Raw Shock: A Study of Cultural Conformity

My video is finally finished. I feel that it has reached a state that I am comfortable with calling done, so that it can be digested by my viewers. I still have a lot of unused footage that I may expand into a larger project in the future. I plan to keep working on it, but I do feel satisfied in having something that feels complete to communicate my message. My message is something that has changed over time, but it is something that I think still meets my goals in a satisfactory manner. At first, I imagined that my video would end up being a sort of true-to-life story from a personal perspective in my ambition to pass on some of the experiences I have had for the benefit of others in a humorous, American Movie sort of way. Instead, my finished project turned out to be a tighter, more honed and brief video with less direct narrative value than originally planned. It relies more on suggestion, dialogue, use of symbols, and personal relationship. There is also significantly less humor that made it into the final cut than I imagined. Instead, there are more personal, inside jokes and incidental humor that have translated into the video's development. I do not think that these qualities are bad, as they do seem to have been necessary for a strong and more direct development of content. My video now feels more like an honest portrayal of a period in my life and a reflection of this transitional state as a person. After showing it in public for the first time at Lawrence University's New Media Showcase the other night, I have found more comfort and reassurance in my final video than I expected. I was given a great deal of positive feedback without any real negative criticism, which whether good or bad is a first for me. This has made me feel more confident in my abilities to navigate mixed media projects and it has shown me the value of what I have actually done. It is easy to overlook some of the significance of a project while working towards completion, but having shown my video and rested on this incarnation of my story for a while, I have been able to see more value in my own work. My video has also become a tool and a statement for my analysis and ability to cope with these events and circumstances in my life. They help me look more closely and examine the issues that have affected me most in the process of re-Americanizing. There were certain challenges in presenting a narrative that dwells on a lot of past events and changes that were largely internal and not on video to share with the viewer. I was uncertain as to how my handling of these topics would really work out, but towards the end of editing everything began to fit in a synergistic fashion and the response of viewers has shown me that I was affective in communicating my ideas to them without sacrificing the humorous or realistic aspects of my content. I hope that this video also has the ability to reach others and enable them to relate the issues I have been grappling with to their own situations, so that they can deal with their own circumstances better or at least look at things from a different point of view. I hope that in seeing the construct that I present, others will continue to question some of the topics of cultural identity, adaptation, and personal opinion that I have raised.

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Jordan Severson