Production 4: Card Decks, Video Works and Cellphilms
- May 30, 2020
- 2 min read
The Cards I Used
I attached my Slide Ideation Deck that my group came up with here. I also shuffled some of Kurt’s Ideation Deck. When I picked out the cards, I got ASMR as my genre, inanimate objects as the character (which I decided to scrap and use animals, such as the squirrel instead), my theme would revolve around the life of a squirrel and I would include sounds coming from the squirrel, and lastly, I pulled out the Zoom-In, Pan out, Bird’s eye angle, and dissolve and fade technique cards.
What Inspired Me to Film This
I decided to make the video about a life of a squirrel because my father in-law had been particularly worried for the squirrels in our neighbourhood. He noticed for the past few weeks a decline in the appearance of the squirrels. Normally, the number of squirrels we witnessed each day was about 2-5, but now we see 0-2 squirrels per week. This video is in dedication to those lost squirrels.
You can watch the film here:
Meta-Reflection
As I was creating the video, I found the process of my film production and editing as messy, just as Doerr-Stevens (2017) documents in her article. For example, although I pulled out the ASMR card, I decided to mix two genres, and blend it with a biography/memoir of the squirrels. In fact, I only had 18 seconds of ASMR and that occurs in the flashbacks of remembering the squirrels. I also found that although my cellphone was not used seriously in the sense that my video does not highlight a need of my community or shed light on issues within my community, I was able to use my iPhone to bring humour to the Covid-19 situation we are all living in. For example, in my video, the back story is of Covid-19 wiping out a huge population of squirrels in my area. Though the Ideation Card Decks give some direction for the video production, there is a lot of freedom in how those cards are being used and implemented.
References
Macentee, K., Burkholder, C. & J. Schwab-Cartas (2016). What’s a Cellphilm? Integrating Mobile Phone Technology into Participatory Visual Research and Activism (Introductory Chapter).
Doerr-Stevens, (2017). Embracing the Messiness of Research: Documentary Video Composing as Embodied, Critical Media Literacy, English Journal, 106.3 (2017): 56–62.
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