For our second project brief, we had to produce a media self-portrait consisting of media components all recorded by us and edit them into a video. For my video, I used 5 photos, 6 videos and 4 sounds all recorded with my phone, and edited them using Adobe Premiere Pro. In my video, I wanted to show the things that reflected who I really am rather than just the objects that I allow myself to be defined with. I also wanted to create a mysterious vibe, hence, I desaturated the colours from all photos and videos.

The video begins with ‘hi’ which is the title of my video, then followed by one piece of text, which asks, ‘who am i?’. The idea behind the fast cuts of the photos, accompanied by the shutter sound as its transitioning marker, was to show audiences quick glimpses of who I am. It was also to reflect that I’m not a stagnant person — I like to keep things going. With the videos that followed, it may not be easy to tell, but there is only 1 video out of the 4 that had live sound with it, and that was the DVD player opening. The other four videos had sound effects to accompany them. The sound during the pouring of the kettle was actually of a running tap, and the sound of me chewing cereal during the breakfast part was recorded for and taken from my first project brief.

The first video, which was a fade from black shot of a window with raindrops accompanied with breathing was to mirror the effect of someone (or rather myself) waking up. The shutter sound that repeated throughout the entire video was again used to present the idea of showing snapshots of my life. And I would say that this would have to be the most successful part of my video as I thought it was a great transitioning marker between certain aspects of the video, and creates emphasis on those certain parts. In terms of the least successful parts of my video, I could have been more steady with the camera and taken more than one shot of some of the footage. I also think that maybe there should have been a soundtrack of some sort in the background, especially during the montage of all the media ordered backwards instead of just pure silence. (But as a side note, I purposely did this to reflect that I am generally a quiet person.)

To conclude, if by the end of watching my very short film about me titled ‘hi’, which appears both at the start and end, with ‘hazel ilagan’ appearing after it to finish the sequence, and you haven’t pieced together or figured out a particular meaning I was secretly trying to make behind the title (and even the meaning behind my blog name, also with the same title) — ‘hi’ is actually my initials.