For my third project, which is still a media portrait of a person, I choose to introduce Peter, Junru Tao, an amateur artist from Beijing who also has passion for movies and sciences. He is a talented person who can play several instruments and compose, paint and draw. He also has spent time in studying astrophysics, five languages and been writing a novel for four years. With so much aspects, I have to find a focused idea for my video; so in it, based on the interview questions that I asked, I concluded him as living in art: “in art, Peter lives.”
Another thought on this video before I started planning was that I made this portrait with some experimental purposes—at least for me, it was experimental. I didn’t want to go for the interview structure which was quite easy to follow if I’d just mix the interview videos with some footages of Peter and found footages. (Thus, the colour grading of the video must be a lot coherent than the one I have produced.) I wanted the viewers to remember the video after watching it and know at least one thing about Peter; I wanted a strong start to grab attention and slowly builds up in the second part of my video. Then I later discovered his songs and got excited about putting it in my video. So I came up with this structure: (it’s the first rough draft.)
(The feeling that I was trying to get was: strong—>low and builds up slowly—>strong. )
Please watch the video first, then read my reflections below.
1. What’s your instant feeling after watching this video?
2. Is it messy?
Here again, my work:
What I consider the most successful aspect about this video is that I did have a unique, strong, clear structure, which helps the viewers to be able to focused on one thing about Peter. The statement, “in art, Peter lives,” has repeated three times in three parts of my video. It must have been effective in reminding my main point. After watching it, people can tell that the mood has shifted twice in the video (though I am not sure if they feel that the second shift is a bit unnatural). The first part is a really short introduction which invites my main subject; the second part is the interview answers with other detailed information about Peter that ends with him acknowledging art being the most significant part of his life; the last is a demonstration of his composed work which also emphasises his cultural background being a Beijing citizen (he sang the song with a distinctive Beijing accent).
Personally, I perceive more downfalls in this video. Firstly, it’s messy, really messy. It’s not, which is usually the case at the beginning, what I expected it should appear to be (except the fact that the length of the video is exactly what I planned to be). Especially in the second part, I couldn’t get it to look like that’s how Peter would like to spend a day ideally. (Maybe it’s because I cannot film Peter’s one day in actually a whole day since he is usually busy.) So I decided to just follow the audio track and put in relevant videos. Despite the structure, the overall presentation is not coherent. The tonalities are so different in each shot that it looks highly unprofessional. I did try to manipulate the aspect ratio in the second part and did some colour grading to the shots that I’ve done, but it was still not effective enough. I think the reason for the messiness is that the style of my shots are so different; and every single shot simply doesn’t look beautiful enough. The third part is the messiest, even though with my control over the aspect ratio. This still bugs me now, so I really hope I can get feedbacks from the viewers and professionals that I can learn from.
The second thing is the sound. I actually interviewed him twice due to some sound problems in editing, so the voices have sounded different in the video—his accent has also changed a little bit. Now I know that it’s better not to record twice and use both of the recordings; or if I really wanted to, I have to go back to the exact spot and check the differences after the second recording.
I think there are many possibilities in creating a portrait for a person. I’ve tried my method by not putting in interview videos and adding a music video in the end. Although it didn’t work well as I expected, I am glad that I tried it. I had learn things from it. If I can do it again, I may try another structure for the second part.
Preparation and organization is vital. During this exercise, I realize how important it is to write down all the little details you need to be aware of during the making, to set a schedule and stick with it, to be determined on what I want. (read more “weekend experiences”) You never know where it will go wrong, and you will never know what you will forget. Make sure you have enough batteries (thankfully I didn’t make this mistake this time, but I can’t guarantee for the next. You never know.) Make sure you check the locations before filming. Make sure the plan is plausible. These are the tips I gave for the other beginners.
I also learnt that the image control and continuity in tonality in a film is vital. My failure demonstrated in this video really proves this. (The cause of the failure may also be that I’ve put too many found footages.) This isn’t the first time I struggle with this so I still got so much to learn.
Editing and filming weren’t a problem during the making of my video, the problem lay in continuity; so while I was trying to promote that, I found two interesting video effects: channel blur(under “blur and sharpen”) and echo (under “time”). Both can create a dreamy look to the video, but the second one looks more like that someone is drunk. In the movie, “the theory of everything”, the editor may have used echo when Hawking is trying to work out the equation. After the discovery, I think I may use one of these effects in the future.
“The devil’s in the detail.”
remember that! 🙂
