iMovie Madness

1, 2, 3, 4… 1, 2, 3, 4… The students counted off to choose their movie project groups. Once everyone figured out who was in their group, then it was time to be assigned topics. The Abstract group, once assigned their topic, got straight to work on trying to define what abstract was. It was a difficult topic, abstract could mean many things. The abstract group had a hard time at first pinning down exactly how they could express it in their videos. They googled the meaning and still were coming up blank as to what it meant and how to portray it. Some ideas they had included: highlighting shapes they see in their everyday lives. This idea was scrapped because finding the same odd shape could possibly be restricting to what you can film. Another idea was emotions and to highlight a certain emotion such a happiness, sadness, etc., but it was decided that wasn’t abstract enough. Finally, the group decided on colors.

Each member of the group each chose their favorite color. Chelsea chose pink, Danielle chose red, John chose green, and Jessica chose purple. Each member had to, in some way, incorporate these colors in their personal videos to showcase things about them. For example, in Chelsea’s video she opened the video to a pink record played because she likes music. Danielle included footage from a Beyonce concert with red lights flashing, because she also likes music (and of course Beyonce). When Chelsea originally picked pink as her color, it was a no brainer. The walls and blankets in her room are a pale pink, her phone is pink, her record player is pink. However, outside of her room she had trouble finding sources of her color outside of repeatedly filming videos of the sunset. She was able to fix this problem by including clips of herself putting on pink lipstick while wearing a pink scarf and carrying her keys with her pink pepper spray in frame to make it more obvious her color was pink, as it wasn’t always prominent in other shots.

The group also encountered issues when deciding what to film for their transitions. Many ideas were passed around. Their first idea was to walk past each other in the hallway and have the video transition into the next persons video as the passed by. However, this ended up not working for the team due to time and scheduling restrictions. Their next idea was to paint the bottom of their shoes with their color and film their footsteps as they “walk” into the next video. This was the groups favorite idea, but unfortunately due to bad weather, this option was a no-go.

This lead to the handprint idea. Each member of the group painted one of their hands and filmed themselves pressing it onto a canvas. This repeated for each member and then they all stamped their hands in the middle at the end. This allowed for an easy transitions between each person's video and helped make the message more prominent. The hands coming together at the end showed how while each person lives their own separate lives, there are commonalities betweens everyone’s videos.

The group really didn’t have a hard time editing their videos and putting them together. They each edited their personal videos separately and got together to film the transitions. They decided the order in which the videos will go in the group video, based on the order they did their handprints in (Jessica, Chelsea, John, Danielle). Then, the group got together early in the morning before the final presentation to put the finishing touches on their work and to look everything over one final time. The group communicated well and enjoyed working with each other.

Using videos as a communication tool, rather than pictures and/or writing, is useful because pictures and writing can only say so much. While a picture is worth a thousand words, it is only a snapshot of one single moment. Writing can be the same way. Writing can express more than photographs can, but they risk being too long winded and could miss out on some important details. Writers can use words to create pictures in the minds of their reader, but writing can be very one sided. Videos give watchers the ability to see and form their own judgements. They get to see what comes after the photo that was taken and they get to interpret the video in their own way, as opposed to what someone has written about it.

The public nature of the video did not affect what the Abstract group chose to discuss. They were simply just filming their lives, but making sure they incorporated their color into most of their shots. Some groups chose to film separate content for their group video, but the Abstract group felt it would work best for them to use the members personal videos. The group didn’t find filming in public awkward as society is now accustomed to people snapchatting videos all the time, so it was nothing out of the ordinary.

The self-portrait experience was good for the group. Each member found it easy and enjoyable to film the things they love and like to do. It even gave some of them an excuse to do the things they love that normally aren’t things they do all the time.

The group didn’t share their video/s to social media. However, they did share their group video with the class. There were no technical issues and the video played just fine. The group was nervous about sharing their work to the class. This is understandable because the video did show the lives of each student which made them vulnerable. No one wants to be told their work isn’t good.

Overall, the members of the abstract group had a fun time filming, editing, and combining their videos. It was interesting to see each individual's video and how they would all come together in the end, considering how different each video was. The group relied on transitions and small similarities between each video to help it flow, and they believe it turned out well.