In a social media dominant culture, visual
communication is the key to captivating an audience. Video is a great platform
when trying to relay an effective message because it is a quick way to relay a
message in an entertaining way. Writing and photography may not be as effective
because readers simply do not have the time in today’s fast pace environment to
read or interpret a message. The failing newspaper industry is a prime example
of this. Snapchat, an app that allows you to post 10 second videos and
immediately track who has seen your posts. Fortune magazine values Snapchat as
a 19 Billion dollar industry. Another example is YouTube, which has 4 Billion
views a day. Both Snapchat and YouTube allows for real time feedback and
interaction. Another crucial benefit to video is that it can invoke
series of emotions via storytelling. Videos encompass sight and sound that
writing and photography lack.
The biggest struggle in creating a video is finding
the message. There are many elements of an effective message. The first
is relaying that message to your audience in a captivating way. To do this,
keep your video short and to the point. Vine
is a social media platform that is a great example of short and effective
messages. Vines are only 6 seconds long provide a unique way of editing and
grabbing the viewers’ attention. The message should relate to your audience in
some way whether it is love, sadness or humor. Vine is a great platform for
conveying humor. With the individual video project having a run time of 60
seconds, the challenge is how to make the video exciting while still
successfully relaying the message.
The theme assigned to our group video was “abstract”.
In attempting to communicate our theme we chose a dream sequence. Spoons replaced
everyday objects we may take for granted like a remote or car keys. This
separation of a concrete reality to a dream is a message that relates to the
audience not only in that everyone dreams but that small objects over time can
be come meaningful. There was not a public aspect of the video, we only used
group members for our footage with a few minor exceptions like pets and a roommate.
After deciding on a message it is time to shoot
footage. A struggle with this is figuring out how much content you need to
shoot. While it is always important to have extra footage, too much is also a
burden when it comes down to editing. With your message in mind it is important
to shoot video that encompasses that message. With the abstract theme in mind,
each member of the group had to shoot video that not only was a reflection of
our everyday lives but also had to keep in mind how it can be created into one
seamless group video. This posed a challenge of shooting footage that defines
who you are as a person while thinking in a larger scope under a single theme.
When shooting, reliable and quality video equipment
is essential. This video equipment could be in the form of an iPhone. The
latest iPhone, iPhone 6 has incredible focus technology and can shoot 1080p
video. A video that comes out clean and sharp is visually pleasing to your
audience and gives the video a high quality standard. While iPhone produce high
quality footage, keeping your video steady and not shaky can be difficult.
Another challenge with shooting on an iPhone zooming. 2-5 minutes of
footage might mean you need to delete some apps because these videos take up
quite a bit of space. Creating a shot is like taking a selfie, angle and
lighting are key and practice makes perfect. Certain angles of shots relate
different messages to your audience. For example if you are shooting a person
at a low angle it can make the subject appear more dominant or powerful.
The next step is editing the footage into a movie.
iMovie is an extremely user-friendly editing experience. iMovie encompasses not
only filters, transitions, time, themes but also audio editing. It is like
having Avid and Pro-Tools combined into one easy and simple movie-making
platform. The problem with editing in a group is there are many ways to
illustrate the abstract message of a video. Editing requires timing and
thinking ahead. Like art, sometimes you don’t know what the finished product is
until it is done. It is difficult to explain your vision to other members but
they may also have insight you would have never thought of. iMovie does have a
dream filter and while it was used for quite a bit of shots it was challenging
to find filters that created a dream like feel without being too obvious. Dark
filters with a lot of saturation was added to make the audience a little
uneasy, as you would feel in a dream. Another feature of IMovie is the ability
to speed up or sow down frames. Our group chose to have slow moving frames and
to ensure it wouldn’t make the video feel like it was dragging, we added quick
cuts of different images. Each shot would only be on the screen for 2-3 seconds
but it would be in slow motion. The fastest cuts came at the end with flashes
of a single spoon to dozens of boxes of spoons, depicting the adrenalin rush
right before waking up from a nightmare or stressful dream.
Posting the video to YouTube, Vimeo
and Vine was easy and simple. Although it was difficult to slim down my video into
just six seconds while still keeping the dream sequence message, it still
worked. YouTube and Vimeo are similar platforms, although YouTube has been
around longer and has a higher viewership.
The experience of working under the abstract theme
allowed for a large amount of creativity and through the use of IMovie, the
filters and slow motion brought the group’s vision of a dream sequence about
spoons to a reality.
