more in tune with the tone of the film. I believe this was very successful as the full arc of their relationship throughout the movie is accurately portrayed, and it still reflects the comedic nature of the film at the same time.

Epigraph

I’m not quite sure why, but when thinking about what to do for this exercise my mind immediately went towards “Fat Bottom Girls” over the scene that’s clearly supposed to be spoofing the iconic queen song. Although I definitely could have used the help of some grids to line up the words at certain sections, I still think this assignment came out pretty good. It’s a fun watch, adequate aesthetically, and manipulates the audio and video clips in a way that makes coherent piece of media. I had a lot of fun making this exercise and it was a good introduction to the frustrations of working with text on screen.

Multiscreen

For my multiscreen assignment, I wanted to find a way to patch together the darkest film in the class folder, with the completely absurdist comedy that is Spinal Tap. I realized relatively quickly that I could easily make it look like Nigel was talking about the Midsommar community in the song Stonhenge. I think I pulled this off remarkably well and it presents itself almost as a music video for the song, however after rewatching the assignment I do think I could have implemented a lot more multiscreen. I also believe that while the video as a whole connects the two films seamlessly, not having any direct juxtapositions between them using multiscreen was somewhat of a missed opportunity. Overall I still think it makes for an interesting watch and was one of my most successful exercises of the semester.

Videographic Response

As someone who has never had a YouTube video essay phase, I really struggled to find a specific video or creator that I wanted to respond to. Eventually I stumbled upon Sideways’ channel and connected with his sense of humor and focus on music. I decided to respond to his video on how to make music sound scary as I thought it was full of really cool ideas and concepts, but could have gone a little deeper and explored more about horror music. I also decided to try and emulate Sideways’ style in my response, not shying away from black screens, trolling the audience, comedic moments, and using text on screen as a sort of secondary voice in the video. I thought I was ultimately very successful in doing this, however possibly at the expense of creating something more visually interesting, as Sideways tends to limit himself to very simple graphics and clips, and static white text on a black screen. Although lacking more visually stimulating techniques like multiscreen, or masking, I do believe my argumentative structure, example choices, and use of a more playful secondary voice, keep this response entertaining and engaging, while also effectively summarizing and building off of the information in the original video essay.

Final Video Essay

For my final video essay I chose to stick with Spinal Tap as I already knew the film front to back at this point and already had a good question in mind. As someone who has played in several rock bands, I knew that some of the interactions in this movie were not far from what goes on in reality. However, through a little research I found that no one had really dug deep and investigated what parts of the film were directly inspired by real life events. After many more hours of research I found that there were in fact just as many real life events that imitated Spinal Tap after its release, as there were events that directly inspired Spinal Tap. Taking this new concept as my framework, I sought to prove this fact through copious examples, searching for video or photographic proof to accompany each one, and organize them in a clear and logical way, before tying it all together in a concise conclusion like one would an academic paper. Approaching the project this way made putting the final project together much easier as I had a rigid outline and structure to build everything around. As I was constructing this project on premier I also wanted to make sure to use as many of the techniques I learned from the exercises as possible. I thought my use of multiscreen was particularly successful as it both provided an aesthetically pleasing visual, while also serving a clear argumentative purpose. Overall I think this project came together very nicely and was a both a good culmination of everything I learned throughout the semester, and an interesting informative video essay on a subject that had not be thoroughly explored.