the video

One of my two final projects for this class is this video.  The experience of making this thing has been kind of intense, in a lot of ways.  First and foremost, I've had to teach myself Adobe Premier Pro and Encore.  I feel like I have a beginners grasp of that software now, and I'm excited about the possibilities that have opened up.  I'm fascinated in exploring the relationship of text, sound, still image and moving image - I'm interested in their relationships, the effect they have upon each other.
I began this project with little expectation of where I wanted to end up - I strongly believe in starting a new work from this place.  After Craig Baldwin's lecture/presentation, I knew I wanted to do something with found video footage.  So I just got online and started looking.
I came across some old 8mm home movie footage on archive.org.  I love the aesthetic of 8mm film, particularly the places where there are filmic "mistakes" - sun flares, the subject accidentally in silhouette because of backlighting, blurred images, etc.  So I just started to collect these things.  I searched for 8mm home movies from the '60's sand '70's - I gave myself that limitation.
I also checked out a flip, thinking I would also capture footage with that, perhaps to mix in.  Interestingly, almost all of the footage I used was found and appropriated.  I did include one bit for which I used the filp - I videoed the screen while a 8mm film was playing.  You could see my reflection in the shot, so I kept it.  That ended up being a pretty important part of this work -and it still falls under the umbrella of remix, I'd say.
So after I had amassed a decent amount of footage, I just started playing around in Premier.  I found that I was attracted to the image emerging from blackness, so I went with that idea.  Short clips fade in, the quickly fade away.  I thought it almost gave the video the effect of being an almost-memory, a moment of recollection that was quickly gone.
I began writing as I was editing the footage.  I was intentionally trying to write little images, little moments that somehow acted similarly to the video.  Each instance of text does not really relate to the others.  The text, like the video, would emerge from darkness, then fall back again.
I'm interested in the way a person "reads" something that is text, image, or both text and image.  In poetry, we often allow for disjunction because it is in the relation of text and/or image that the really interesting stuff happens.  Life is better represented if A doesn't equal B, but rather A equals B and/or C and/or D, etc.  That is reality.
As I was putting this together, I started to get a sense of something a little ominous.  There was so much unsaid in this piece that it started to feel a little creepy.  I kept this in mind as I started to develop the sound design.  The first couple of minutes of the film are accompanied by a low drone, a sound I found online.  I added other sounds that are a little scary, and all of the sudden I have a scary piece.  That wasn't my intention, but I went with it.
It's particularly interesting that this footage, taken from several different places, filmed over the course of a couple of decades, is not scary at all.  In fact, it is mainly happy family moments - holidays, vacations, stuff like that.  But so much of creating an art work is context.  It is all about context.
And the reader of the piece is providing much of that context herself (I'd say the music is the only contextualizing element in the piece, and admittedly it is huge).
And I included the image of the film with my reflection because I wondered how the reader would experience it.  Does it make the piece meta?  Is that man's face the creepy secret that isn't being revealed in the film?
Anyway, that was more or less the creative process.  I'll write some more on the piece later.