Final+Video+Project+Alexandre

For this final project, I used a video called "Two voicemails on a Sunday" (see video below) as inspiration to for my own video piece. "Two voicemails on a Sunday" focuses on a college girl partying at what seems to be a rave party, and with the voicemail her parents left her on her phone as a soundtrack to the video. This is an autobiographical video, as the author is the girl represented in the video, and the messages are from her parents. The video plays with the empathetic sound: it makes uses of a sound effects that completely contrasts with the film. The video uses this frame to convey a disconnect between the girl's reality and her parent's deception. The expectations the parents have of their daughter are expressed through their voicemail, and it contrasts with the girl's actions recorded in the video. There is a split between the reality and the expectations.

http://www.videoart.net/home/Artists/VideoPage.cfm?Artist_ID=6951&ArtWork_ID=5666&Player_ID=10

For my video, I decided to use this contrast and split between reality and expectation as a frame. The video I created revolves around the subject of a long distance relation between two friends. Instead of using sound as the disconnect, I however used two different videos that I put together. One is a video that represents the memories of the days these two friends spent together. A girl is being filmed playing around in grass or in a park while her friend records her. On the other hand, the other video represents the current reality of long distance, through technology. I emphasized the split and contrast between current reality as the laptop of the screen versus the memory in different ways. I alternate between the two videos, sometimes overlaying them. The memory is cut in different pieces. I used special effects to give to the video a memory "feel." I also used repetition to further emphasizes it: Just like the human memory, the video focuses on specific moments rather than the whole event. Just like a human memory it does not record everything, and rather focuses on specific points of the video. There is thus a disconnect created between the memory of the moment lived together, and the current reality. I used pixelating effects at many points to represent the inability of technology in bringing these two friends together. Memory seems more effective in doing so. I did not give technology (as represented with the recording of the Skype conversation) much voice. At the same time, the memory and the current situation are tied together, despite the clear contrast, through the overlaying effects, as well as the alternating videos.

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