Author: Laura Huang

Link: https://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~cc5581/week09/video-project/welcome.html

Partners: Chloe Hannah

Main idea:

Our video project focus on the topic of freedom. We want to create a documentary project which includes the history of freedom based our research and a number of interviews with our peers. The start page will first show the beginning montage that illustrates the common concept of freedom and the development of the idea over history. After the short montage ended, the interview clips will show on the screen in random positions. When the user clicks on the video, the window will pop up and the counter will add on one. The video window can be closed at any time and once the number of clips reached 7, the page will jump to the ending video. In this way, we want each user can take away different things from the project and also avoid a long time watching and getting bored.

 
Process:

We brainstormed on the idea and Chloe come up with the idea of freedom, we all think a documentary video is very unique and the freedom topic is interesting to discuss and think over. I’m responsible for the editing of opening montage and half of the interviews. Hannah is responsible for the ending video and the other half of the interviews and Chloe did the coding part and we three shoot the interview together.

When I was researching the montage sources, I basically searched from two aspects of physical freedom and spiritual freedom in human society and download the suitable video from YouTube. I choose a few seconds from each source and fit them with the background music, which takes me a lot of time.

To explore different angles and shooting environments, we tried a lot of different spots on the campus. During the interview recording, at first, we encountered some technical problems. The Tascam didn’t work at first so we lost few audio sources and the first few interview record did not focus on the interviewees and the light is too dark. We learned to test all the equipment first and fixed these issues in the following recording.

When Hannah and I edited the interview clips, we discussed a lot to make sure all the layout and format are consistent with each other, for example, the subtitle content, font, and the transition. We think this is necessary for the documentary interview videos and will increase positive user experience. Since we use two cameras to record and change angles during the process, I switch between different angles and some focus shot on the interviewees’ subtle movements. 

We shot 14 interviews in all and we want the user to choose the video clips by themselves. So Chloe designs the webpage and wrote the random position code. We also want to avoid an overly long project so we set a limitation on the number of videos that the users can watch.

Reflection:

During the user test, we received a lot of useful feedback. Some people suggested us to change the button on the web page to make it more clear (delete the next button before the user choose the last interview and change the size). They also suggested some revision on the montage video, for example, it would be better to put our names in the ending video rather than the beginning video. We improved our project according to these suggestions and also improved the layouts.

In brief, since our project is a documentary video which is quite different with other videos that have a storyline and certain characters, it is important for us to integrate everything and make them unified and organized. I think we can improve the animation effects of the web page elements for further improvement. Also, we may want to expand our interviewees to people outside the campus. But overall I’m satisfied with our project and I think it’s really thoughtful and meaningful.

Our project topic is about freedom and we want to make a documentary video project so it is a little bit hard for us to draw the complete storyline. But the project contains three main scenes. Each of us was responsible for one part. The first one is the opening video, which is a montage with a series of video clips that show the history and common understanding of freedom. For example, the physical level of freedom: climbing, diving or innovation of planes and space shuttle and the spiritual level of freedom like the liberty of race, gender, and culture. We will add our own voiceover. The second scene would be the web page with balloons floating in the sky and each ballon will link to an interview video.  The last scene would be the ending video that shows the modern or unique understanding of freedom, which may include a shoot of a dancer and some other combination of small clips and voiceover by ourselves.

Our group record a short clip of the water bottle taping the table from two angles.  After we upload the two parts into the Premiere, we synchronized the audio, unlink the video and audio. Then we cut from each clip to get the transition of the angles. I took a video from my computer because I failed to upload the mp4 file directly to this documentation(the image can’t show).

Our video project wants to focus on the topic of freedom. We want to interview people from different countries and regions about their understanding of freedom and divided them into different categories. We also want to do some research on the freedom concept over history and create a Montage at the beginning.

On the web page, we will first show the opening montage video. After that, the second page will be some balloons or bubbles floating in the sky and the user can click on the balloon. The balloon will explode and link to the interview video of the students. When all the balloons are exploded, the ending video will be shown with the voiceover of our own description of freedom.

The story from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie demonstrates her experience as a Nigerian in Africa. Throughout her growing experience, she met all kinds of people who come to know her with prejudice towards the African. They only hear the single story from the novels or news written by westerners who also learn the biased knowledge due to reasons like political, race or even gender.

Chimamanda’s example of her own prejudice toward the servant’s poverty, other’s prejudice on her about African’s living condition and development status and the general assumption of Mexicans’ crimes, with an unreasonable superiority complex. These single stories are shaped by multiple reasons, including culture and customs, education and most importantly, politics. The way of telling the story may be easily changed under the influences of political power and forces. For most of us as a story reader, the only way to perceive a comprehensive story is to read from various sources and jump out of the single story. The paradigm that rooted in our mind may blind us from the truth and distort the way we communicate with others. This increases the gap between different countries and races. Just like the article said that the single story emphasizes the differences between people rather than our similarities. Many people are unaware of their preference for a single story as it seems more interesting and unique.

When Chimamanda was conscious about this issue and turn to write the story by herself, she has the chance to review all the story happens on her or around her. She finally noticed the importance of a comprehensive and just perspective for a culture and its dignity. This inspires us that when writing a story, as a storyteller, we should also be cautious about the misleading part in our narration. The word has its power on humanity and culture and can be used to shape a nation’s characteristic and future.