Nicole Bassil Initial Walkthrough

[0:00] Screen capture of video editing software. 

So I chose to do my e-poem on the same poem that I wrote about for my essay, which was “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath. I really like the poem in general, and I thought I could do a lot with it by really speaking through my e-poem. 

[0:11] The poem appears on-screen.

Um, and I used a lot of the elements I discussed in my paper in my e-poem as well, which tied both of my projects together nicely. So part of the reason this poem intrigued me was analyzing the purpose, um, and usage of the mirror itself and how they’re made to physically reproduce an image. However, mirrors truly reflect what it is we are seeing when we look into them. There’s often more perception involved than just pure sensation, and this concept reminded me a lot of psychology--which is what I study and it’s my major--so I took a psychological lens on the poem, and how reflections can be identical yet contradictory, which I will explore more as I walk through my e-poem.

[0:59] Back to the editing software.

So, a lot of the videos I used are mirror images or have symmetry in one way or another, like the beginning clip of ink expanding through water. I also created a reflection of the words here in the introduction, but I didn’t include this through the entire e-poem because I didn’t want to overdo the physical mirror image throughout the entire poem, and I thought this could take away from the words in the poem itself, um, and it would take away from some of the more stylistically subtle choices that I made. Um, I’m gonna get ahead of myself a little bit here. So, the task of choosing my music was probably the most difficult for me. Um, the poem is not happy, and it’s sad in a sense, but I didn’t want it to be a depressing tone, so this tone of music was hard to pinpoint to me, and I wanted something a little more neutral and very similar throughout--not too many rhythm changes throughout or anything like that. So I chose two instrumental songs--this piano at the beginning and another song a little bit later on that you’ll hear that’s actually from the show Lost, and, um, it’s a little bit more instrumental, a little bit more emotion in it, and it’s played, actually, during a part of the show where, um, they’re kind of reflecting--one of the character’s is reflecting, um, on the island--they’re on the island and they’re reflecting back about getting onto the plane that is about to crash on this island. So it’s a reflective moment of the, um, of the show and just reminded me a lot of the tone of this poem. I thought it would work really well in my e-poem. So, um, the poem’s speaker is a mirror itself, and as I mentioned before, there’s a contradiction in this poem. So it’s a line in the poem that reads “i am silver and exact.” Um, I chose a clip of a mirror being hammered, which would cause a very inexact image to play on this concept that what one sees is often different than what is real per se. 

[3:06] Proceeds to the next part of the video in the software.

So then I matched up the lion roaring with the word “swallow” in the next line right here to exhibit the cruelty or harshness, maybe, that can be perceived of oneself in a reflection, and at this one point, the hammer, the word and--uh, the hammer, the word swallow, and the lion’s mouth all line up in a split second, which took me a while to kind of do in Camtasia. Um, so then this next line is pretty simple in my opinion, so I just wanted to add, um, a misty background, and this is when the next music comes in. So, um, I just wanted to add a misty background to play off the word “unmisted” and leave the words--just leave the words just as they were, playing off the words “just as it is.” So, the next clip is one of my favorites.

[4:04] Closeup shot of an eye in the editing software.

The mirror claims, “I am not cruel,” and the image of the eye stares back at us, putting the audience in a position where we feel like we’re, perhaps, looking at ourselves, or at our own eye maybe, and then the next part comes up, “only truthful” and this, the eye begins to water, forming tears, and it insinuates that the cruelty and truth often go together, and that this is a contradiction, saying “I am not cruel, only truthful.” I then overlay two video clips of an empty room and a peaceful scene that fades in and out with the words “I meditate,” and I place the words “on the opposite wall” on the opposing wall, um, particularly on the corner of the room so that “opposite” is split right down the middle to keep this theme of reflection, mirror images, things just splitting, you know, kind of right down the middle.

[5:00] Video continues in editing software to a closeup clip of someone painting.

And then here with the speckles, I overlay, the speckles of the pain become the speckles of the little boy looking back at us, and I thought the overlaying of these clips turned out pretty well as I changed the opacity of them to make it difficult to distinguish between what is truly a part of him as the freckles and what seems like it is part of him but is not, like the speckles of paint. 

[5:30] Next clip shows playing cards.

So then I use playing cards a couple of times in my e-poem, and in this instance, I wanted face cards to be shown, particularly ones with hearts. Um, and I continue to use this opacity feature to overlay clips upon each other. So when, um, the line ends here with, “but it flickers,” I slow down both of the clips, um, and I make the words actually flicker themselves and kind of change like earlier there on top of each other, and they flicker back down as they move. Um, and I underlay, um, another clip of a flame that also flickers, and it’s within her, and as that--the clip of the woman fades out, this flame becomes prevalent. For the next line, which I wanted to focus on the darkness, as it says, um, and the words that--I separate “separate” and put the words “over and over” on top of each other to just kind of, put emphasis on the words and the darkness itself. And as that candle burns out, the first stanza comes to a close.  
[6:41] Clip of a drop of water in a pond.

So the next stanza here begins with a change in speakers, so now the mirror is a lake, and I picked a droplet of water that I slowed down to be the background for these words, and, as the words “a woman bends over me” fade in--so there’s a clip of a woman who barely, slowly begins to open her eyes, and I scaled the clip of the woman and placed her so that the water droplet is right over her eye, and as it drops, her eye opens. So, um, let’s see--I can show right here as it hits, her eyes open up with the ripple. And this line of the poem also implies that the reflection itself, um, does not provide her with what she really needs, and what she really is; that there’s more beyond her reflection or what she sees that she needs. So this woman then turns to liars, um, because she seemingly cannot find, um, what it is she’s looking for, and I have an image here of a lyrebird--here “liars” shows up. Um, this is a lyrebird.

[7:56] Picture of a lyrebird is shown.

It’s feathers are supposed to imitate or resemble that of a lyre instrument, which is also symmetrical. 

[8:01] Back to the editing software.

Um, and I also wanted to make, just to make the poem flow better, I tried to line up the music with the words or images at some point so the inkblots here line up with the word “liars” and the high note of the music. So right there as the note went high, that popped up. And then, these inkblots I have throughout are a pretty big theme in my e-poem and the poem in general I think. 

[8:33] Images of Rorschach inkblots are shown. 

So, these are Rorschach inkblots, but just in video form, um, and that’s just when it ties into the psychological lens of the poem that I wanted to take. So in this part of the poem, um, there’s the inkblots, there’s the mirror, and I just kind of interpret that as, mirrors are a way of showing us all the same image, but we perceive all of those images differently, and how we perceive them vs. how we see them can be deceitful in a way.

[9:08] Clip of a woman in a bathing suit walking into the ocean. 

So next I have a clip of a girl walking into the ocean, which matches the words pretty well, um, and then as the lake says, “she rewards me with tears” right here, I kind of line that up--right as I hit play--that the wave is going to crash right on the words to kind of make the tears and the waves one, which kind of makes the water, or, the water from the ocean, or the water from the lake that is reflective, also become the tears. They kind of become one. Um, and again, the mirror is somewhat contradictory, claiming earlier that it is not cruel, but it is now interpreting her tears as a reward. 

[9:48] Clip of a man fanning out a deck of cards.

So then this hand of cards fan out, again producing a symmetrical pattern. I also wanted to come back to the playing cards, um, to create a sense of balance within the poem. And next, that brings us back to the beach, and I associated a man throwing a boomerang here, um, with the coming and going, and this is followed by a girl looking out a window. We can only see the back of her head, which is dark because of her hair, um, but this is the background I chose for the words because her face replaces the darkness, and she is the darkest figure in the clip. So, for the next part, I use a different part of the same clip of this girl looking out a window, but I wanted to focus on the word “drowned.” Um, so I overlaid--or underlaid--a clip of the inkblot, but I wanted to pick a heavier one with more ink kind of pulling downwards, and I placed it inside of her figure, or I scaled it that way, so that it seemed like it was weighing her down and kind of drowning her.

[10:54] Clip of ink and paper.

So then the clip of the girl, here, is replaced by crinkled paper, and throughout this process, just to not be so literal in general, I would just use my stream of consciousness, so I would think “old woman, wrinkles, crinkles, crinkled paper,” and then that kind of became my background while this ink runs through it. Also, just into the fading in and out everything, I would try to have two clips overlaying each other at once, and then let one fade out as the other is incorporated into the line of the poem. So here, I have the ink and the girl, and then I have the girl fade out while the paper fades in, but the ink remains the same, and it just created better flow in my poem. 

[11:45] Clip of people stretching fades in.

So then, I make the--I lessen the opacity of the crinkled paper as we’re moving along in the poem, the woman is getting older, and I have some woman doing yoga and stretches, and as the girls arms move up here, they’re folded down, they’re gonna move up as the word “rises” comes up. Um, but I have the other words show up one-by-one or few-by-few, and they’re actually going in a descending motion just to create kind of--instill the sense of contradiction again. But then, in the next clip, I overlay a video clip of someone underwater rising to the surface and coming up for air, right here, “like a terrible fish.” Thank you so much for watching my video.