Project 4, reflection, and revision

Eating Habits

I intended to make this video as annoying as I could. I was attempting to evoke, in my audience, the same reaction I have when listening to someone chew their food loudly.

The graininess of the original video is partly the fault of the camera on my computer; it is subdued with normal video effects, but is made apparent with the use of a high-contrast filter and the removal of color. There is the same constant shifting of tones in both versions, but in color, the tones waver between similar tones, concealing the graininess, whereas in black-and-white the tones have a restricted palette and the graininess cannot hide so easily.

The composition is not entirely deliberate. I filmed the original version in haste, without considering much besides the idea of chewing granola as loudly as possibly. That explains the camera angle. The frame occurred because iMovie didn't let me zoom as close as I wanted. had I been able to capture my mouth alone, or to crop the video to be narrow, the bed in the background would not have appeared and I would not have done the video in bright black-and-white in a desperate attempt to obscure my mistake.

The sound itself was simply the best audio-distortion effect iMovie presented me. I think that worked out well. It made the sound of chewing granola big and pompous. One expects big and pompous sounds out of cathedrals. They've gone to all that expense to create a massive, echoing indoor space, after all. It would be a shame to let that effort go to waste.

Revision:

This one is a different animal. 

As all the video cameras were checked out of the Academic Media Studio, I made do with the recording function on my own digital camera. It takes a much better-quality picture than my computer. BUT the computer lets me see what I'm doing while I'm doing it. So for this video, I had to look into the camera more attentively. Also, where the camera on my computer would be at a low angle as I set it on the floor, the digital camera was on a tripod at eye level. The combination of these factors (attention and angle) meant that the mocking, half-lidded gaze of the first video was replaced by an unsettling, wide-eyed stare. Annoyance has been replaced by uncertainty. 

The background was an attempt to make a more anonymous location. Who knows where that door is? Only, it clashes with the sound of the video, for a cathedral is a deep space and the space in the video is shallow.

I'm not sure if the revision works any better than the first video, but it's less grainy, at least.