Adjective
[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=0TvKs6eegSw]
Pre-Production
When I first sat down to think of my adjectives project, I was not really thinking about words that meant something specifically personal to me or about me — perhaps I misunderstood the project a bit when I read the process for this project. But at any rate I decided upon different adjectives that I felt would be a bit of a challenge for me to define visually. I also tried to think of adjectives that could have double meanings, or a certain duality to them. I picked ten and began thinking of what I thought made that word for me:
Assimilated- Loss of identity, sameness, monotony. The aspect most important to me is the loss of identity. I believe it is important to maintain your identity as an individual; an assimilated person makes me sad, because I know that he or she has something to offer, but I can’t find what because he or she is hiding it behind a mask, a façade. I think I want to try and find something that shows a loss of character or individuality.
Bright- [double meaning alert] – Something that is innovative and new, (perhaps in a more superficial way) something that is shiny. I think bright ideas are important because they look to improve the way we live and function. Bright also has a double meaning because of the physical nature of brightness. Because of this double meaning, I want to try and think of something on campus that exhibits both properties.
Wonky- Askew, lopsided, crooked, a bit backwards—it is the one word I have heard used most in this class. I thought it was an interesting trait that our teacher used this word quite often (I don’t really know anyone else who uses it with such frequency) so I thought I would try to find something that shows what I think it means.
Genius- Something that is brilliant and individual, an innovative or unexpected approach. I want to try and find something that shows an unexpected path to succeeding in some task.
Close- [double meaning alert] – (in reference to relationships) together, understood, dear. (perhaps in a more superficial way) within reach. With this adjective, I think I want to try to find a situation where the double meaning contradicts itself. That is, I want to think of a situation where there are 2 friends who are close, even though they are a great distance apart.
Distant- [double meaning alert] – (in reference to relationships) remote, withdrawn, detached. (perhaps in a more superficial way) far apart. I want to have this contrast with close in the same way, so I will find a situation where there are 2 friends who are distant even though they are in some sort of confined area.
Out of Shape- Tired, unable to do physical activities that you should be able to do. I thought of this adjective when I was originally thinking of words that could describe me. I want to find an activity that should be simple to do but turns out to be very taxing.
Congested- [double meaning alert] (in reference to a congested atmosphere, as in when you are sick) dull, foggy, stale. (in a more physical way) packed, overflowing, crowded. I want to try and find a scene that depicts the feeling you have when you are congested when you have a cold. There is activity going on around you, but you are not really taking anything in; it is all kind of floating past you in a fog. All conversation seems void, and you sort of just drift in and out of consciousness in a way. I want to place this type of scene in an environment that is congested in the physical sense as well.
Resourceful- related to bright, resourceful is a roundabout way of doing something that creatively makes use of the things surrounding you. I want to try and find something that exhibits this, maybe with a bit of conflict-resolution in the storyline.
Different/Unique. As a contrast to assimilated, I would like to explore unique or different, when something is individual and has characteristics all its own, when something has personality. I want to find a situation where I can’t think of the last time I saw something like that. As I am working in a more abstract fashion, having ‘assimilated’ at the beginning and ‘different’ or ‘unique’ at the end could help form together my thoughts.
After thinking of the characteristics of these different adjectives, I set out thinking about shots that would exhibit these qualities. Also, I thought about the order of the adjectives, and decided on a slightly, although not perfectly [8 and 9 are switched], chiastic structure. That is, words at the beginning would line up with the one at the end in a symmetric way, whether as a contrast [assimilated & different; close & distant], or based on the characteristic of double meaning. The resulting structure is this:
Adjective 1 : Contrast to 10
Adjective 2 : Double Meaning
Adjective 3 : Normal
Adjective 4 : Normal
Adjective 5 : Contrast to 6
Adjective 6 : Contrast to 5
Adjective 7: Normal
Adjective 8 : Double Meaning
Adjective 9 : Normal
Adjective 10: Contrast to 1
Of course, I do not want the audience to notice this structure totally. I am doing this because it helps me organize my thoughts, and maybe subconsciously some form of order is felt by structuring it in this way. I hope that they will go away with a hint of the structure, though.
Production
Assimilated- I decided that the best way to visualize a loss of identity was to show a single set of footprints in the snow that then joins all the others; you cannot tell which one was from the original set. Unfortunately, most of the snow had been shoveled at the point I had the camera, so I went to the Krannert Center’s roof. Not only has it proved itself worthy ground for many fun games of capture the flag, but it is also unshoveled. I walked around for a good 10 minutes back and forth to get all the other footprints in the shot, and I made sure to film at sunset so that the reflection of light did not wash out the image. Sound inherent in the film was going to be snow crunching, and I was quite pleased with how that turned out.
Bright- I remembered seeing a cool exhibit at the Beckman Institute, showing a possible use of LED’s as an active wallpaper for a room. I found my double meaning— the University of Illinois played an important role in the development of LED’s, which have many advantages, including energy efficiency and reduced power consumption. The wall is also, well… bright! An unexpected after-effect of standing in front of the wall was a bit of dizziness and nausea.
Wonky- While sitting at a concert at Krannert, I noticed how a set of stairs on the upper level was very strangely askew due to the contorting acoustic design of the walls. “How Perfect!” I thought. After the concert, I got permission to film, set the camera on a low angle and zoomed in on the most angular part of the stairs.
Genius- My friend Ryan always makes these saltine cracker sandwich things that are a practical, albeit unexpected, way to get something to eat at late nite (the staple location for evening dining at the dorms) for no cost at all, which is usually a high priority for college students. I set up the camera closer to him to catch his audio, but left room for activity in the background to give depth to the shot. I let him explain in his own words, but asked him to explain that he was at late night. One problem I knew I was going to have was the level of ambience. I tried to get there as early as possible so there would be the least amount of people, but that place fills up. I did not know how to use a microphone of any sort, although a shotgun mic would have been helpful in cutting out the extra environmental noise.
Close- I decided to exhibit this adjective by depicting an AIM conversation between two friends where they could understand each other even though they were using completely nonsense words. This was to capture the opposition of the two meanings of this word— the friends are close in their relationship, even though they are distant in proximity to each other. I originally filmed the screen itself, but found that to be too pixilated, so I used a third-party software to capture screen activity.
Distant- I wanted to show an estranged relationship within an enclosed space to contrast with close. I thought that an elevator is a pretty enclosed (and also public) space. The girl in this couple reaches out to the boy, but he pulls back and she is quite sad. I thought that a nice way to frame this scene would be to have the elevator opening in the darkness and then closing in the darkness with the camera’s fade out function working in tandem.
Out of Shape- This adjective provides a sort of comic relief (maybe you thought it was funny in a dry way, I don’t know). An activity I should be able to do is climbing up the stairs; to capture the unfit nature of the climber, I made the camera go in a first-person perspective as they spiral upwards and reach the top. “Oh my aching legs” was said off-camera by my friend Kristin as sort of the comic part (I cannot do an old man voice, but for some inexplicable reason, she can).
Congested- I tried to find a situation that was visually cluttered, but one that also captured the feeling of being congested, of being dull or removed from conversation. I decided upon a table’s conversation at breakfast. Everything in the morning is just in a sort of haze, and the table was also pretty full. I think maybe I could have gone from less of a high angle to capture the sense of clutter. The important part of this scene though, I think, is the conversation. It is quiet and removed, groggy and disconnected.
Resourceful- The original idea for this scene was that people would arrive at The Cookie Jar in Champaign late at night only to discover that (to their great dismay), it is closed. Thinking quickly, a person suggests to “Follow Me” and they follow him and arrive at Insomnia Cookies, which is always open late at night. The funny thing about this is the close proximity. Challenges that faced this scene was actually that distance. While they are not really all that far away, it is impossible to travel from the front of The Cookie Jar’s window to Insomnia within 20 seconds. If I could have broken the shot up in two parts, I would have had the close up at The Cookie Jar, but to bypass this problem, I decided to begin filming in the middle point, at Rentertainment. Unfortunately, my camera steadying skills are not quite up to par, and I don’t think that the audience was able to understand what it was I was pointing the camera at. I was supposed to say, “shoot, The Cookie Jar is closed” but not thinking, I said, “shoot, it’s closed.” I think that may have made it more apparent to the audience if I had said the former, but the limitations of only having one take to do the shot prevented me from going and re-shooting. Oh well. Lesson learned.
Different- Originally, I was going to film something more concrete for the adjective unique, to form a strong contrast to the opening “assimilated.” What I had planned to shoot was a row of windows at night at Taft, the dorm across the street from the art building. While all of them have dull white light emanating from within, there was one window that stood out, outlined with a bright purple Christmas lights display. I would have shot all the regular windows first, ending up at the purple window. This would have made a more obvious reference to the chiastic structure I was originally planning for- the motion of sameness towards individuality is exactly opposite the beginning shot. Unfortunately, when I set out to shoot, it was rainy and foggy quite a bit, and I just did not feel right about shooting; that room’s blinds happened to be open that night, and I kinda felt like a creep if I were to film like that. I decided instead upon the shot that appears in the project, which is a more quirky shot of my friend’s ceiling, where [no production preparation involved] there actually is a banana hanging from the ceiling. The song happened to be playing and I thought it added to the zany atmosphere. Although it was different from what I wanted originally, I think the shot still worked to show the adjective different.
Editing
Whee! Easy editing! I used the camera’s fade function to get the fade, and all I did was place the adjective on screen. I did have an exporting issue where I could not get the project to export as a .mov file, and I believe this is because I used the third party software to capture the screen image. That scene is the only one where editing came outside the camera—I had to add the fade in and out to be consistent with the other shots.
Distribution + Reflection
I appreciated the critique that Alex gave my project—I think that my structure was not as apparent as I would have liked, and I can see that this maybe was due to my approach to this project, combined with the shots I ended up with. I thought that each adjective ended up being pretty apparent within itself, but I would have really liked to have the structure more apparent, simply because I put a lot of time into it. These are lessons learned though, and Alex also had some good suggestions about working with the physical act of shooting, especially regarding white balance. Before this class, I have never shot anything besides a project in high school once, so I am really unfamiliar to many camera techniques and I think that will be helpful in creating a clearer work.