↠ Unit Reflection 8 ↞
Whenever I looked at the syllabus before this unit began, I became a tad nervous whenever I saw that we were doing an assignment called "Video Analysis." I was anxious about this project because I definitely do not consider myself an actress nor do I like being on camera. To my surprise, the project ended up being quite simple and a lot of fun, too.
For this project, my group members and I chose the short story titled, The Story of an Hour, by Kate Chopin. The first step of the story process included us making a 20 shot story board, which is a planned out drawing of all 20 scenes. Creating the story board was actually really easy because the story we had chosen was not very dialogue heavy, therefore, all we had to do was focus on big actions. Also, it was a lot of fun creating the scenes on paper because we made the short film exactly how we saw it through our own eyes. Overall, this step was very simple and made the filming portion of the project fly by.
The next step of the project was using the story board to film the scenes. Since none of my group members, including myself, did not own an actual video camera, we chose to use an iPhone. We figured using an iPhone would be the easiest tool to use because we all knew how the phone worked and we figured it would be easy to upload the videos to my Mac Book. With that being said, we also chose to use the online tool iMovie because we had easy access to it and we were all pretty familiar with how to use it. Since we planned all of the scenes ahead of time using the story board, the actual filming of the 20 shot project took less than an hour. We were all on the same page and it was easy to collaborate and get the exact shot that we wanted to use in our final film. Whenever we were done filming, all we had to do was plug my phone into my laptop and upload all of the videos to my desktop. From there, I simply had to click and drag the videos into iMovie and add transitions between each of the clips as well as introduction and ending slides. If I were to recommend an online video tool, I would most definitely recommend iMovie. It was so easy to use and honestly, the whole video editing process took me about a half an hour.
In regards to the way we chose to film the story, we tried to use a variety of angles. For certain scenes such as when the main character, Mrs. Mallard, is in her room sitting on her chair and is paranoid because she believes something is coming for her. We chose to rotate the camera around her while she panicked and looked in every direction because we wanted to emphasize the fact that she was driving herself insane and making herself ill over the “death,” of her husband. Also, we chose to have the camera closer to her face to show the fear within her expressions. In another scene where Mrs. Mallard’s sister is knocking on her door and looking through the keyhole, we chose to zoom out from the keyhole to her sister knocking on the door. Since the door was ultimately the only thing standing between Mrs. Mallard and her sanity, we chose to focus on the door and portray that meaning. Being able to control how each scene was filmed was a really cool feeling because it felt as though we created the story ourselves. It was a lot of fun being able to put what we were thinking while reading the short story onto paper.
For this project, my group members and I chose the short story titled, The Story of an Hour, by Kate Chopin. The first step of the story process included us making a 20 shot story board, which is a planned out drawing of all 20 scenes. Creating the story board was actually really easy because the story we had chosen was not very dialogue heavy, therefore, all we had to do was focus on big actions. Also, it was a lot of fun creating the scenes on paper because we made the short film exactly how we saw it through our own eyes. Overall, this step was very simple and made the filming portion of the project fly by.
The next step of the project was using the story board to film the scenes. Since none of my group members, including myself, did not own an actual video camera, we chose to use an iPhone. We figured using an iPhone would be the easiest tool to use because we all knew how the phone worked and we figured it would be easy to upload the videos to my Mac Book. With that being said, we also chose to use the online tool iMovie because we had easy access to it and we were all pretty familiar with how to use it. Since we planned all of the scenes ahead of time using the story board, the actual filming of the 20 shot project took less than an hour. We were all on the same page and it was easy to collaborate and get the exact shot that we wanted to use in our final film. Whenever we were done filming, all we had to do was plug my phone into my laptop and upload all of the videos to my desktop. From there, I simply had to click and drag the videos into iMovie and add transitions between each of the clips as well as introduction and ending slides. If I were to recommend an online video tool, I would most definitely recommend iMovie. It was so easy to use and honestly, the whole video editing process took me about a half an hour.
In regards to the way we chose to film the story, we tried to use a variety of angles. For certain scenes such as when the main character, Mrs. Mallard, is in her room sitting on her chair and is paranoid because she believes something is coming for her. We chose to rotate the camera around her while she panicked and looked in every direction because we wanted to emphasize the fact that she was driving herself insane and making herself ill over the “death,” of her husband. Also, we chose to have the camera closer to her face to show the fear within her expressions. In another scene where Mrs. Mallard’s sister is knocking on her door and looking through the keyhole, we chose to zoom out from the keyhole to her sister knocking on the door. Since the door was ultimately the only thing standing between Mrs. Mallard and her sanity, we chose to focus on the door and portray that meaning. Being able to control how each scene was filmed was a really cool feeling because it felt as though we created the story ourselves. It was a lot of fun being able to put what we were thinking while reading the short story onto paper.
Overall, I ended up really enjoying this unit. At first I was hesitant because I felt uncomfortable being on camera and I did not really know much about film, but whenever it came down to actually filming the project, it was a lot of fun. I find immense value in completing a project such as this one because if a student is able to take what they have read and transform it into a different form of media, such as video, that shows that they truly understood the deeper meaning of the work. In order to transform it, you have to have a strong understanding of the reading as a whole as well as a strong sense of creativity. In the future, I would love to implement a project such as this one!
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