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Necessities
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I’ve had a Flickr account since 2007. I am not sure how I found it, but there is a group called “What’s in Your Bag.” People take out all of the contents of their bags, take a picture, and post the photos to the Flickr group. Some display their contents in an organized fashion, and some simply dump out the contents. I’m not sure why people are compelled to do this, but there are over 27,000 members in this group and over 15,000 photos. I am one of the members, and I have posted a picture. I removed the initial photo with all my bag’s contents from my Flickr account, but I did create a similar post on my blog (“What’s in My Bag“). A friend of mine read the post and said it was like reading US Weekly magazine.
The idea for my Concept in 60 project came from this Flickr group. Everyone carries around bags teeming with items that are considered necessities. Some of the items are absolutely necessary and some are not. The items carried, however, are frivolous and not actually necessary for living.
The First Idea
Initially, when I shot the video, I gathered a bunch of items and pretended to take them out of my purse. I set up my video camera on my tripod and didn’t move it. Since I was not actually taking the items out, I had to make my purse look full. I did this by putting a roll of paper towels in it. When I uploaded the raw videos to iMovie and started editing, I realized I should have been putting the items into the purse, so I reversed each clip. I had a lot of items and only a 60 second timeline. Each clip needed to happen at a rapid pace, so each clip’s speed was increased. This is how the idea of the silent movie developed.
I paid a lot of attention to the details with creating the video in order to make it look like a silent movie.
- Audio
- “Maple Leaf Rag” is the song being played on piano.
- A film projector sound effect is used.
- Brief clip of me sighing is at the very end.
- Slides
- I looked at screen captures of silent movies to create the credits and captions slides in Photoshop.
- I purposefully blurred the text in these slides because the film was not always in focus.
- To add the slight jitter, I created two or three different images of the same slide. The decorative frame and text is shifted in a different direction in each one.
- Filter
- I used the “Silent Movie” filter in iMovie to add noise to the video. This also adjusts the hue and saturation of the colors.
I liked the video when it was done, but I wasn’t completely happy. It just looked like I carried a lot of stuff in my purse. (Watch the video.)
The Update
The second version of the Concept in 60 uses the same theme and idea, but the video is entirely different. There are 14 different camera shots. Some of the shots are of the same activity, but at a different angle. I did this in order to create visual interest. I didn’t want it to look like a home movie. I used two tripods for my video camera. The regular height tripod was used for most of the shots, and the handheld tripod was set up on the ground. For the sake of continuity, I paid attention to blocking and to my motions. I didn’t want my position to shift between the different shots.
iMovie only lets the user apply one filter per clip. In order to use two, I exported the first video which used the silent movie filter, uploaded the new movie to iMovie again, and then applied the black and white filter.
Thoughts
This video was a lot of fun to shoot, and I’m extremely happy with the final cut. Since I used a storyline, I was able to capture the theme of necessities in a better way. The video shows how distractions, such as being late, can make us forget what we really need.
I liked the challenge that this project presented. Capturing a concept in 60 seconds is not an easy thing to do. I can see how I could have made this project longer, and potentially, uninteresting. With the idea of “get to the point” in mind, I know that I will definitely use this concept when creating videos in the future.
This video is dedicated to my friend Catherine. She is guaranteed to be late, and she has locked herself out of her car and out of her house multiple times in the past year.