Visual Metaphor Documentation

A. Introduction

My visual metaphor is called “Escape” and I shot this video in the city of Ningbo during the Thanksgiving holiday. My inspiration comes from some traveling vloggers on social media. When I watched their videos, I was fascinated by not only the beautiful scenes but also the special feelings or stories behind their journeys. So I wrote a story about some internal feelings when I traveled. I wrote the script in Chinese and I tried to make it like prose. 

Here is the video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VTK55kjEBzjNZJp9glVNdU98uiBpitn1/view?usp=drivesdk

During the shooting period, I stayed in Ningbo for two days and visited lots of famous tourist attractions in order to make them visually attractive. In those scenes, I am running several times, which is a metaphor for the title “Escape”.

B. Concept & Story

So why it is called “Escape”? First, at the beginning of the audio, I mentioned that I was tired of living in the city of Shanghai, which was the reason for my escape. As a result, the first meaning of escape is to run away from pressure in life and loneliness living in a city far away from home. I finally managed to escape to Ningbo, another city, where I got refreshed from the hustle and bustle of a normal life. In the visual metaphor video, we can see lots of wind that show my complicated mixed feelings with both happiness and sadness.

Besides, there is another meaning of escape. In the video, I emphasized that I dislike the cold weather in winter and miss summer very much. I tried to escape from the freezing feeling but failed. However, in the journey, I finally get relieved because I was willing to wait for summer to come. This is another metaphor for the whole story and audio script. As for the visual scene of this part, apart from shooting in Ningbo, I also put some videos that I recorded during the summer holiday in Xiamen. The comparison between the scenes in different places represents the distinct feelings in winter and summer. 

B. Creation process & Execution

I used Premiere and Capcut together to edit the video. During the creation process, I encountered some challenges. The most challenging one was that the audio was too long. After deleting some of the words, the audio was still a bit longer than expected. As I thought I could not delete anymore, I finally speeded up the audio. So it looks like this audio is a little fast, but I made a great effort to deal with it. Apart from that, I studied how to make the beginning and ending of the video with masks and roll titles. Actually, it was not that perfect in the beginning, because I wanted to make the letter of the title transparent but I failed. However, I added some stickers around the letter to make it more natural and prettier. In my opinion,  my inspiration is great, but I still have to improve contents and techniques like the plots, the ways of video shooting, the variety and the transition.

Shooting process:

Editing Process:

C. Collaboration

During the process of making a visual metaphor, I challenged myself to finish the shooting, audio, and editing on my own. As for the parts with myself in the video, I told my parents how to shoot and they followed my suggestions. So I would like to express my gratitude to them. Without them, I couldn’t finish my artwork.

D. Aesthetics & Results

The color adjustment in the video matters. Most of the colors in the video are adjusted to light purple. In my mind, purple is a representative of depression as well as romance. So it represents my mood of winter in Ningbo, partly escape but will go back to reality soon: I feel better but still a little depressed. The reality features with depression, while the escape features with romance. However, the summer scenes (waves and a long shot on a hill beside the sea) are bright and blue, which represents  refreshment and freedom. From my point of view, refreshment and freedom are clear and positive feelings, so I have chosen light blue as the background color.

As for the pace of the video, I think I talked too fast because the text that I wrote was too long. If I have a another chance the next time, I ‘d like to mention simpler things in the text with a lower pace.

E. Conclusion

Overall, I have tried my best to complete the visual metaphor on my own. It provides me with a wonderful chance to learn video making individually and encourages me to share my feelings by making videos in the future.