[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/B4_UauJaFdU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
My video, titled Unnatural Enemy, is a companion piece to my essay about Anne Waldman’s poem “Manatee/Humanity”. The video title itself is based off of a line from the poem, in which Waldman defines the clear differences between “natural predators” and “unnatural man”. The distinction between the two struck me as important, and that’s what I tried to emphasize in my video.
It would probably be more correct to say that the idea for this video inspired my essay topic, rather than the other way around. Despite its many imperfections, I’m really proud of my digital essay and all the effort that went into creating it. Its purpose was to spread awareness about shark finning, and I felt that because I had such a clear idea of what I wanted to do from the very onset, I was able to convey that message clearly in my work.
This was also the first time I’d ever drawn 221 image frames in a single sitting, or even attempted to animate anything at all, so I feel like that’s probably something to be proud of too. I definitely have a whole lot more appreciation for hand-drawn animations now that I’ve experienced making one of my own.
