It's done. Am I forgiven? Thank God, thank God. My final project was a silent film, and the second that fact was revealed to me, my mind jumped on the creative possibility, then jumped immediately backwards. I had too many ideas. I only had two minutes. I only had one location! I only had one week! I only had stock music! I was panicking on what I wanted a silent film to be, as I was struck out of luck on a Chaplin-esque plot. But I approached it from a different angle and it all came together. Silent films. Films without sound, but with music. What did silence mean to me? What is silence? How does the absence of sound matter? Noise fills the world. Noise is all around us. The undercurrent of the world is the sound of life. I initially thought of the one minute of silence to celebrate the armistice to end WW1, but in the end I had a different concept more dear to me: Being silent about yourself. Struggling and suffering in silence because you are too scared to ask for help is a very misleading idea. In truth, people who are "suffering in silence" communicate all the time. Their behavior is a constant cry for help, that someone will come and make things alright. Even those people who strike out at their families, friends, school, and harm people around them are suffering in silence but calling for help. In silent films, text is presented onscreen after somebody speaks. I gladly took this logic: How do people who suffer silently speak? What are they saying? With that philosophy, I put together a string of moments where I am not talking, but I am still speaking. Text appears on screen as if I vocalized, but the real language is what my body says. The biggest challenge was the one set restriction. The timeframe was perfect for me, but I had a good chunk of the video with a lot of good footage I decided to remove to be more in line. My concern was that, while yes, sloughing around with your head in your hands or lying dead in random places is very accurate behavior for depression and suffering, trust me, it isn't entertaining. It's a string of clips of someone sitting around, and so I included an outside section at a park to lighten things up. In the end though, I didn't want to risk being against the spirit of the final and removed it. It was a hard choice, and while I think the video would have been improved if it remained, I had to conform to what was asked of me.
Just as well, the second biggest challenge was the music. You had to have music. You had to use the music provided. The only music provided was pretty comedic. I immediately thought that perhaps the comedic music underneath everything would create an ironic juxtaposition, but then realized while watching that it was too much and went on for too long to simply become laughable again. I had the idea of simply fading the music lower and cutting over time, just hoping to get it out of the way quick like a tumor, but this turned out to be a gold decision. This is the first video (or anything) I've made that made me feel kinda spooked at the end. Before the music fadeout, the whole video was audioless, and was fine. But with the music fading out at the end to be left with the image of silent suffering and someone facedown on the couch made me think I'd watch somebody die. The only thing I could focus on was the light creaking of the house around me while I edited. And the video was done. I thought to myself: "Wow. That was a gold decision. That was also really morbid. This is fantastic." It's certainly my favorite video. My favorite project? Eh, I don't know. Maybe. But video-wise, it's the best. I can say nothing poor about it except for the cutting of the rest of the scenes I made. I loved to be able to use the monotone features. I loved fiddling with the technical elements of the old school film effect I hand-made myself. I loved getting to be real wordy with it and say something poetic. I made a two minute video where someone dies at the end, and I didn't even know it. I love this video. The person critiquing and grading it will likely not be as blinded as I am by my love for it, but I am proud nonetheless. Videomaking has been a struggle. Confining myself to an assignment guideline has been a struggle. Cutting what I don't need and learning to move on has been a struggle. This is a capstone. Final. I win. The gradebook may disagree, I don't know yet. But I feel a sense of overcoming.
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