“Self-Portrayal”

Assignment #1 Video Finger Painting

            For this initial video assignment, I began by filming basically everything I could possibly think of. In the end, I had over four hours of video footage to search through and cut down for the three-minute time limit. Once I uploaded all of the footage to Adobe Premier Pro and watching pieces of it, a story and concept just arose from the clips. The short opens with the stairwell, empty, as the music very slowly begins to build. As the song “Send Me A Vision” by Boy Harsher plays, the main character gradually comes into view, walking down the staircase. This scene and the ending scene with the main character (played by Kenneth Holm) are the only scenes in the film in black and white and the only scenes that are representative of “reality” as the main character experiences it – drab and void of life. A crossfade to a scene in color as someone drives down the highway at night, practically blinded by the oncoming headlights. This transition and use of color is representative of the audiences first glimpse into the inner world of the main character. The film then cuts back and forth from “reality” and the thoughts of the main character. The driving represents the internal wanderlust of the main character, but also the anxiety. Occasional, drawn out glitch effect cuts are representative of the blurring of the lines between reality and what is imagined for the main character.

A jump cut is made to a man dancing in a party hat and glitter, manically, with gelled red and blue lighting. The red incites anger, aggression, passion, intensity over the lower and more subtle blue lighting that shows the more nuanced side of the man dancing. The dancing here has been slowed down to 75% speed to make the movements even more uncomfortable. This is a personification of one of the emotions/characters which exist inside the mind of the main character. Due to the lighting and filters, it becomes difficult to tell what is the true emotion of the main dancing; does he dancing out of joy or being forced to perform?

A crossfade transition introduces a unique angle of individuals walking down a flight of stairs and quickly another character/emotions from the main character’s mind dissolves in over the image of the stairs. The viewer is shown the main character’s sexual desire and self-admiration through the figure of a female (played by myself) sensually regarding themselves while laying on the floor. The feminine figure, played by a genderqueer individual, shows the inner turmoil and feelings of shame that so often accompany one’s own self-expression of sexuality as she is being metaphorically stepped on by the feet on the stairs she is superimposed upon. The lyrics in this scene also reflect this through the phrase “do you fear who I am?”

Jump cut and again the feminine figure is shown again, this time mirroring the opening scene with the main character as she walks down a flight of stairs with very little color in the image itself, though it is not in black and white. The lyrics play “send me an angel, so I don’t have to fight” as the now less sexualized and more androgynous personality from the main character’s mind approaches the camera, and inherently the viewer. This figure is the “angel” referenced in the song approaching the film’s viewer, then crouching down on the floor, and finally reaching for the viewer as they are “sent a vision”. As the lyrics die out, the film cuts to my favorite shot of the man acting out a seizure, slowed down by 50%, on the bed. The look was accomplished using red and blue gels yet again, but this time the image is highly filtered in post to create a completely different yet congruent feeling to the dance scene from earlier. This shows the crescendo of inner torment and anguish for the main character who ends the scene by saying “there’s no better disinfectant for life than whiskey.” He must comfort and cleanse himself of all of these images in his mind through the use of alcohol.

As far as challenges in making this film, I began by filming using a Sony Handycam from the early 2000s and ended up corrupting my disks with most of my footage and lost at least an hour of footage I had intended to use, but in the end, it turned out better without it or I was able to recreate it using the iPhone 4 that I am using as my primary filming device. For gel lighting, I am using LED panels with colored tissue paper over them which is quite a change from using the nice gels for photography speed lights I am used to. The car scene was difficult in that you should always have a designated driver if you are trying to film and not be an idiot like me and try to film and drive at the same time on a high-speed highway. I would not recommend this. I consistently ran into issues with my gels not being dark enough or with my hands shaking too much. I cut out hours of footage just because of it being too shaky, so I ended up purchasing a rig for my phone to hold it steady. I messed a lot with white balance and iso. My favorite part of the process was post and editing work. That is where everything seemed to come together into a coherent image and idea for me. Overall, this project turned out much better than I had expected for just trying the camera out.