Prior to the rough cut critique session, my group and I were able to compile most of our footage together along with some voice recordings in response to our overall theme of affection. Using sound in video in my opinion is my weakest area so being able to get feedback related to audio as a key concern from Hannah as well as the class and my group members helped a lot. Class feedback related to this topic was to refine the sound design and to think about including background sounds initially was mentioned to fill areas of silence as well as a way to create a more immersive experience when viewing the video. But at the same time the moments of silence between each audio piece was also seen as a positive as it created space between the thoughts of affection as it gave the audience time to think about what was said. 

For a coherent and balanced structure and randomness, a tip mentioned was to have the voice overs come earlier and to even be placed over the prompts and quotes. I thought this was a great idea to display various perspectives simultaneously as to what affection is to different people through speech and text. This also aligned with the question and tips to how our group can go about thinking of the poetic nature of our video being sounds mixed together and overlapping voices as a suggestion of  an audio technique to implement. Eventually this idea led to having voice overs being placed over one another with one of the voice recording layers being made to sound like it is at a distance but can be noticed but not heard easily. Then as the video progresses, the use of sound can create a pattern triggered from a sense of familiarity in wondering about similar sounds heard before.  

Also the idea of progressive overlays was applied in making improvements to how our  visual collages were presented where each type of affection has their own animated collage. My group also decided to place these animated collages in the end where there would be multiple snippets of videos acting as the exploding list of multiple perspectives of affection with multiple voice messages being laid over each other to accompany the videos. As well having balancing in the structure of  consistent use of visual and audio patterns, a chaotic ending where many videos are shown could potentially end the video well as it brought in the infinite list giving the audience a wide visual of the different ways affection is expressed and letting them contemplate the types of affection they have experienced or can think of related to the mundane. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv_zldfbh7

After experimenting with using Adobe Spark to see what would work on it as platform to present our media pieces consisting mainly of videos, we discovered and decided that it is not the best option for us as we did not present our work in an easy flow as to what we imagined.  As we uploaded our test footage the content looked disjointed and each part we worked on was quite separated. For uploading the videos onto Adobe Spark, it did not embed videos the greatest as it was difficult to just show the video. This was the opposite as to what we envisioned where all these different interpretations and perspectives of affection were tied together, creating connections between each media fragment. 

Something positive that came out using Adobe Spark and importing some of our creative pieces to it was the process based method as we were able to recognise a structure as to how the group can work better for the final project where each member was in charge of a type of affection to be conveyed utilising poetic techniques and other methods we discussed as a group. A common theme in our videos was movements in the hands and from that we close-up and tight shots in conjunction with the shakiness in handheld shooting to share intimacy and create a stylistic approach in capturing affection. Also in capturing hand movements with close up camera angles, it can create a sense of wonder like Hannah mentioned as to how it relates with the idea of affection and the purpose and how it is similar. With seeing how our videos together on Adobe Spark were not just similar but are also different, we thought of a nice way to compile everything together and end the video which is the use of a collage using videos creating an exploded list which can also maybe be accompanied with a question to construct an infinite list on how we perceive affection.

In the end as we understood that we do not have the time to fully learn how to use Adobe Spark or a web page in presenting the work the way we wanted to, we instead decided to make an experimental video where we all contribute our own work and compile it together. 

Some feedback my group received for our studio presentation was that there is a positive being  including collages and mosaics being a smart link to affection as love and affection are very fragmented feelings. Some feedback that linked to this comment was to gather other people’s material and perspective on how they see affection to really bring in the infinite to our list of how people express affection.  And through these multiple perspectives, embedding aesthetics to our fragments was another tip as it can bring a structured consistent type of stylised look to our project whilst showing many interpretations of affection.  A creative work example suggested by the panel which could help us was looking at the We Feel Fine directed by Adam Luxton, Jeremy Dumble as it is a film which shares similar components to a gathering list as it captures different emotions from various characters. Despite not watching the whole movie, I did watch the trailer and found that it had similarities with the creative work I presented which was Is Anyone Coming For Dinner by Audrey Lam as it also used shaky camera movements for a more intimate and personal tone to the film as the consistent use of close ups and cropped body actions just enough for the audience to understand what is happening. 

Some advice for using Adobe Spark as well as Hannah was to keep importing anytype of media into the platform to work intrusively as an interactive approach much like the processed based method in creating the video as mentioned in my initial ideas blog post as from then our group can let the content form around how we  organise it. Ordering our works of media on Adobe Spark I learned can also intentionally guide the audience in the way they interact with the works which can stem off providing or giving the viewers a prompt or question at first and then showing them our media works to contemplate the relationship between. Another idea mentioned was including the use of hashtags to accompany our work to create an infinite list where other online users’ understanding of affection can be brought in with our project. 

Since our group discussed how our videos will contain aspects of categorical listing, an  idea I found from Bogost Ian’s reading  Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be aThing  is where he analyses a list of likes and dislikes made by Roland Barthes is that a list can “draw our attention to the curious world outside his person, as filtered through the arbitrary meter of likes and dislikes.” (Bogost Ian, 2012, pg41). With this idea in mind, having videos which stem from our perspective of how we see affection in our lives creates a mosaic from personal lists which can then be categorised into the expanding idea of affection. Our videos being variations created from our interpretation of affection can leave contemplation between each video to act in “drawing  attention  to  the  couplings of and chasms between them” (Bogost Ian, 2012, pg50) This quote can be helpful in thinking about our final project to have videos which can evolve into maybe multiple narratives through the audience engagement of what they notice throughout their viewing experience.  

A creative work that I found which can assist making our videos is Audrey Lam’s short film Is Anybody Coming Over For Dinner. This video is made up of mosaics which expand into displaying affection in a family orientated environment. A lot of these shots use close ups on actions (e.g feet kicking the soccer ball or hands playing with a toy, cutting food) where in some aspects it crops the entire full body action but it is  just enough to create viewer contemplation and for the audience to figure out what is going on. This places emphasis on details in how people especially in families show affection for each other. Also with close ups in the film, tight compositions display the family members to be close together and that affection can be shown in a physical manner. A technical aspect that can help assist close up composition is using a 4:3 aspect ration like in the video. This can also give off a a home video aesthetic in conjunction with  ideo grain, light leaks, film burn etc which can elicit a comforting feeling as if you are in that environment with friends or family who you do exchange affection with.

Reference : Bogost, I., 2012. ‘Ontography’ in Alien Phenomenology. Or What It’s Like to be a Thing.’ University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. pp. 35-59

Some potential ideas my group and I discussed were different concepts to explore filming which align with our question of how a poetic video conveys a story but remains experimental at the same time. We started off with listing out broad topics such as home, love, comfort zones that had the potential to form a list that could be exploded starting with our own interpretations and perspectives of it. This approach was quite similar to how I started out making my earlier poetic video works where the visuals and sounds revolved around. 

However, a process based method in working on this video project Hannah talked about was something I found quite interesting and want to attempt is starting out with an emotion and having each group member gather some videos of how they interpret it. Then from that gathering list exercise of each person, the list will then explode and will potentially develop its own aesthetic and show us if a narrative has been created from it or not. 

Another concept in class discussed was the idea of thinking about balance and aspects of order and chaos in our poetic video. I see this as an important technique to help convey a narrative and give our video some sort of structure which can assist in generating meaning to the video. Structural elements being as the “order” whilst being combined with more  experimental shots accompanied with poetic techniques acting as the “chaos” hopefully the audience can take note of a narrative being formed whilst also in contemplation and questioning how each shot makes sense of one another. 

Also considering balance combined with our gathering and explosive list generated from our group allows “room for critical engagement and an experiential knowing.” (Frankham B, 2013, pg147) may also allow more than one narrative to be formed and discovered from the audience which may alter from our original idea of the story created.

Reference: References : Frankham, B.L., 2013. Complexity, flux and webs of connection,’ in: (Links to an external site.) A Poetic Approach to Documentary: Discomfort of Form, Rhetorical Strategies and Aesthetic Experience University of Technology Sydney, Sydney. pp. 137-176