My digital essay is done, what a relief. I ended up having more fun than I would have expected while making it, and it came out better than I thought it would as well. My original intent was to go out and film people, hopefully without them noticing, but I then realized that would probably be way too much trouble, relied too much on being in the right place at the right time, and in worst case scenario, led to some “altercations”. And besides, it’s been raining the past 3 days anyway. Instead, I went mad with YouTube, finding a bunch of different examples of what I wanted to film initially, but already recorded for me! This is not as easy as typing in “sad woman crying” or “people having fun together”, unfortunately. I had to dig far deeper, going through videos of TV shows, movie scenes, concerts, and other things just to hope to get lucky and find something relevant. It finally got put together, however, for some reason it doesn’t want to save as a movie on my PC and I’m still trying to get the technical bits worked out so I can have it up on here by the time it’s due…
I interpreted Frank O’Hara’s ‘Steps’ as a way of showing the human need to interact and be social with other people, displaying the adverse effects of a lack of, and the positive effects of fulfilling it. In the video, I show quick cuts of people in different types of interactions with humans, and shows how much weight we really put on the people in our lives. Whether it’s a family member we miss, a significant other, a group of friends, teammates, or anybody else, bottom line is: we need other people. We don’t just want them, we NEED them. I used an old version of Windows Movie Maker to edit this and couldn’t figure out if I could make the audio levels different on the individual clips, and there is one part I would have preferred you guys to hear. It is the second clip showing prisoners in solitary confinement, and saying how a long time in isolation can lead to depression, thoughts of suicide, physical pain, and violent behavior. Even when all the physical needs are met, humans need more. The clip says that we are social animals, and can’t survive without others, whether it be for physical, emotional, or mental support. I use the buildups and cool downs of the song (Explosions in the Sky – The Only Moment We Were Alone) to change the mood very rapidly, going from sad when the music is calm and slow to more lighthearted and happy when the song is faster and more hard hitting, and making the length of the cuts according to the pace of the song.
This video ties into my written essay well, as in the written essay I strongly try to back up the notion of human connection as a need rather than a desire, and go over the various examples in the poem and try to decipher them and tie them into Frank O’Hara’s concept of Personism.
Once again, I’m still trying to get this up somehow… wish me luck!
EDIT: Finally got it up! The link is below.
