Though I’d love to say that I’m walking away from this week feeling accomplished, I wouldn’t be telling the complete truth. While I do feel this way, I’m also extremely relieved that it’s over. Video assignments were the thing that stressed me out the most in the class as video is probably the farthest thing outside of my comfort zone in this class. I love film and the amazing things that can be pulled off when it comes to cinematography, but I’ve barely ever tried my hand at any editing or filmmaking of my own. I plan to challenge myself soon for another class in this way, but I have a great deal of time to grow and learn, going through a process for that assignment, while this week I initially felt as though I was being thrown to the wolves. Regardless, I think this week still went well, so let’s get into it!

Expanding Ideas and Analyzing Cinema

I get nervous to give suggestions to others when they seem to already have great vision and direction for a project, making an assignment of this sort a bit daunting. Thankfully I was able to find suggestions that don’t change the story or plan for the narrative, but instead provide opportunities to strongly develop a theme, mood, and atmosphere for the entirety of the projects in question. I think that a cover design for the stories that looks professional and uses appropriate colors and imagery could immediately add depth and interest to a piece. The use of tools for mapmaking can also provide additional artifacts to spruce up the experience of following these stories. A heavy emphasis on sound design, striving for the perfect sounds with the right amount of texture and most optimal volume would also work wonders. I wanted to keep my suggestions from branching beyond these ideas as these stories seem personal and thought out, something I don’t believe I have the authority to stretch and pull on.

My video essay touches on a small snippet of the incredible work done by Marvel TV. While the shows in the Defenders series are some of my favorite shows of all time, that is not why I chose to cover the cinematography within Daredevil. Realistically, I would have used a show that I’ve seen before to ensure I knew the context of a scene and could focus entirely on the techniques used, but I could have easily chosen How I Met Your Mother or The Office instead. The reason I chose Daredevil ties directly to the incredible creativity in it’s cinematography, using unique camera angles and tricks to showcase Matt Murdock’s heightened sense of hearing. By having close-up shots of Matt’s ear, blurring things effectively, and cutting after seemingly more natural times to cut pass, the show obtains a great sense of emotion. The most difficult process of creating this video essay was trying to find a way to record the clip, as it is blacked out on Disney Plus. Thankfully, a YouTube channel had a clip of the entire segment I had hoped to cover.

Video Assignments

For my first assignment of the week, I wanted to take on the challenge of creating a TikTok that showcases something funny about a pet. I remembered that my cat, Luna, has all sorts of little things that she does every time I do a specific action. For example, if I open my closet, she’ll run over and instantly jump up onto the skateboard on the floor. If I put my backpack facedown, she’ll climb on top of it and get comfy, sometimes resting there for hours. Paired with a few other things she does on command, I figured making a quick video of it all would be very fitting for this task.

I wanted to take on something a bit more creative for my second assignment, so as soon as I saw the opportunity to fabricate ridiculous responses to serious questions, I was all in. The original video had questions relating to some kind of outbreak event, potentially a zombie virus that could cause an apocalypse. Because of this theme, I naturally pulled out my oblivious and strange character that I jokingly play with friends sometimes. I tried to think of the most obnoxious or shocking answers to the questions that I could, though that doesn’t necessarily mean all of the answers were long. With that being said, some of the answers were clearly over described and meant to carry a feeling of discomfort and “what the hell..?” with them. I believe I achieved my purpose quite well and honestly couldn’t be happier with the outcome.

For my first assignment, I had to have things fall into place and had the stress of whether or not my cat would cooperate or not. With my second assignment, I spent a lot of time brainstorming ridiculous answers to the questions. To wrap up the week, I wanted to do something a bit more laidback and casual. When I saw the Q&A assignment, I knew it was exactly what I was looking for. I asked some friends to think of some appropriate and pretty basic questions, trying to not make the video too long and trying to keep it PG. After a little while, I was equipped with a list of around nine questions, all very basic but at least somewhat interesting, and I just decided to ditch a script and chat about myself with the camera. It was a bit therapeutic to more or less talk into the void about things that I don’t usually get to open up about in such a casual environment. I’m not sure if anyone will watch it, especially because it is around 11 minutes long, but I had a very relaxing time making it.

Daily Creates

Honestly, I was a bit let down that no one liked or commented on this first daily create this week. I was so proud of this ad, both because it looks so real, but also because it’s just some good comedy in a stressful time. Originally looking at this prompt, I was really unsure about what to do, so I looked back at the original post for inspiration. I thought about the benefits of a long table and realized that long furniture is great for social distancing. From there, the gears were turning and soon enough I had my hands on a picture of a very long couch, turning into a very fitting product.

For the second daily create, I wanted to stay true to the prompt and only click the random link button once. Unfortunately, it brought me to a page that had very little information on it. Thankfully, though, the name of the film was interesting enough to create a decent poem out of it. In a clever way, I was able to throw my own active thoughts about the film into the final product.

Closing

While video assignments are far from a strong suit of mine, I found that I had a lot more fun creating this week than I had imagined. Next week, I will be tackling more video assignments, which is causing me similar stress. Fortunately, I’m on top of things now and look to get to work on next week’s assignments earlier than I did this week. But, until then, I guess this week was just another scene edited!