Description
For this video, I interviewed my friend and dorm-mate Dixie Law about her thoughts on truth, vulnerability, and art. I started just by asking open ended questions about her thoughts on the topics at hand (like “What do you view as ‘truth’ and what is your ‘truth?'”). The video follows her stream of consciousness on the topic, and eventually reveals it’s thesis around the final minute of the clip.
Challenges
At first this video was way too long, and it was definitely a challenge to cut it down. However, I think shortening a video (or any project) to it’s essence makes a stronger piece, and at the end of the day it helps me as an artist to build that skill of “saying what I mean.” There is a certain point when you need to just stop touching a piece, and accept that nothing will ever be perfect… in fact the parts that seemed imperfect usually ended up giving the piece it’s unique character and flavor.
Reading Response
At a glance, “Visual Narrative Structure” is about how we express time through different mediums, and how those ways are effective or not. Expressing abstract thoughts, like in my video piece, can be a challenge. Yet so intuitive at times. One may not immediately recognize the components of this video piece as one would with a sequence of physical events (ie. a ball falling down a flight of stairs). However, this video actually does include an Establisher, Initial, Prolongation, Peak, and Release. They are simply less obvious than physical action. How I would choose to equate these components to my piece would be as follows:
Initial – Title text in beginning
Establisher – First shot of dixie speaking
Prolongation – Dixie continuing to express her thoughts on truth
Peak – The “thesis” of the video essay is finally expressed, as dixie reveals she feels we are truly alone and framing becomes smaller, as well as her scream and cut to black
Release – Video montage at the very end of piece speaks to dixie’s interactions with her friends, bonding this idea to my desire to create art for the sake of creating art. My hope is that the viewer can be a little closer to my subjective truth and understanding of the world.
