Prey: An Experimental Video

Prey

An Experimental Video 

 

 

 I know nothing about Adobe video/photo editing programs.  I have never once used Photoshop or Premiere before in my life.  Needless to say, this video production was not a smooth ride.

Being a nature lover, I had no doubt I would incorporate nature in my film.  Over the past few days, I took small journeys moving across campus eyeing-out anything that particularly caught my eye.  I did not have any particular message I wanted to convey while shooting the actual film.

When it came time to edit, I was beyond overwhelmed.  Thankfully, Callie was in the Wriston lab and passed on a great deal of fantastic advise to me.  While I clipped pieces of film together, I still was not sure which direction I wanted to go in as far as the content's message went.  It wasn't until I had pieced all the pieces of film together in the sixty seconds that I realized what my message was.

I tend to reflect personal experiences into my art is some way, shape, or form.  As soon as I watched my sixty second film, I immediately recognized the subliminal meaning of my content.  There was an underlying concept of vulnerability, disorientation, and lack of control or direction: calm and chaos.

The wind whipped around the trees like silly string.  Rain drowned the sidewalks.  Bees gathered nectar while the flower cluster the were clinging to thrashed spontaneously to and fro - like a bull with a pin in it's back.  Squirrels fought over food in order to fill their small tummies.  The child stumbled around alone, almost lost, in our crowded world.  But yet, regardless of the hard work and turmoil our world experiences, cars obliviously drive by.  People blindly walk through their regular routines.  Our attention transfixed on the latest technology and longing to avoid socialization and recognition to the world surrounding us.

Instantaneously, I began to hear the background music creep in as I watched my newly made film again and again.  I began to search for eerie sounding music that, I felt, fit the mood of my film.  It offers a new perspective to every day life, little things and phenomena we don't pay attention to or choose to ignore and pretend doesn't exist.

We are all prey, especially the child - alone, vulnerable, and innocent.  Like McLuhan said, "All media work us over completely."