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Commentary:
The idea for this video started
more or less by shooting with limitations.
Being stuck in the Neonatal ward of the hospital almost every minute that
I am not actually teaching made for a tough environment in which to find
compelling video. There is a strict photography
policy in the hospital that allows photos of only your child and their environment
as well as hallways and generic hospital environments. Couple this with specific instructions to stay
away from the sentimental (and babies were used as a specific example) and I
was feeling sort of hemmed in. Due to
the time limits I chose to approach the video as kind of commercial for the
neonatology wing of the children’s hospital.
Everything
in the hospital is numbers, people are hooked on to various monitors, there are
clocks, charts, percentages, and counts of everything that is happening and
could happen in the future. When a
doctor talks to you, most information comes in the form of numbers, measurements
and readings. There is a sense of
anxiety that comes with these numbers, they bring good news and bad news, move
slowly, or quickly. I wanted to capture
that sense of anxiety as well as the feeling that as the numbers come and go,
are given and taken away, life continues to fight on.
I
picked the washed out drawing effect for the video because I thought that it
helped reinforce the sterile feel that hospitals tend to give off, also it
helped to provide continuity between shots that had drastically different
lighting and colors (the elevator numbers as opposed to the clock). Also the white quality gives an impression of
hope to the viewer.
I tried
to edit the different shots so that they were somewhat the same length but not
chronologically symmetrical. For anxiety
to happen we cannot know the exact moment of an edit. I slowed down the speed of each segment by
half to make the viewer hang on to each number change, again an attempt to
build anticipation.
The
captions are an attempt to give context to the video without giving away
exactly what the point is until the very end.
I would have liked to have replaced them with a great voice over; unfortunately
I did not have access to a trained actor.
The placement of the words as they appear was a bit difficult to get
right with the software that I was using.
I wanted them to add to the film but not distract from the video. I tried to have them appear and then disappear
within the span of a single shot and be located in a place that keeps the eye
searching for the next set of words but does not draw attention away from the
video itself. I feel like I got this
mostly right except for the first clip and the image of the zeroed out digital
clock. I fiddled around with different
fonts and coloring but in the end I kept it simple because it seemed easier to
read and carried a serious tone with them.
At
first, I tried to incorporate music in to the video but I was having a challenge
finding something that struck a somber tone but then finished off on a high
note all within the span of fifty seconds.
Instead I chose to leave the film silent until the very end, where I faded
in a subtle heart beat. I wanted to show
the ability of the video to be compelling on its own as well as use the lack of
noise to increase a sense of anticipation.
I chose
not use the drawing effect on the very last shot because using it made the
image of the baby hard to make out and in doing so, the final “reveal” less impactful. The black at the end of the video gives the
viewer time to reflect on the video and I left the heartbeat sound in there to
help spur the viewer into further thought.
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