Conceptual brief: ‘Finding space and time for contemplation during Covid-19’.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDHTO6sjHTl/

For my first post on Instagram for the Platform Video studio, I decided to create a small looping animation of a coffee mug. I chose this idea in response to the conceptual brief as sitting down with a drink or a book is usually my time to unwind and take a break from the pandemic in the outside world. I liked the form of blending photo with animation, as for this first video I wanted to create/edit outside of the constraints of the Instagram app (square format, not as much liberty with editing) to then post on the platform. I decided to name my Instagram @make.roomco, as I want to use my page to focus on wellbeing during COVID-19, to reflect the way we make room for reflection in our homes (physical and time-wise).

All images and/or screenshots used below are my own and were taken during the production of my work.

How did you author the video you recorded for upload to Instagram?

To author the video, I used my iPhone 6s Plus back camera to take a picture of my desk setup. I often find myself contemplating in this space and I chose to use my phone camera to capture it as it is a little less constraining than the app’s square format. This gave me more breathing room in terms of how I framed the image. I moved a little closer to capture both the mug in the foreground and the books in the background, taking a few pictures before I settled on one I liked. The final image was the most well-lit and included the entire mug in the shot.
I imported the photo into the mobile app FlipAClip to animate white steam lines above the mug at 7FPS, largely inspired by @keek_s animations on Instagram. I have used the app before creating short-form animations in the past and found it fairly easy to use it to export for social media. The only issue with the FlipAClip app is that it has dimension constraints for importing background images. To troubleshoot this, I resized the image using the app White Border which adds a white background to the image.

After exporting the animation to my camera roll, I imported it into the Premiere Rush app on my iPhone in order to increase the video length to fit within the time constraints of Instagram. To do this I duplicated the 1-second video to extend its length to 10 seconds. I then exported the final edit using the 1080p Match Framerate preset to preserve the video’s high resolution. Lastly, I removed the excess border from the video by cropping it using the in-app editor in Photos and resized the video to the 4:5 format for Instagram.

I went without audio for this animation as it is fairly short, and prior to uploading, I chose one particular frame of the steam to be the front picture in my video using the ‘cover’ feature. Compared to other photography/videography I have done, authoring this video for Instagram felt very natural, as the process was pretty much point-and-shoot and did not involve a tripod or staged lighting to capture the image for the video. I relied mostly on natural daylight which felt relatable to the audience and the simple animation conveyed this message nicely. Something I feel I could improve on for my next post is maintaining the video quality so that information is not lost as it is passed through different apps.

How did you publish the video you recorded for upload to Instagram?

To publish my video, I opened the 10-second animation within Instagram and prepared to post it. I skipped over adding any additional filters as I was satisfied with the way it looked with the natural colours. In the caption, I wanted to emphasise the importance of making time to look after yourself during quarantine and posed a question to the audience asking their thoughts on ways they are doing this for themselves. I left autoplay for the video on as the default as the looping function on Instagram helped to make the animation flow well. I did not include a location but I included hashtags in the comments of my post as I have seen similar wellbeing accounts on Instagram do, using tags such as #selfcare, #study, and #selfreminder as these had several million posts in each of them to distribute to these specific groups.

For my next post, I would like to try utilising another version of short-form video on the app, such as Instagram stories or IGTV. I have not had much experience using IGTV and would like to both learn how to use this feature and explore this affordance of the app further.