Video Assignment

The footage that I shot for this week's assignment consists of me travelling from one commuter parking lot to the next, and riding along the Campus Connector shuttles.


I wanted to capture the experience of what it was like to be a commuter and go through their daily routine. I filmed the parking lots and the surrounding areas of the West Edge and Mast Road lots, and filmed at Lot-A. My "journey" began at West Edge, where I spent roughly ten minutes acclimating myself to the controls and handling of the camera. Although it was incredibly easy to actually record footage I found it difficult to frame the shots the way I wanted. Zooming in and out proved to be a challenge for me, and walking with the camera produced shaky, uneven footage. The best material from West Edge came when I found myself riding the shuttle bus solo; I was able to pan around the bus and not only visually capture the emptiness but listening to the sound after I had shot it, I realized that the lack of human voices and ambient noise really produced a nice effect. That sense of solidarity and calm proved to be a them for this footage, as I found myself filming parking lots teeming with cars and very few people.

From West Edge I made my way over to Mast Road and once again filmed the parking lot and surrounding area. I even managed to capture footage of the graveyard that sits just yards away from parked cars. I then made the journey on foot over to Lot-A and once again went about filming the lot and the surrounding area. My favorite shot of the whole video came during my visit to Lot-A; I went through the pedestrian tunnel (again, I was alone), and the lighting, sound, and atmosphere really provided me with a nice sequence that I though played out quite nicely.

Working with iMovie proved to be both educational and immensely frustrating. Loading the video was simple and I felt that this would be relatively easy and fun. But after spending hours sifting through and cutting footage of shaky camerawork, I felt somewhat nauseous and mentally exhausted. The time it took for me to whittle the hour and a half of footage into five minutes was well over four hours! Had I recorded footage that provided a clearer narrative structure, this probably would have been easier, though.

The visit from Fred Field worked well for me when he dissected some of his work and went through the process step-by-step. It was both inspiring and educational to know what lighting works well, what time of day to shoot at, how to make your subjects at ease. I wish he would have spent more time going over the pictures rather than simply showing them to us.