A Reaction

I think most people reacted the way Anita and I intended people to react : melancholy, a bit confused, and lonely. I have a personal background in photography and I tend to create images that are both sad and melancholy, so making a video was a method for translating photography into a more "sculptural" form. The biggest weakness of our project was the ambiguity. I believe a work of art shouldn't be too descriptive, to give the viewer some space to move, but we overstepped that a bit and ended up making the whole thing a bit vague (why are we sitting here?, why are we watching this looping video?, what do all of these images mean?). Having the ambiguous figure move around in two of the clips, and then a voice clip didn't integrate well into the video (although fortunately it's easier to delete then to add). I still have no consensus on the furniture set-up. Some people argued that it was unnecessary and distracting, I agree. Others said that the furniture provided some kind of living space comparable to the one in the video, I agree. I think the furniture would be successful if we were able to make it look more like a room than anything else. On the other hand, it could also be just as fine if the video took up the whole wall. Some other points brought up was the lack of continuity in the way the video was shot. While I agree, there's a practical reason for not framing the subjects all the same way, our the curves in the hallway and all prevent the camera from shooting at that angle so I had to compromise and shoot the clips from various angles so I could capture the room wholly. I also wish the camera quality was in a higher resolution. I think the video would be easier to watch, since there was a lot of film noise present due to the lack of light. I had also mentioned my idea of perhaps using a cinematic camera, and what effect that would create. Certainly there would be more of a self-imposed narrative (one aspect of this project that I really enjoy in particular, it allows it to be "hands on" in a way) because the video would produce a movie effect.

Adam