My Natural video includes components of primarily nature, whether it be surrounded by other external forces that are not categorised as nature or purely nature itself. There are going to be a lot of things I am going to mention about my ‘natural’ video so without any further ado, let’s get into it!

Man and Nature interaction, Part I:

Influenced from my previous work in Task 3, I decided to compare the two footages I have of me walking with my dog, Walter.

• The first footage on the left, was a result of the camera setting left on auto focus. It did not bother me too much because I wanted to capture some closer aspects of nature and that included the grass around us. With the blurred out background of me walking, the focus on the dried and somewhat green grass, it reinforces the importance of nature and that it will ultimately surround us. However, the unnatural will still coexist with natural, hence the background of myself and Walter.
• The video on the right is the opposite of the left, with the focus of the foreground. This time, I made sure to focus on the greater areas of the location because it still displays the more features of the nature that surrounds us such as the trees, more grass and the sky. At the same time you can also see me walking and the houses around the park.  Again, it emphasises the coexistence of us and nature, coming to a full circle with both the videos on the left and right.

Change of Colour effect on Premiere Pro, Part II:

I took the suggestions from the feedback into consideration, and used the effect on Premiere Pro called the change of colour where you pick a certain object, for example, a black figure and change into any colour of your choice. As a result, all of the colours that are black within the chosen video will all turn into the colour that you choose.

Initially, I was only aiming for a single object of the video to change colour but because I was not familiar with this edit, it actually turned all the black colours around into white. Like I said, I solely wanted that one object to turn white, but the effect worked in my favour – it gave a distorted effect and a hyper-unrealistic effect. The isolation of an unnatural aspect of the natural area stands out and is a proof of how nature is grand and the unnatural is living in nature’s space, but adding that effect only reinforces that the unnatural can also take over nature, especially with the distorted white effect of Part II. Throughout my studio experience from Seeing the Unseen, I have always mentioned that white is an occurring colour in both natural and unnatural spaces but it ultimately stands out against nature.

Plants, trees, foliage – Part III: 

The third and final part of my Natural video shows an alternating video between one and other footages of different plants. It was a personal choice to choose that one video to contrast against the rest – it was one of my favourite videos.

I filmed it inside a moving tram whilst pointing my DSLR upwards, trying to stay steady as much as possible. The reason why I chose this (and is also my favourite) is that it displays both the natural and unnatural aspects of the city – with the background of the buildings and the foliage at the front, it was a good choice to use this video as the main video in between the rest.

Screenshot from ‘Natural’ 

Finally, the choice of music:

I decided to remove the initial audio from the videos to the low quality and instead decided to use a royalty-free sourced music online. From the website, Freesound.org, I found the soundtrack, ‘Gardensoundscape’ by Luftrum.. This was the perfect soundtrack to use because it had the appropriate sounds of nature that matched both the ‘nature in city’ and the ‘purely natural’ landscapes. Not only is it an aesthetic feature but also adds to the element of noticing the sounds in nature.

Ultimately, this video piece reveals a lot about noticing: noticing comes in different forms, hence why I have separated the video into three parts. It helps not only me, but the audience to see different perspectives of noticing, specifically when it comes to several creative outlets: a collage, a moving abstract piece and a main video to compare to the rest. In order to constantly practice noticing, having more than one stimulus assists in being able to notice the naturality of our world.

Lyreca.