#digitalpractices

It’s two videos of the same path but things happen differently within them.  This is something that I experimented with last week with two different ‘parallel perspectives’ just to show how it would work and how two videos sync together at certain times as well as both play at the same time and you can choose to switch between both.

For this video my theme is in play, the character is present and people can hopefully now understand what I’m trying to achieve.  

The day walk concentrates on interacting with the surroundings and objects, in this instance the bench.  The other introduces my character the rabbit, ‘the Pooka’ which is a continuous being that has started to appear in all my other works being my signature.  The characters appearance occurs in the ‘Night Walk’ where I've edited it to look more eerie and darker, adding ‘noise’ and colour distortion.

Though there are visible stutters and an ever so slight blip in the sync, for a film that I had to produce within a time limit I feel it went quite well and I’ve learnt a lot more.  I’ve started using Adobe Premiere Pro to create atmosphere and make my videos dark which was one of the issues I encountered when creating my videos.  I don’t need to go out at night now.  

A lot of editing and constructing to create something that looks simple.  

It’s starting to get complicated on the datebase...

All of my video clips that I merged together;

Title Screen

I wanted to play around with a title screen to make the video more fluid rather than it just starting straight away, I also wanted to give the viewer a quick insight to the purpose of this interactive video and what they needed to do.

Night Walk Clips;

(via Night Walk)

The interactive game on Interlude Treehouse

In this piece I wanted the viewer to experience an interactive narrative.  A set of choices to expand exploration of a ready made Video.The sounds and choices work really well and gives good immersion.The choices need to be made before the time runs out or the decision will be made for you. The equipment and environment is the biggest let down.  It's too dark and the torch and low quality night vision ruin the visuals.  The interference with passers by disturb the feel of aloneness and though characters will appear in my next piece their absence of human familiarity will enhance vulnerability.

3rd Crit

The crit didn’t go brilliant, as I expect.   The video was so dark, so people just start at total blurry, palpitated darkness for most of it.  However, all the choices were displayed smoothly and though you lost a lot of the effect with bad visual quality everyone liked the idea of the ‘horizon line’ the sight of escape, the exit to this unsettling night walk.  Something I’ll look into in my next videos possibly.

 I think the music went great with the piece, it was subtle and added an extra dimension.  I feel however, the transition from each clip was quite stuttery but because this was my first attempt and first look at the equipment and video creator it’s something that can easily be improved.

The benefit of this video is that you don’t need a massive room to view/play it, a smaller room in darkest can help immersion and possible give a feeling of claustrophobia.    

The main focus now is getting the time of day right so it’s not too dark to lose quality but it’s not too light to lose atmosphere.  

Janet Cardiffs (and George Miller) work inspired my ideas for my Digital Practices project.

Firstly I was intriqued by her installations; Storm Room and Storm House as I wanted to carry on with installation with visual and auditory.  However I started looking at her other works such as her video walks.

Once I started sitting and watching her video walks I was able to link it with my interest in ‘horror’ and the ‘supernatural’ and with her influence it helped me more away from cliche horror in the sense of images and more into placing a viewer into that environment with video and sound. 

I love her work.  It’s like memories captured in a device and projected into reality.  A split in dimensions, where two worlds are almost the same just the beings within are no longer there or replaced with others.  You also get this feeling of ghosts within the screen.  Such as the video ‘Alter Bahnhof’; there is a woman in a red dress on the balcony in the video but when the viewer moves the camera phone to the balcony the woman isn't there in reality.  The same happens again later in the film where there is an elderly lady in the elevator but again in reality she ‘doesn't exit’.  It’s quite haunting, the use of a small device within a large space really changes the area around you, it makes it feel less vast, the use of headphones to enclose your hearing solely to the video helps with this.  Her narrative is almost emotionless but enough to keep the nostalgic atmosphere.  

Last week we were given tutorials on how to progress our work. As I have been incredibly stuck, it was suggested that I look into the idea of looking into windows - like in Rear Window. 

What is it about the act of looking into a window?

The invasion of privacy

The scenarios/happenings

Glimpses of these

The psychology / thought processes that occur because of these broken, fragmented images

Curiosity

Trying to understand / see the whole picture

Not knowing if you are being watched too

Connections made between the images seen and what that might mean for the onlooker.