Performance Art Assignment

For this assignment I wanted to do something a little personal. So I filmed myself getting ready in the morning, because no one ever really sees the process that some people go through in order to look "presentable". You always see people as they chose to present themselves to you. Unless you live with that person for an extended amount time you won't ever get to see them in their "natural" state.

For me, getting ready in the morning is a hassle. I hate that because I'm too insecure with my appearance I have to get up super early every morning just to change the way my hair looks and put on makeup. Everyone should feel confident enough in themselves so they don't have to change their appearance. The makeup companies are just using our insecurities to sell us products that we shouldn't have to use. We shouldn't have to alter our appearance in order to feel good about ourselves.

I put the definition of insecure at the beginning because it's a word that gets used a lot, everyone is insecure about something. And the two other quotes are from two songs that are about being insecure, and trying to accept who you are.

The whole point of my video is just to show people the daily "ritual" I perform in order to feel somewhat confident or satisfied.

Abstracting Place

For this project I chose my bedroom, because bedrooms are a very personal space and I really wanted to be able to show my room from a different perspective. I didn't try to collect specific types of footage or sound, I just turned my camera on and went for it. Even though I took this footage during the day, my room isn't very bright, so I tried increasing the brightness in Final Cut Pro, but I added a little too much and the footage came out looking grey, and almost foggy, but when I played it back I really liked it. The grey-ish tone made the footage look old, and when I layered another video of my rat on top of it, I thought the grey was perfect. I didn't want to manipulate my footage a whole lot, I really like the effect of layering, so that's what I mainly focused on.

I think because my footage was so dark, my finished video gives off a really eery feeling, and the spinning motions almost make me feel dizzy. Over all I get a really uneasy feeling about this place, aka my room. When I was in the process of editing, the sound was the last thing I added. And I almost like my video being completely silent, but I think the slow clicking of the TV with the faster spinning of the video contrast each other, the sound isn't edited (except for being layered with another sound) and just repeats, and it makes me feel like something else should be happening, like there should be more going on.