Lauren Farrington Initial Walkthrough

[:00] Screen capture of video editing software. Lauren voices over.

Lauren: I chose to make my e-poem on “Making a Fist” for a couple of reasons. I wrote my paper on this poem and I enjoy it so much. Also, “Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye is a very visual poem, and the structure lends itself to the story of beginning, middle, and end--perfect for a video. 

[:32] Video clips play in the editing software.

Lauren: The first two segments of the poem make me think of a child who is looking back on their young life. I think people undermine the meaning of young childhood because children’s lives, at this point, are so short in comparison to adults, so adults with the experience to experience the value of meaning, but children feel everything so fully because each experience is new. Every high is higher for a child and every low is lower for a child that I think they are more connected to their own emotions, dreams, and sense of self than adults are.

[:59] Screen capture of a Google search.

Lauren: So, I knew I wanted a visual that depicts childhood as a time when we’re free of inhibition. For this, I chose segments from The Tree of Life by Terrance Malik, which are in the background of…

[1:16] Switches back to editing software.

Lauren:...the text, or the masking when there’s not just a blank screen. Um, I chose the images because I saw the movie once before, and I remembered it being...well, the movie itself is a very arthouse, heavy-on-cinematography movie. 

[1:24] Clips from the movie play.

It’s very beautiful, and I remembered it being a story of children as they grow up. The clips show children playing with friends, or with their mom, or getting in trouble with their dad--so, very real-life experiences, um, shown pretty much from the viewpoint of a child so all the emotional impact is there. So for the first two segments, I wanted to create a sense of detachment, um, from the speaker’s prior life, up until the time that their living now, and in this moment, they’re remembering a time when they felt like they were dying and that the life was sliding out of them, and so I just wanted to create a sense of detachment. 

[2:18] Back to the editing software.

And to do this I did a couple things. I used a filter throughout my poem to make, um, over all of the images to create a scratchy and old look to it, as if it was a old film, video, home movie. Uh, and I think that helps give the sense that the poem is in past tense as it is written out, and I also used smoke on certain segments to create like a misty reality as if, like, their reality is slipping away from them. Um, and then I used masking in the second segment and in the third to create a sense of detachment from the speaker’s former life and to create a sense of claustrophobia, which is shown more in these clips here, as the circle is really constrained and there’s just, like, an eye, like right there. Um, since the speaker knows they are in control of their life in that moment and they think that they’re dying.

[3:39] Moves on to a different section of clips in the editing software.

Lauren: The space imagery--which you can see here--I think adds to the isolation and the feeling of being lost. I tried to keep it simple; I like it because I think it’s more dramatic. You’re able to focus on one thing. Even though I didn’t have a lot of images playing on the screen at one time, I did enjoy playing with the text. I tried having the text mirror the meaning of itself, like in this first part--the line is, um, “I feel the life sliding out of me,” and so the text is sliding down the screen, and then disappears. And then I also did it over here, at the end, when it says “separately,” I separated the word into its individual letters, and then I had the letters come back organically instead of writing out the next line new because the line is “stamped by our unanswerable woes,” which to me seems like a child people are bearing together with the pronoun “our.” So, I think having each word--each letter of the sentence come together, it’s like the individuals coming together to bear this together instead of individually. Um, I think that this helps get the theme or meaning of the poem across that, at the beginning of the poem, the speaker feels, um, desperate--they feel like they’re dying, they can’t get through this time in their life, or the situation, or whatever it is, and that they’re having an obstacle with end--towards the end they’re feeling rather that it’s just something they have to get through and that somehow they’ll get it, and especially with the help of others.

[5:53] Goes back to the beginning of the video in the editing software.

Lauren: I really enjoyed picking music out to match the poem and match the pacing I set for the video, which is kind of slow, and this first one is called “Sleep Sound,” and I already knew of the artist; it’s Jamiexx. I think it sounds like a wide-eyed child looking at the world--curious and experiencing new things. Good and bad, they don’t know what’s coming, and they are not really afraid of it either. 

[6:28] Skips to a later part of the video in the editing software.

Lauren: Then I used this one for the second part. It’s called “A Field for Recording 3.”

[6:34] Screen capture of a YouTube page.

Lauren: And I actually found it because I typed in to YouTube--

[6:38] A Google search.

Lauren: I don’t remember how, but somehow I got to glitch music, and then I got to the WIkipedia page, and it took me to this person--I picked the first one and it’s Richard Chartier, and he creates music from, like, materials in the world, like the environment around him, which is really cool. 

[7:04] Back to the editing software.

Um, they, like--glitch music is like making things sound like glitches--like things that aren’t supposed to happen, but instead, they’re doing it intentionally, so. It’s just one ominous noise that keeps getting louder, and to me, it feels like a ringing in your ears, and so it’s very disorienting, it doesn’t feel good, and I think it mirrors the lack of control that the speaker is feeling at this time. 

[7:38] Cuts to a different section of the video in the editing software.

Lauren: The last one I used--it’s called “Her,” by Rory, and...I thought it sounded very, like, uplifting and hopeful. I also liked how it included the voices of multiple people at the beginning because the last segment is about...I think, coming together to overcome our obstacles, and I thought that was very fitting. And then also, at the end of the poem, to give it a sense of finality and resolution, I had the text and the music aligned.

[8:22] Boosts the volume of the video and music to show how it is aligned, then fades the volume back down.

Lauren: The sound of the last word is heard, and then the sound of the last word in the poem is “hand,” and so the Hs--audibly you’re able to hear the h being breathed out, and you’re seeing it on the screen at the same time. So, it gives me the sense of, like, a sigh of relief. The speaker is able to breathe now, they are getting a hold on the situation, or they just feel better about it in some aspect, like they could handle it. Um, or they know that they’ll get through it no matter what.