One more step

I am pleased that I have met my goal of creating a rough cut of my video to show for my class progress report. I got the video to work out enough to have some semblance of my original vision and I cut it down to a pretty controlled length of 8:45 min. I got a select amount of criticism, but what I heard from people so far was really helpful. There are some very particular things that people drew my attention to:

I need to think about the intro and title, the transitions of scenes, having more problems to display my point further with the plot, adding more humor, adding some of my other types of footage to round out what I have chosen, of course I need to finish trimming it down, and I am considering a bit more video to shoot that could bring together a different kind of conclusion if I wanted a more closed ending.
I am pleased, but I still have a great deal of work to do. It is at this sort of stage in such a project that I think a little discipline and pacing go a long way. In considering this, I was reminded of a song that has always caught my fancy conceptually. It is called "Imprint" by a band that was called doubleDrive. It has always felt for me to be a calming kind of concept to consider when I need to focus on something and take it one step at a time. I will include a Youtube video for this song. That being said, I want to also consider some more audio for my video and try to think about scoring my video also to give a more complete feeling to the finished product.


IHRTLUHC
Jordan Severson

A Reading Period's Progression

I feel that I have made some valuable progress over reading period. I always think there could have been a little more, but I am satisfied that I got some great footage of events that will help me structure the daily events portion of my film that will help to advance some kind of plot with in my piece however minimal it may be in the end (I would like to point out that some of the most successful videos to my mind are capable of having very little plot, but survive on character development and other elements: e.g. Seinfeld and the show about nothing idea). Anyway, I have begun using the flip style mino camera, which I like now that I have gotten used to it. It is a bit shaky at times, especially while zoomed, but it is decent to manage. I also do like some of the differences in film quality and as before I do embrace some of the home-video feeling for my project. I really like that the camera is so small and portable. I have been taking it around with me and been able to capture a lot more unplanned events as they occur to assist in obtaining a natural, organic feel to my scenes. I don't want them to feel stiff and scripted, but realistic and believable. This camera seems to allow me to accomplish this with much less effort and also more discreetly. Another good aspect of this camera is the ability to capture the already created clips from usb connection, rather than from mini dv tapes, which can be frustrating. This is a lot easier and less hassle when I want to keep shooting video and worry less about securing my footage.

This weekend I was able to film: interactions with one of my friends from Florence study abroad, some first person view fencing, public encounters in stores, and a development of characters/ establishment of cameraman identity.

I plan to have some more shots in the coming week that will follow more of my original vision: a professor interview, interactions with my nephew, more conflict development, the role of friends, and some of the resolution to the film.

Overall, I think that my video is getting much closer to the point where I can delve into a lot of editing and reduce the amount of time I spend filming.


IHRTLUHC
Jordan Severson