Sunday, February 4, 2007

Motif Part Two: Post-production.

I'm skipping over photography, because, like I said in one point two, it's not nearly as essential in the process, like raking leaves to clear a yard. My analogy has failed. It is important, but I'm just going to mention it in here: I took lots of circles. I used a tripod for the 18 or so hours I had it, and took even more circles. The outside ones were particularly difficult because it was maybe zero degrees outside. The inside ones were easy, but it was tough to do close-ups to fit my viewfinder guide circle for small ones. There was no preponderance of planning, other than the few motifs I knew were worth some space on tape.

Importing, I was impressed by uniformity of the circles taken using a tripod and liked the contrast with those not using a tripod. Before trimming clips en masse, I figured out the correct phrase timings. It looked good. I then went ahead trimming clips en masse. I organized them thematically and had some semblance of a narration. Any mention of the nuances of the editing process will just detract from the piece. I’ll mention them here:

  • Having noticed a thematic thread among my images, I decided I would delineate some sort of meangful narrative. I had thought all along that I wouldn't have wanted just a random assembly of images, but rather something that on a deeper level would invoke some sort of response.
  • I started with the worm's eye shot out the exterior window from a skewed angle to begin with. It sort of suggests morning or at least a sense of wonder at the clouds outside. The implication is that it is a circle although that the image is an ellipse from the angle I shot at. Otherwise, when I took the shot, I just knew that it would be a perfect opening shot.
  • Next, I juxtaposed more images that suggest morning, or some sort of routine that would prepare someone to facing the day.
  • I repeated images, but obviously not in consecutive order. The effect evokes, within each "phrase" of the piece, a sense of repitition. Yes, this is redundant, but my motif is about circles. So, it's just another to invoke circularity.
  • Then I selected images that suggest mobility, or transportation. Placed after images of routine, it begins to make sense; after we get ready for something, we have to get there, somehow.
  • After this is a human element, a close of my friend's eye. It's the first image that isn't a uniformly sized circle. It was also the first example of how I'm limited by equipment, the field of view on the camera can't do extreme close ups. So I couldn't do my Kubrick homage, unfortunately. Other than that, it suggests individual disuniformity. (I think that' s a word, I'm trying to avoid using cliched descriptions, so I'll use obtuse ones instead.)
  • Among that are images suggesting a destination, like work or school or some other place.
  • Next are images of art or music. I'm guessing this is a "day in the life of..." an art or music student, or both. Or maybe I just thought the images looked good and worked together as a theme.
  • The fifth phrase is unfortunately the last phrase, and I kinda wondered how I had only used about 35 of the 90 or so images already, and realized I couldn't include a lot of them. Such is the fortune of someone who takes a lot of footage.
  • The last phrase is unofficially night, or some sort of winding down. The glowing round thing is the moon, and like the eyes, the camera doesn't have great telephoto capabilities. I wanted, however, to include it simply because it was a beautiful full moon taken on a crisp, cold, and clear night. The aluminum can was a Moutain Dew can, so one could say that this is really a day in the life of a student, something we could relate to (also as we will see in the phrase, night almost instantly turns into day, like a sleep deprived student).
  • The passage of time is clear in my motif, it is appropriate that the last tempometrically similar image is a clock before it rushes into the final blur of images, framed through the eyes of my final subject. After that, I repeat the opening image before ending, suggesting that the series of images could be repeated again in a similar fashion. If anything, the piece suggests that the formula for existence is, Day, night, repeat.

And that is all. Movie will be uploaded once Netfiles works properly:

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