Once again I have really enjoyed the practical component of this assignment. Robin set me the challenge of blending the voiceover of one of my observations (observation 1 was chosen for this element) with the visuals of one or more other separate observations. This concept was one I hadn’t really even thought of as a possibility before Robin suggested it, but it immediately got me really excited for the possibilities. So essentially for the last couple weeks I’ve made a point of getting my camera out everytime I wrote an observation down and just grabbing a bunch of random clips that sort of fit the mood in which I was writing at the time. As a result the real challenge of this exercise became the editing process, as I ended up with a whole bunch of disparate footage that by definition didn’t fit exactly with the voiceover I had recorded. It was quite difficult actually to use what I had filmed to fit tonally with what I had written in my first observation – which I probably made more difficult for myself by choosing not to get any ‘pickup’ shots if I found gaps in my coverage, as I felt this would somewhat defeat the purpose of the challenge Robin had set me. I tried to fit the images together in a way that made sense to me, which essentially ended up being not in the order that I shot them, but rather in order of what time of day they were filmed (regardless of what day they were filmed on). What this was intended to create was a sort of subjective beginning and end so that even if the video wasn’t portraying a conventional narrative it at least didn’t seem to appear out of nowhere and then leave without resolution. I also appreciate the sort of symmetrical nature of the beginning and end – something I actually hadn’t considered at the time of filming.
I’m not sure how I feel about the finished product. I really quite like each shot individually for their own unique qualities and I feel like despite the rapidly changing subject matter of each shot, they do all fit tonally. The part I’m not so sure about however, is whether they really work together to tell a cohesive story, or indeed whether they even bring a new meaning to the words being spoken. I think that they certainly convey the tonality I was going for with that first observation, in that regard they are a match. But being a biased viewer, I can’t really tell how effective the images are when paired with the audio. I think it works – but I won’t be surprised if others disagree. Once again I’m genuinely interested to hear Robin’s feedback on this practical exercise. Perhaps I’ve missed the mark this time, but equally I may have stumbled onto something at least mildly interesting – who knows.