As it floweth!
- Read it after watching the video -
The Idea -
Transition - As simple as this word seems, it’s as much vast and difficult to capture it with few elements. Transition, if we start to define it, is the flow from one state to another. And that’s one reason to justify why we went ahead to represent flow through our video.
It’s started with not so silly idea of ‘water cycle’ from one of our members which turned into a big discussion on river, culture and topics like gender fluidity which many of us were completely unaware of. But we need to stay focus and limit our ideas, thanks to the short time and the sense of abstraction that we needed to achieve n it. After a while, we decided to share what we collected with our group mentors.
Because of this discussion, we realized that we had to break out from our preconceived notions and to do that we had to think about a broader term like flow or fluidity. The discussion was really groundbreaking for us, since now we could think of various types of flow and not just how a river behaves. Although we decided to go with the river story (integrating with gender fluidity) which are not so abstract, we could now think in terms of abstract ideas.
Now we had a basic plan which we could detail out. After few more zoom meetings, we divided our roles. I was mainly responsible for video editing/compiling (Adobe Premiere Pro), researching about river and few sequences but I have to mention, we all helped each other in some way or other.
The Process -
I had to shoot a sequence where I was required to throw things at the camera. The initial setup which I did was simple (below)
But I soon realized that when I throw thermocol balls, they just covers the whole lens after a point. So, I decided to go with some kind of glass before the lens. (Final setup below)
In the first few tries, my hand movements were gentle which were not fitting well with our narration. Since our main element in the narration was much more aggressive, I had to reshoot a few more time with more energetic and swift movements.
The Learning -
This was group assignment where we all were required to work together and pitch in our unique ideas from different places. The most difficult part of this project was not the lack of ideas but the integration of those ideas together. The way we composed so many varied ideas and sequences together, so that they all look harmonious together and tell a single story - is probably my greatest learning from this project.
I also learned to break out from my existing thoughts and boring ideas by taking a step back and broadening our theme. This is really a good method to come up with unique ideas.
This assignment was an excellent opportunity to apply what I learned about color and composition and evidently so, helped me understand their real application.
Cheers!









