Unfortunately I’ve reached my monthly video limit for Vimeo and Youtube is blocking my videos on grounds of copyright so I may have to make this without the videos themselves embedded.

Epigraph: This was one of the first exercises where I really felt proud of the final product. I took the reveal of the alien in The Thing and overlaid it with a section of the Bible that I think is Revelation 6:8 (the one about the horsemen). I was particularly proud of how I worked in the ability to make certain words stay longer than others, by making them separate text boxes but making them line up with the rest of the text, and I feel that I was able to make that work really well with dramatic timing. I do think that having the text slide in from outside of the frame, while it helped satisfy the technical exploration of the assignment, was kind of goofy.

Multiscreen: For this one, I combined the scene of the assimilated Bennings in The Thing with the doppelganger encounter in Scavenger’s Reign. I did have to cut out a large chunk of the sequence from The Thing, as while it is a very good movie it is also a very slow movie. I do think that, in my effort to demonstrate and expand my keyframing abilities, this one was somewhat goofy in execution. Nevertheless, I do think the narrative parallels made between the alien doppelgangers and their deaths by fire were interesting, and I am proud of how I lined up the sound of lighting flares in The Thing with the ignition of the tent in Scavenger’s Reign.

Visual Deformation: This one is a deformation of the scene where Norris is revealed to be an alien in The Thing. This is likely my most simple work technically, as all I do is mirror one side of the screen along a vertical axis. However, I found that I liked it a lot, especially within the context of the ‘deformed’ nature of the aliens in the movie. Mirroring often not only made the creature more monstrous (sometimes giving it two heads, sometimes erasing the head in-between the monstrous parts), but it also helped to make the humans look monstrous, which was an interesting concept thematically.

The Christmas Colors of Fear: This is my video essay in response to “The Color of Fear“, which analyzed Green as a color associated with the supernatural and horror. I approached it through trying to explain the relative absence of green in The Thing, and the prevalence of the color red in exchange. My favorite part personally was the opening sequence, where I not only was able to imitate the original essay’s introduction, but was also able to break the 4th wall to explain the imitation and segue into the content of the response. The open-endedness of the essay was deliberate, as I felt unsatisfied at more-or-less copying the format of the original to explain the color red, and I felt that combining the color theories and creating a chicken-and-the-egg question about horror philosophy was a good way to leave the audience considering the principles laid out in the essay.

‘Behold, A Man!’: My final essay was focused on what I see as a connective theme between The Thing and Annihilation, that of human identity, imitation, and monstrousness. This was partially borne of convenience, as I was watching Annihilation for another class, and noticed some similarities between it and The Thing; both heavily feature mimics/doppelgangers that mutate humanity, and both have ambiguous endings where the last two survivors could very well not be human. In the essay, I present arguments for the mimics both as overtly monstrous and as basically human in their own way, creating a dichotomy between a “monster” identity and a “man” identity. The essay is effectively split into two parts: the trailer, which became the intro and outro, and the body of the argument/exploration. The intro/outro were very fun to work on, as it involved much editing on the beat of the music, “Little Dark Age”, with some use of deformation techniques. The body of the essay was in many ways several pecha kuchas, with a heavy amount of epigraphs. Since my response essay had been narration-heavy, I wanted to lean away from that in this one, hut since the concepts were fairly complicated, I needed a significant amount of text. I arrived at a solution that was reminiscent of poetry, striking a balance between being understandable and simple/abstract enough to not detract form the scenes of the movies.

ASSIGNMENT: Choose one element present in your film/episode, and create a video compilation gathering all of the moments of that element. Assemble these moments together using straight cuts of linked sound/image tracks. All sounds and images should come from your film.

This was the first assignment we tackled in the class and was a great way to introduce one of the most basic elements of video essay creation. This exercise helped me realize how variable a video essay could be. Just by following a very basic set of parameters we were able to create a unique video which linked together elements which are otherwise easy to ignore. While I don’t truly think a compilation of all the times the Jason Funderburker croaked in Over The Garden Wall will conjure any grand revelations, the act of assembling one specific elements from a film helped demonstrate the possible new connections such an exercise might reveal.

Assignment: Select a sequence from your film, and a quotation from a written text (not specifically related to your film; it could be academic, poetic, narrative, etc.) of no longer than 5 sentences. Alter the video sequence in some noticeable way using at least two different types of transitions or effects. Either replace or significantly alter the soundtrack. The quotation should appear onscreen in some dynamic interaction with the video.

This was perhaps my favorite exercise we did in class. The combination of choice clip selection, video transformation, audio alteration, and on screen text helped give a strong sense of what a complete video essay might be. Perhaps my biggest takeaway from this class is how juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated media (audio, text, video) will create new and interesting connections which otherwise would never have existed. How many other people have linked the space rock band Duster with the late poet Louise Glück and a 2014 animation for kids? There is a certain joy and power in creating something unique like this, and I hope to carry that joy into whatever I make in the future.

Assignment: Use a multiscreen process as a compositional technique to create a short piece (3 minute max) engaging with at least one other (significantly different) video source uploaded on the shared media folder that other participants have uploaded. The video must contain moments of both fullscreen and multiscreen, including images from multiple sources. All audio and visuals must come from your film and the videos posted on our server. Each editor must impose an additional parameter upon themselves. A goal of the exercise is to engage in spatial montage to make a meaningful juxtaposition between two or more sources.

This was maybe the most difficult assignment of the class. Perhaps the linking of animation with live action media was what made it so challenging, or the fact that I’ve never actually watched Afterlife (sorry Christmas), but either way this assignment required me to figure out exactly what I wanted this video to be doing; I needed to come up with my own parameters outside of the ones listed in the prompt. Since the medias were so difficult I struggled for awhile to land on something which felt fitting. I finally decided I wanted it to appear as if Over the Garden Wall was bleeding into the reality of Afterlife. I’ve always liked stories about some other world peering into our daily life and the promise of escape they offered. I still of course had to find clips which I felt vaguely matched between the two pieces, but overall this was an incredibly instructive assignment.

Assignment: Create a video essay that directly responds to another published video essay. The approach you take to the response is up to you, as long as it engages both with the content/ideas and the form of the original video. You might think about responding by extending the original’s ideas to other examples, debating particular points, “remaking” the ideas via new forms, or otherwise building upon the foundation that the other video constructs. Your response video should be comprehensible on its own, not just as a response that requires familiarity with the original. It should be at least 4 minutes long.

I believe I am more comfortable with pieces that lean towards the artistic side of video essays rather than analysis, which is why I wanted to push myself to attempt something outside my wheelhouse. I’ve always found myself to be a strong speaker, and so while I wasn’t particularly thrilled about hearing my voice recorded back to me, I was willing to tackle voice over as a new element to incorporate into my works. Despite this, I found myself struggling when I compared my work to that of schnee’s. Perhaps this is an obvious conclusion, as one of us is a procrastinating and overworked college student while the other is a successful content creator who makes his living on publishing compelling video essays. Still, it was difficult to hold my work in comparison to schnee’s. Nevertheless I hope my arguments hold up at least a little and managed to convince a few people that Ashitaka is actually secretly one of the best written characters in fiction.

I also really enjoyed messing around with the audio mixing of certain clips. Most of the music I listen to these days is more beat focused with piles of samples all coming together to form something which really makes you nod your head and tap your fingers. While I am no expert audio mixer (and you truly must forgive me for the silliness of my opening lines), working on this project helped me identify a style I want to pursue in the future. Bringing clips together, overlaying audio and images, and syncing it all up to some marching beat is something I find incredibly satisfying. I am eager to continue working on pieces in this manner in the future.

Final Project

The Soundscapes of Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

This final project took me a great deal of time to complete. In the end, I am proud that I was able to put in so much time, as the final product reflects that exact effort. I remember my first time watching this film and being in awe of the soundscapes used. I wanted to simulate that same feeling and questioning that I had when considering why the director had decided to create such a noticeable soundscape. The same soundscapes are interwove n with the visuals and impact our perception of the world around Riggan. I create a more explorative first half of the video, introducing the audience to the key soundscape of The City, showing various clips of the film, and comparing and contrasting these clips to gain some insight into their significance. Towards the end, I describe the exact feeling of Riggan’s reality becoming a fantasy, where he then dictates what is diegetic.

Epigraph

I am presenting this exercise first, as it was the video I am most proud of, apart from my final project. Initially, I was somewhat dreading the idea of being forced to use captions in my video for an assignment; However, to my surprise, this exercise opened my eyes to a multitude of possibilities to communicate and convey messages to audiences in a creative medium beyond narration. In fact, this exercise enabled me to succeed with my final project in allowing the composition of the video to speak for itself while communicating through captions sparingly. At large, I am extremely pleased with how this video turned out, and I believe its minimalist style enables it to stand out.

Desktop

I was excited to complete this desktop assignment, as I had previously created desktop videos but had yet to be in an academic context. I wanted to imitate the feeling of discovery and simulate this by asking quite broad questions a viewer would wonder about, knowing little about the movie. In fact, the video itself was an attempt to replicate the authentic surprise I experienced learning more about Miles Teller and his past experience that has an uncanny relationship with the car crash sequence of Whiplash. Ultimately, I am quite satisfied with how my attempt to recount my initial discovery turned out.

Multiscreen

Although quite chaotic, I decided to include this video, as I spent a great deal of time sifting through many different films on our Google Drive to think of a film or even a single scene to splice with Whiplash. Then, I came across a scene in The Matrix where Trinity smashes through a glass window. That sound of the glass shattering immediately put the pieces together for me. I would create a Multiscreen between the two sequences, creating a chase sequence spliced together. In the end, this video achieves its purpose of being quite entertaining, which also serves as a good training exercise to improve my multiscreen and masking skills.

Response

This videographic response essay was quite interesting to make, as quite enjoyed thinking of interesting ways to interconnect books with movies. I like the comparisons of history and the liberties taken in film, but obviously this film experiences a number of adaptations. I still think it is fascinating to compare to the source material in order to see how truths have been lost for the sake of dramatisation. The narration for this video was quite fun to do; However, I do believe I am able to be more creative with captions. Although, captions do take a far longer time to complete. It was quite fun to create the highlighter and 3D book effects on Adobe After Effects, but it also took far longer than I expected. Overall, I enjoyed making this response essay to history and how they are depicted in films.