A self-portrait video is one's effort to express themselves visually; whether it be showing how a person got to be where they are today, or creating visuals on a value they strongly hold. In the most simplest of self-portrait videos, it pieces together different things that make-up a person's lifestyle.
I viewed 15 different self-portrait videos, and there were only a handful of videos that stood out and grabbed my attention.
THE REALLY GOOD:
One of my favorite videos was done by a student named Alicia Scott, titled, "About Me-Revisited." This student illustrated 'a day in the life'... literally.
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| Watch video on YouTube.com |
While watching each video, I jotted down a few initial thoughts:
"VERY COOL!!" ... "LITERAL & METAPHORICAL"
Not only was this video very "cool" and unique, it was also literal and metaphorical. It was literal in the fact that it showed her daily routine, ending up at her iMac computer using different programs (Adobe InDesign, Adobe After Effects); yet metaphorical because she used her actual illustrations- which show that drawing and animating are an important part of her life.
"VERY ARTISTIC"
What made the visuals even stronger was how the student used her [real] hands to interact with the animations. The video had good quality, good music and kept my attention.
"SHORT, SWEET & TO THE POINT"
This student clearly put a lot of time and effort into her video. Though I would enjoy more to this video, it's length is just one minute but easily got right down to the core of her lifestyle. To me, if you can get someone to know you in a minute without using any words, that's a job well done.
THE GOOD:
Another video that made my top favorites was made by James Barany. The video, titled, My Most Important Self-Portrait takes the audience into his this man's head to understand his weight struggle.
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| Watch video on YouTube.com |
My Initial Thoughts:
Alright so maybe titling this video, "the FAT guy", on my notes isn't the most politically-correct or nicest thing. My apologies! Anyways....
POSITIVES:
Throughout the video, plays a voice-over of the man's thoughts; which are also cleverly animated on the chalkboard behind him. In my opinion, the chalkboard animations brought the video together for me, it grabbed my attention and kept it. Not to mention, without these words moving around in the background, our eyes would have to feast on the image of a clearly depressed, morbidly-obese man- not very visually-stimulating!
The voice-over could have been removed from the video, and the video would still get its point across- BUT the voice-over adds to the overall mood of the video. The man's voice is very agitated, and depressed, which is fitting for theme of this black and white video.
NEGATIVES:
The video is seven minutes long, and after the first few minutes it started feeling redundant. There were 2 separate parts of the video where the chalkboard showed the fluctuations of the man's weight in numbers, as he stood up and turned around showing his body. When this was showed the second time, I thought I was watching the same thing. This could have been showed all at once and maybe cut down on the total length of the video.
Despite the negatives, I thought this video was inspiring. After watching, you start to really feel for this guy and his struggle (hence my regrets of calling him 'the fat guy').
....AND THE NOT-SO-GOOD:
One video, titled, "Fragments" by Emily Esperanza, really caught my attention, in a bad way. If I had to sum this video up in a single word it would be: Awkward.
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| Watch video on YouTube.com My Initial Thoughts:  The fact that there was no audio in this video (until the ending credits) was one of the biggest flaws. I was too distracted by the static-like noise to even know what was happening in the video, so I re-watched it... But I still didn't understand. The images/video clips playing in the background were of bad quality, and I'm not positive what exactly these images were. The message of this video wasn't clear to me at all. The only recurring theme I saw in the video was women. There was a woman, perhaps the same woman who made the video, standing and doing poses the whole time. (And you could hear her movements because there was no background audio... awkward). Maybe it's just me, but I could not gather an idea of a central topic or message with any of the images of women that were used. To make this video better, this person should have... -Used some sort of background music throughout entire video or voice-over -Had better quality visuals -Made use of text to help viewers get some sort of an idea of a theme
It's not easy to create these self-portrait videos because you can't be too obvious with your theme but you also can't get too metaphorical with it, where you are the only one who understands it. All-in-all, it was interesting to watch the 15 self-portrait videos, and see how different people express their lives in video-form.
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Katie incorporated the video links into her post allowing for the reader to quickly convey their attention from the text to the film. Katie organized the blog in a descending order, having the video she perceived as the best being first. This structure is essential, giving the reader a full understanding of the expectations for the quality of work. Providing links also give the reader supported evidence to the point Katie is making. Readers look for blogs to not only be informational but personal. With this in mind, it was great for Katie to add character to the blog, taking pictures that relating to her analysis. As far as the context goes, Katie used descriptive language for the reader to conceive on their own opinions from. The added images were also great; due to the fact it displayed her main points in the passages’. A reader can refresh their memory from just reading the handwritten words, rather than re-reading the whole passage. Overall the structure Katie provided for this blog was well-defined, making this post a good read!
ReplyDeleteAt first glace, I was very confused with what exactly I was looking at. After a moment to let my eyes and mind adjust to the way this was formatted, I got down to reading. I have to first mention that you did a great job showing your favorite and then your least. It shows that you liked some and others you found terrible. It was even better placing visuals on you post. It helps to remind me of the videos that I’ve already scene. I really appreciated seeing them, though at times they became somewhat of a distraction. The picture of your notes interested me. I thought that your little scribbles added a personal touch to the post, which otherwise might not have been there with words alone. Over all, the critiques of the videos seemed to be fair. Your opinion hold strong validations to what you’re stating and even if I were to disagree with you, I could see why you said what you did. I would have to say that you did a great job with creating this post. I would like to read some more of you video post another time to see what you think about the rest of the videos.
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