Video Editing Rationale

For our video project we decided to make our raw footage out of one of our group members just going through normal day to day activities. The footage was of me studying, reading, sleeping, walking around campus, and hanging out with people. The footage was very neutral in terms of content. We did not commit to any ideas of how we would edit the footage until after we had filmed the raw footage. Doing this made the footage easy to edit because you could really do what ever you wanted to as long as you were creative. For my smaller edit group we decided to edit the original footage into a very artistic and sad adaptation of a person questioning their life and their place in the world. This video is taken from the perspective of a pessimist. The editing does a great job pulling this vision together. For one we made the video in all  black and white. This really makes the video seem morose and serious, which is what we were aiming for. The video is simply scenes of someone going through their day day to day routine. While the images of the scenes are playing there is a voice of the main character narrating the scenes. For our video we got a voice over of someone speaking French. It really adds to the sadness of the video. We then made English subtitles in the video. The subtitles to not directly translate to the French words being spoken. Our desired audience reaction to the video is too shock and provoke thought. The video definitely has a shock value to it. The use of of French being the language spoken really is a curve ball. Also the music is a very creepy and sad piano being played. These things along with the black and white filter and the subtitles really combine nicely to create a great video. Some of the dialogue is pretty deep and I think many people question their life and place in the world. That is what this video is getting at. This video really makes me take a step back and reflect on myself after watching. Most people will probably find the video humorous. In class when we watched the different movie trailers for the same films it was interesting to see how the original video was edited to make trailers that were very different. Some trailers used the same scenes and others used different ones. Even when the trailer used same scenes the use of text and different music completely changed the tone or message of the movie. You could tell that some trailers were created to attract the attention of certain consumers groups. I do not think our video is designed to attract particular ages or consumer groups but it definitely shows how editing can drastically change the mood and message of a video. I am interested to see what the other group is going to do with the original film. I think they will be very surprised at the editing route we took.