Making Something Out of Nothing

October is coming to an end.

Each day passes so quickly I feel I am unable to enjoy the time I have left at school. Not to say I've enjoyed the experience, at least in the last year, but I think it was a necessary struggle for me to go through to be able to better appreciate what's to come in my life.

Justification of effort, they call it; the more time you put into something, the more likely you are to be thankful for it in the end.


Now, what does that have to do with my project?
Well, it sucks. I have spent all weekend working on it, because as of Thursday it was not up to standards. And my presentation is tomorrow.

I felt so stupid, and guilty, and depressed. And still do.
I set myself up for failure. All the signs were there but I just ignored them.

And now I'm paying for it.
But, like with everything else in my life, I will persevere, and make it through.

I may not be a filmmaker, but that's the point. I wanted to challenge myself, and I have. I did this to myself. Because somewhere deep, deep down, I believed in myself.


From storytelling to appealing visuals and a majestic score, I think what intrigues me the most about filmmaking is everything.
Every component is in itself a story, and when all of those things combine it creates a masterpiece.

And to be able to say I did all of that, just me, that's what I want.

So, I'm gonna get it.

On the border of Liberation City and Terrifying Town

Anxiety is a bitch.

And then anxiety meets depression, and they fall hard and fast. They move in together almost immediately. Anxiety and depression are the "Kim and Kanye" of mental illnesses.

I say this because I suffer from both.

Being a first-gen college student in my last semester doesn't necessarily help.
So I set myself up for failure regarding my senior project.

See, I am a Communications major with a concentration in Strategic Communication. I have experience in coding, public relations, social media, writing...
However, the one thing I never really explored during my college career was filmmaking.

I am a total left-brain. I fell in love with the pen in first grade. I get chills when I hear a really good song. And I've been told I am a natural painter.

So combining the aspects of storytelling with appealing visual aesthetics and an incredible soundtrack sounded like a dream.

I always like a challenge, so I decided to try my hand at filmmaking for my senior project. About 3 weeks ago I was in Ocean City with my boyfriend and some of our friends for the notorious H2Oi car event. What started a few years ago as a weekend-long Audi and Volkswagen car show has spiraled into one of the country's largest, 4-day long modified car event at the tail-end of Ocean City's Summer season.

The locals hate us. The cops love to make money off us.

This was my second year attending, and when we arrived on Thursday, September 28 there were already twice as many cars as last year.
I had already had a mental breakdown that Monday wondering how I was going to have an entire 25 minute long video edited in a month for the first round of presentations (while now taking 17 credits and working 30 hours a week).
So when we arrived and I saw some of the filming equipment others had, I immediately felt about three feet small. Couple that with the fact that we were staying with quite a few people I hardly knew, and I definitely didn't pack warm enough clothes, my anxiety skyrocketed, and I proceeded to shut down for the remainder of the weekend.

I knew I wasn't getting enough footage, and by the time we left on Sunday I was in full-on panic mode. I resorted to avoiding it altogether and when I had to meet with my director this past Thursday I had convinced myself that I would fail anyway so I should just stop trying.

Obviously this wasn't the case but that's what that power couple in my brain told me.
So I'm kicking them to the curb, with the help of my director, my therapist, and the constant reminder that in precisely two months I will no longer be a student, for the first time in almost two decades.

It's both liberating and terrifying.

But that's where I'm at right now. On the border of Liberation City and Terrifying Town. It's quiet, and anxiety and depression are distant neighbors for now.

Setting the mood

Film's have features that help set the mood. Color, brightness, complexity, readability, and a host of other factors tell us how to feel when watching a film without the actor having to say a single word. In "The Way Films Feel: Aesthetic Features and Mood in Film", a study from Jussi Tarvainen,  Stina Westman, and Pirkko Oittinen, the three attempt to reveal how aesthetic features of film both relate to one another and contribute to a film's overall mood. 

"The set of low-level features described five concepts: brightness (bright—dark), colorfulness (colorful—colorless), loudness (loud—quiet), fastness (fast—slow), and smoothness (smooth—fitful). We so included the feature dialogue-based and music-based to study the significance of these aspects of film sound, and the feature rhythmic to investigate the little understood concept of film rhythm. The high-level features, in turn, described seven concepts: beauty (beautiful—ugly), complexity (complex—simple), familiarity (familiar—unfamiliar), interest (interesting—tiresome), pleasantness (pleasant—unpleasant), predictability (predictable—unpredictable), and understandability (understandable—unclear). Both sets therefore contained semantically opposite features...
Recent work in cognitive film studies and media psychology has shown low-level stylistic features of film to be instrumental in shaping viewer attention and cognition. Our study contributes to these findings by illustrating that low-level features also influence viewers’ aesthetic and affective impressions. We found low-level features to be related to the high-level aesthetic concepts of beauty, pleasantness, and interest, and to be better predictors of film mood than high-level features,"

Certain emotions can be attributed to various colors, sounds, locations, etc. I plan to manipulate these factors to evoke particular emotions during different parts of my film. These, coupled with the narrative music, will really help set the tone and mood.

Narrative music can be described simply as music that tells a story. Narrative music tells us how to feel without the actor having to say a single word. In a study by Johnny Wingstedt, Sture Brändström, and Jan Berg's study on narrative music in film they conclude that, "When image, dialogue, sound effects and music combine into multimodal texts, a 'chemical reaction' seems to take place. The resulting whole is, if maybe not greater, certainly different than the sum of the parts".

At any point of our lives the music we enjoy tells us who we are at that particular time. We enjoy different genres of music during various activities, moods, even times of day. I think that is really important to keep in mind when making this film. I also plan to have varying scenes move to the beat of the music, and vice versa. 

Getting excited.

Tarvainen, Jussi, et al. "The Way Films Feel: Aesthetic Features And Mood In Film." Psychology Of Aesthetics, Creativity & The Arts 9.3 (2015): 254-265. Academic       Search Complete. Web. 19 Feb. 2017.

Wingstedt, Johnny, Sture Brändström, and Jan Berg. "Narrative music, visuals and meaning in film." Visual Communication 9.2 (2010): 193-210.

Senioritis

I discussed senioritis a little in my last post, but considering it is the foundation of my senior project, I wanted to find a source that explicitly dealt with senioritis. Though I plan to make a video and most of my research will be based on filmmaking, and I have real life inspiration to draw from, my particular experience might not be the same as others'. Also, many times when senioritis is discussed, it revolves around high school seniors and the truth is that college seniors experience senioritis as well- often times at a worse degree.
Vicki Nelson, Founder of College Parent Central, wrote an article titled "Is Your College Senior Suffering from Senioritis? 13 Reasons Why It May Not Be What You Think". Says Nelson, "We hear less about senioritis during the last year of college, but it exists.  Often, it looks much like high school senioritis.  Your student has been in school now for sixteen or more years, and he is tired of being a student, loses focus and motivation, skips classes, does poorly on assignments, and generally appears unengaged."
This woman gets it. The reasons she lists for possible college senioritis range from debt, to job pressure and even the comfortable "bubble" of college. I had already drawn up a rough outline for my movie but after reading Vicki's reasons (and her explanations for them), I have realized there are several minor details I could add in to make it that much more real and relatable.

Speaking of those "minor details", no details are too minor in my opinion. I love finding "Easter eggs" in the TV shows and videos I watch (an Easter egg is an intentional inside joke, a hidden message, or a secret feature of an interactive work). I enjoy watching advertisements and watching the narrative unfold. I have always been a creative person in that sense. I don't watch things just to be entertained; I live for the story.

David Bordwell, author of Three Dimensions of Film Narrative, says, "Whatever we call it, the study of narrative is very important. Storytelling is a pervasive phenomenon. It seems that no culture or society is without its myths, folktales, and sacred legends. Narrative saturates everyday life too. Our conversations, our work, and our pastimes are steeped in stories. Go to the doctor and try to tell your symptoms without reciting a little tale about how they emerged. The same thing happens when you go to court or take your car to a mechanic or write a blog. Perhaps storytelling is part of human maturation, since it emerges quite early in human development... We share stories with each other, assuring others that we have experiences congruent with theirs. Sometimes we tell a joke... to create a bond..."

Bordwell is right. Though I'll be behind the camera and not in front of it, this is my story. The way I experienced something. And I'll be sharing it with people who may or may not have similar experiences. Perhaps, in turn, it will prompt others to provide their own experiences, tying us together, creating that bond Bordwell speaks of, and building a community (as discussed in previous posts). That in itself gives the film meaning, in my opinion.

Bordwell, David. "Three Dimensions of Film Narrative." Poetics of Cinema (2008): 85-134.

Nelson, Vicki. "Is Your College Senior Suffering from Senioritis? 13 Reasons Why It May Not Be What You Think." College Parent Central, Mar. 2013. Web. 18 Mar. 2017.

Switching gears

As I have said in previous posts, I am not a concrete person. I start with one idea and it snowballs into 5 or 10 or 30 more ideas- some that coincide with the original idea, others that manifest from that idea but don't relate at all.
I like to draw inspiration from real life. Getting an amazing internship for a music magazine my senior year of college seemed too good to be true. It wasn't. However, as I am in my senior year and also have bills to pay, I don't spend too much time on my internship and therefore, am not as involved in the industry as I would like to be. I shot for the stars as far as what I wanted to do for my Capstone project and, after doing some thorough research and planning, realized what I wanted to do just wasn't going to be an option in the timeframe I needed.

I have been in a serious funk. For weeks. About school, about work, about life- both in the present and the future.
I have skipped a majority of my classes over the past several weeks. I sleep in as late as 12pm and just lay around my house all day. I see the assignments piling up. I see the laundry hasn't been done and there are dishes scattered about the kitchen. But I just can't bring myself to want to do anything.
This is my reality.
This is my inspiration.

Though senioritis has yet to be proven as a real disease, it can currently be described as "a supposed affliction of students in their final year of high school or college, characterized by a decline in motivation or performance".
Oh yeah. That's real.

What does this have to do with my capstone, you ask?
As a Communications major, I have had limitless opportunities concerning various forms of communication (social media, tv, music, art, etc.). However, one aspect I really didn't get to explore was filmmaking.
Last summer I took a course where I helped shoot part of a documentary for my university (I got to work the soundboard. It was rad.) Since it was a summer course it was only 5 weeks long, but we really only filmed for 2.
Since then my thirst for film has been rampant. I've always loved Youtube videos, but now I've tried to focus on more "legit" filmmakers, such as Casey Neistat. Not only is Neistat a Youtube personality and filmmaker (with almost 7 million subscribers), he is also a vlogger, co-founder of the social media company Beme, and co-creator of the HBO series The Neistat Brothers, along with his brother Van.

That's a lot to accomplish.
I've watched upwards of 500 of his videos (there are currently 754 videos on his Youtube channel) and have found great inspiration through him. He does a "Question and Answer" segment in several vlogs and the intro is just incredible. 
Anyone can tell you "these are the steps to becoming whatever" but it's another thing to see it working in action.
Neistat started "daily vlogging" around this time in 2015. In November of 2016 he decided to end the vlogs, as he wasn't feeling challenged anymore as far as his filmmaking ability was concerned. However, this past week Neistat decided to bring the vlogs back. 
I enjoy watching his videos (along with 6.8 million other people) and think he will be a great source for my project: a Youtube video.
Not sure how to describe it quite yet. It will only be 5-10 minutes long, so it's not a documentary or anything like that. I guess I will just call it a "short movie" for now.

In the article "7 Storytelling Techniques You Can Learn from Filmmaker & YouTube Star Casey Neistat" by V Renée, she features two videos: one from editor Sven Pape, breaking down 7 techniques Neistat uses in his videos, and another by Evan Puschak, who delves into Casey's creative force and the meanings behind those techniques. I will use each of these videos as separate sources (rather than using the article as a source), but it's nice to have everything in a central location.

Eggo Müller's "Where Quality Matters: Discourses on the Art of Making a YouTube Video" sheds some light on what exactly people use the video-sharing site for. Müller writes, "As the website's self-promotion goes and as commentators repeatedly affirm, YouTube is first and foremost a cultural space of community building and shared experiences. Many critics therefore lament the poor aesthetic quality and moral shiftiness of many of the self-made clips on YouTube, often recorded on the spot with facilities like mobile phones, webcams or digital photo cameras and then uploaded without "wasting time" on postproduction. YouTube is- at least for "contributing users" as opposed to "lurking users"- all about sharing moments online with a potentially world-wide audience, but actually a limited number of viewers," (Müller).
My video has the potential to reach a large audience with varied demographics: mid-lifers who want to relive the "easy days"; current college seniors who can relate right then; college freshman, sophomores and juniors, who remember their senior year of high school and realize they have senior year to look forward to; high school seniors who can relate right then; others in high school who will see what they have to look forward to, etc.
Though I will spend months on this project, both editing and filming simultaneously and then editing again in post, I do agree with Müller that Youtube is about sharing moments and experiences with those who can relate. Even if they can't relate, those viewers then have the power to share the video with their friends, and so on and so on.

Sometimes where you need to be isn't where you are, but sometimes where you are takes you to where you need to be.

Müller, Eggo. "Where quality matters: discourses on the art of making a YouTube video." The YouTube Reader 12 (2009): 126-139.

Renée, V. "7 Storytelling Techniques You Can Learn from Filmmaker & YouTube Star Casey Neistat." No Film School, 27 Aug. 2016. Web. 19 Feb. 2017.

 

Two cameras are better than one

Video blogging, or vlogging, has become a popular Youtube trend in the last few years. Several vlog channels have emerged and some Youtubers have even created second channels strictly for the purpose of publishing vlogs. These vlogs possess a certain level of intimacy that other genres of videos may lack. Beauty tutorials are directed at those who may want to try out a different look. Video game play-throughs are dedicated to enthusiasts who may feeling like watching how a game unfolds before spending $60 on it. Those people have information about something and are there to share it with their audience. However, vlogs- even those stemming from main channels- may not have an audience at all.  Michael Wesch explains this in his article "Youtube and You: Experiences of Self-awareness in the Context Collapse of the Recording Webcam", saying, "Like a soliloquy shouted into the ether or a message in a bottle set adrift at sea, these vlogs have no specific addressee... They are videos of people sitting alone in front of their webcams and just talking to anybody and everybody who care to click on their video," (Wesch).

Vlogs are real and raw, and their creators are free to film whatever they'd like without having to stick to the label of their main channel, should they have one. Vloggers are welcome to talk about their problems, their dreams and accomplishments without judgement- because they don't know if anyone's even watching. But we are watching. And that makes us feel good, as though we're a part of a secret club.
You don't know it, but I'm rooting for you, we think to our computer screens, willing the person on the other side to feel our empathy.

Wesch goes on to say that vlogs foster a sense of community that was deemed long gone with the emergence of social media, which hasn't been around long enough to have such a negative impact, in my opinion. We start with Facebook, which allowed us to connect with distant relatives and old friends in a new, user-friendly way. People begin posting daily updates on their lives, which becomes tedious- so Twitter is formed, allowing us to post about whatever we want in short snippets. Instagram gave us the option to broadcast our lives through pictures and videos without having to say anything at all. And along came vlogs. They encapsulate various aspects of each social media platform. Each vlog tells a story in itself and yet is only a small portion of a larger scheme, inviting us back again and again.

But how do they do it? How do they intrigue us day after day?
In a word? Clickbait.
And what is clickbait you ask?

Think about the last time you were scrolling through Facebook. You see an article and the description reads, "Couple receives terrible service at restaurant. What they do next will shock you!". And then you spend ten minutes clicking off pop-up ads only to find out they left a very generous tip because they were good people. Not what you were expecting, right? Well, that's the purpose of clickbait. To get you to click on the article or video and watch or read through the entire thing in the hopes that there will be some turn of events, some payoff, to make the three minutes you just wasted "worth it".

Clickbait is the Internet's cliffhanger.


Wesch, Michael. "Youtube and You: Experiences of Self-awareness in the Context Collapse of the Recording Webcam." Explorations in Media Ecology 8.2 (2009): 19-34. Web.

Music to my ears- literally

I have never been, and will never be, a person that is concrete. Some people can decide to do something and stick with it until it's finished and I applaud those people. I get an idea in my head, and then another, and then another... I am never just pursuing one thing at a time. So I am considering two different ideas for my project. The first is a website to launch my record label. It would be a digital label. This would work as long as all the bands I plan to sign record their music digitally. Being a Communications major and possessing skills in HTML coding puts me at an advantage because I could build it entirely from scratch and really set myself apart from other digital labels. However, I am extremely detail-oriented and fear I might get too wrapped up in the minor aspects of it. Another potential challenge would be that in order to do this I would need to rely entirely on technology. If a file gets deleted or there's no Internet access I won't be able to do what I need to do.
The next idea I am contemplating is a paper which will chronicle my experience as an intern for Appalachian Jamwich over the next several months. Appalachian Jamwich is a magazine based out of Shepherdstown that features "visual artists and mid-level bands in the jam scene", according to their website, which you can find here. Working for Appalachian Jamwich will not only give me insight on what it's like to run a business, but considering I want to work with artists in this region, they can set me up with some really great contacts. Team members at the magazine regularly attend festivals and concerts and even host their own festival each June- The Mad Tea Party Jam, which can be seen below.

Working alongside Co-owners Daniel King, Elise Olmstead and Taco Olmstead and the rest of the team at Appalachian Jamwich and attending these events could really help me break into the music industry. One challenge of writing a paper would be the size of it. I would have to condense several months' worth of work to make sure it's readable. It also wouldn't entail the visual aspect that I crave.
Now that I sit here typing this, another idea would be to vlog my entire internship. I may end up pursuing multiple ideas if I find that I can manage my time well. I would hate to just "pick" something and produce mediocre results because I end up resenting my choice.