Circus, Circus

For this video, I started with the audio, compiling songs in garageband and creating my own simple single noted track intro using the keyboard piano to make it more personal. I wanted to be inspired by the song, creating a mood that was then translated into images that complimented the experience. This is my own interpretation but I wanted the audience to get the same emotional response from the combination of the song and pictures and create an atmosphere rather than a narrative. After finding the loops in Garageband that I wanted to use, I got a clear image in my mind of what I wanted the music to represent.

The mood it inspired brought me to a circus/acrobat theme and gave it a whimsical and magical quality. I wanted a more vintage look to the video as the music seemed a little nostalgic to me. I found footage of circus acts from the early 1900's and paired them with early photographs and advertisements from that time. To add to the atmosphere, I choose to put in some images of abstract light, twinkle lights, and blurred image of lights to make it almost dreamlike.

Deviant Behavior

I experimented with the Ken Burns Effect to see how still frame could have motion and add depth to the subject. I wanted to take images and create a video with a message that my not normally be conveyed through the images themselves. 

I collected images of women in the 1950's American society from commercial ads to pin up posters and separated them into two different chapters. It was kind of an obvious message but I had a lot of fun with it. I picked two popular songs from that era that would connect a feeling or emotion to the images; one song being more homely and sweet while the other more risky and fast paced. The introductory video was found footage from an old car commercial that emphasized the assumed role of a housewife. I then used audio from an informational video that was called "changing 'devient' behavior" to helped differentiate 'good girl' behavior vesus 'bad' where the words and tone change the way we look at each image. The audio establishes an overall theme to my video, comparing the housewives and the pin up girl images to create almost an ironic narrative with a male gaze. I used the Ken Burns Effect to focus on certain aspects of the image to show what the audience was expected to see as important in defining these women.

Visions of Berlin

Visions of Berlin

A video composition about the conflicts surrounding the Berlin Wall told through found footage including: Beethoven's Tempest Sonata (Piano Sonata No. 17) played by Wilhelm Kempff, scenes from Wings of Desire, audio from Shakespeares The Tempest, and news footage from multiple sources of the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall.

"These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air; and, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with sleep." (The Tempest, Act IV, scene i, 148-158)

These lines from The Tempest were the inspiration for my video and hold so much more meaning than I could begin to put into words--but I will try!

This video was meant to capture an individuals experience through a dreamlike stream of consciousness of analyzing a physical object as well as creating our understanding of its significance. The Tempest is a tragicomedy in which the protagonist discovers how dreams and spirits can establish a new cerebral truth of existence, while Wings of Desire is about an angel discovering the world for what it is through substantial sensory pleasures. Through the editing of sound and image, I aimed to fabricate a reality where the intangible world of spirits and angels meets the constructed world of man in order to break down what we see versus what we feel or experience (more specifically surrounding the erection of the Berlin Wall). My connection between The Tempest, Wings of Desire, and the Berlin Wall is based on the idea that reality is perception and the physical existence of something or someone is only as important as the meaning we ascribe to the material item.

I hope you enjoy!