Video as a Creative Outlet

Assignment #25: Revisit our video class and your notes about it. Come up with 2 ideas about how you would like to introduce video through lesson plans in an art class (age: your choice); alternatively: 1 or 2 paragraphs describing how you would like to continue to work with video creatively; alternatively: what you have been able to learn about video as a creative material.

Since I am particularly interested in a visual narrative, video is, in some way or another, the epitome of visual narrative. However, I'm interested in exploring with video in a similar way I explore photography sometimes. Instead of being over focused on having a specific story line, or having a specific subject, I want to use video to collect visual aesthetics, such as the floating plastic bag in the movie, American Beauty.

This brings about quite an interesting debate about photography and video to begin with, especially in the digital age (accessibility to instant review and "unlimited" storage) - documentary vs. art.

Just a glance at YouTube, anybody would be overwhelmed with the range of material on there - differences and similarities in topics, equipment, editing, style, sound, etc. There are music videos, video blogs (vlogging), short films, advertisements, how-to's, etc. Many of these videos are filmed in an approach that can be understood as documentary-like. "Here's what I want to show and that's what I show."

However, many people think of anything fancier than pressing the record button as too difficult or requiring a lot of skill. But, in reality, good videos (not to include blockbuster movies) don't necessarily require anything fancy. In video, you can focus on getting the right frames aesthetically or you can focus on the editing, which opens up a huge territory.

I'd like to revisit the "getting the right frames aesthetically" approach. Instead of all of the pre- and post- video editing and preparation  I want to focus on the actual filming itself, by filming whatever I think evokes feelings/emotions or is aesthetically pleasing - whether it's something with a lot of movement or motion, or something that actually stays still and the camera does the moving (from even just natural breathing or intentionally). I think that there's beauty in video in just that simplicity, and that's what I'd like to explore.