The prospect of undertaking this assignment was very daunting just a few weeks ago, but as I have begun putting my video together things have seemed a lot easier than I made them out to be just a few weeks ago. That being said, my project has come with its difficulties and challenges, but none that I havn’t been able work through and overcome.
Before I started sourcing footage for my artefact I did research into the effects of e-waste on the populations in countries such as Ghana and Nigeria, two countries that receive huge amounts of e-waste every year. I wanted to know the specific effects that the e-waste has on the health and wellbeing of the people who live near these dumping grounds as well as the people who dismantle the e-waste for income. The information on the myriad of health risks and irreversible health conditions that workers on e-waste sites are exposed to was quite shocking. Workers inhale smoke and chemicals from the burning and harvesting of e-waste and subsequently are exposed to cancers, kidney failure, respiratory failure, infertility and many other health risks. On top of this, due to the release of lead and cadmium from e-waste, the many people who live in the surrounding regions of e-waste dump sites also suffer from these same health concerns due to soil pollution making their homes unliveable.
The most challenging aspect of my video project has been the editing stage as it has brought a lot of creative challenges and difficult creative decisions. Creating the soundscape for my video has probably been the most difficult part of the process. Sourcing sound effects and sound clips that appropriately convey the sense of danger that the unethical dumping of e-waste causes was difficult, in the end I decided to use sound clips of flames and fire, as well as smoke, coughing and heavy breathing. To accompany the soundscape I used footage of workers in Agbogbloshie, an e-waste dump site in Ghana, being engulfed in smoke from the burning of discarded e-waste. The message I wanted to convey through the accompaniment of the soundscape with imagery like this, is that the e-waste that we discard and throw away should not be ‘out of sight and out of mind’, as it is having a detrimental effect on the lives of so many people who not only sort through and dismantle it to simply make a living, but also to the people who live in surrounding e-waste affected regions.
I encountered a few problems in the editing stage, specifically with my laptop not being able to handle the timeline I had created on premiere pro. This made it difficult to edit as the playback became very choppy and hard to make frame specific changes and adjustments. I avoided this issue as much as I could by separating my artefact into specific parts and editing them in order. It did become a problem however when it came down to making the final editing changes with all three parts put together.
