I think Gloria sums up our concept perfectly in her documentation. I would focus more on the editing part.
A. Concept & Story
I Have Tried Hard to Have Appropriate Feelings
By Susan Leslie Moore
I have folded them away like sweaters.
Kept my distance from the moon, visited the sick.
I am proud of the life in my head. Nobody knows
the garden I’ve seen. I am tender with the suburb.
Some days even the ceiling worries me, the way
it keeps the roof on.
I only cry when the polar bears get to me.
The ones stranded on the melting ice.
Otherwise I’m kept in line by the steady curve
of my driveway, the tight fists of the roses.
I can easily converse
about the sweet peas and our eventual disintegration.
The sky has more to say to me than I could
ever hear, given the restricted space between
houses. Frogs sing at night and the whine of the train.
Our video is about the outcome of trying hard to have “appropriate feelings” and the toxic mental state of hiding true feelings. The story is about how people are in a state of lacking a sense of security but still trying to stabilize and hide their sentiments. It could be interpreted as what people are internally going through during this unprecedented unstable and dramatic pandemic period, because crazy things are going on every single day, making people assume that their feelings are unreal. But it could also be interpreted as how people don’t accept their negative feelings and try to hide those emotional fluctuations, because of the pressure from social norms. They tend to force positivity on the outside to pursue a sense of security so that they won’t be judged by others, and tend to suppress their true feelings inside.
- Inspiration:
Gloria brought this topic up as soon as we start discussing the project. I am also interested in visualizing emotions and mental states. Unlike the previous video assignments we did, we want to create something deep, depressive, and relatable. To be honest, I feel like both of us might have experienced that state before 🙁 🤫
- Ideation Process:
Decide the topic, focusing on emotion or mental state -> Research on any related materials for the voice-over narration -> More research for artistic inspirations, youtube tutorials -> Develop the story and every scene
B. Creation Process & Execution
- Storyboard:
We have two storyboards and this is the one that we utilized. It helped us visualize the metaphors in the poem, decide the camera angles of each scene, and establish the progressive emotions we want to convey. We followed the storyline of the storyboard when we did the actual shooting, but rearrange some shots during editing.
- Process of choosing a setting, shooting, sourcing materials, lighting, directing :
Although the setting of the project is mostly indoors, the location we filmed is at Puxi, because I think the vibe of Pudxi is more appealing. As for the equipment, we used a green screen, a studio lighting device (barn doors?), blue & red color filters, a stabilizer, and a recorder. Since we are both ammeters and we are both bad at using DSLR, we used an iPhone to film all of the shots.
- Challenges and solutions during the creation process:
Audio:
Since the voiceover audio of Marina reading the poem is shorter than our edited video, we have to cut her lines into pieces. However, due to the lack of the empty room sound, the fragments between each line can be heard clearly. We fixed that by exporting the entire voiceover audio from Premiere to Audition and adding a DeNoise effect. We also panned her voice from left to right to create a spatial dimension, especially the part of the line ” otherwise I’m kept in line by the steady curve of my driveway.” In some parts where a red scene is transitioned to a blue scene, the audio is also panned from entirely left to entirely right. Also, we added a female vocal enhancer effect to the audio, making her sound calmer.
We soon found out that the background music is much longer than the video. We solved that by finding and deleting a few repeated rhythms and notes.
Video:
Isolating the red and blue color in each shot is a pain in the ass. We have to adjust each clip separately because of the difference in lighting. I think we should spend more time adjusting the colors. The overall color tone still isn’t consistent enough.
- Editing & Post-Production Process/Editing Techniques and Effects
Color Isolation:
Most of the time, we use the Leave Color effect for color isolation. We have to adjust the tolerance level and Edge Softness level for each individual clip.
Ultra Key:
Ultra Key is used for the green screen.
Noise HLS:
A weird effect we found out accidentally. We used this effect to progressively change the color. This clip also acts as a transition into the second part, with the line “I can easily converse about the sweet peas and our eventual disintegration”. After that everything goes crazy.
Blender Particle System:
The particle systems were rendered in Blender, initially for my Media Architecture class. Since the background was exported in alpha, we were able to layer them together with an animation of The Starry Night. Starting with this clip, trippiness goes up to another level. We meant to show the mental state of the protagonist after restraining her feelings and accumulating all the negative energy.
Turbulence Displace:
I think this is my favorite effect of all we used. In this scene, the protagonist is drinking alcohol, and the real world she’s in together with what she perceived as reality seems to be melting. I masked her out so the figure isn’t affected by the displacement.
Kaleidoscope Effect in AE:
This baijiu bottle scene is too shaky, so we decided to make it into a kaleidoscope. We couldn’t achieve this effect using mirroring in Premiere, so we used the kaleidoscope effect in After Effects.
Dust & Scratches:
This melting effect ends the crazy “disintegration” part of the video.
Noise:
We used the scene of watching TV to start and end the video. Only this scene is about the line “frog sings at night”. This noise effect at the end is actually meant to echo with the glitching TV screen at the beginning.
C. Collaboration
A huge thanks to Marina for the amazing voiceover! The video would be much worse if I am the narrator. Her voice is so gentle and elegant, which I think, makes the video more professional. By the way, Gloria is obsessed with Marina’s accent.
Gloria is an amazing actor, especially when she’s pretending to be depressed.🤓 I appreciate the huge amount of research she did. I think she watched all the videos and movies Ann recommended. I believe the concept of this video and what it expresses is really meaningful, and I could never have done it without her. I would probably make another silly video that expresses nothing to the audience. I am also thankful for how serious she treated this project, which motivated me to be more responsible too. Actually, we were able to finish editing way sooner, but I insisted to include all the clips we shoot. Even during the final week, she was able to put up with me till 3 am to complete all the stupid effects I proposed.
D. Aesthetics & Results
From camera language (using long-shot, different camera angles) to color correction/adjustment to establishing the tone of video, please describe how the aesthetics you choose to pursue supports your concept and story, and do you think it is effective? You may also share your inspirations and references which are relevant to this aesthetic.
Aesthetics we want to pursue:
Stream of consciousness, Noir style, Sin City, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
More Inspirations: https://vimeo.com/channels/1654412/page:1