Caroline Key Initial Walkthrough

[0:00] Video software

Hi everyone, I’m Caroline Key, and I’ll be giving a walkthrough for the e-poem that I created in my English 150 class. So I’ll start out by showing the poem that I decided to use, which is “There is Another Sky” by Emily Dickinson, and I was first introduced to this poem when I was in the 11th grade.

[0:12] Web page showing written poem

For my AP art class we were asked to use an Emily Dickinson poem as the basis for a painting that we were to create, and this is the poem I chose of hers. And I really like this one because it can be taken in a really abstract way or a really literal way. So, it’s really fun to be creative with it, and I thought it would be cool if I used it for my e-poem, since I was already pretty familiar with it. 

[0:43] Video software, e-poem plays in a screen

So, I created my e-poem on Camtasia. At first I was really nervous about using Camtasia, because I had never done anything like it before. So it was kind of intimidating at first, but after I messed around with it, it wasn’t that hard to get the hang of. It was actually a lot of fun to explore the different effects you could use, such as zooming in or zooming out, or fading in or fading out. I definitely utilized those a lot. And seeing how you can add text and the different fonts you can use, which I also used in my poem to show the lines of Emily Dickinson’s poems that I used. So, for the beginning of the poem I used very literal video clips to portray the lines of the poem. So, for “There is Another Sky” I found a video on YouTube of a sunrise, like a time-lapse of a sun rising and setting. So it goes along with it in a very realistic way. And I found all of my video clips on youtube. And it was actually kind of hard to find the different clips, because you have a very clear image of what you want in your head, and it’s kind of hard to find something that’s already been created and posted on YouTube that goes along with what you were thinking of. So it definitely took a while, but I think I found some really good ones in the end, and I’m really pleased with them. So here I started using a family. And I was trying to portray a story using a family, of a little boy who’s interacting with his brother and mom and dad and how he’s trying to get away and find a safe haven, like maybe a forest where he could escape to, or a garden where he could just sort of get away from everyone and clear his mind. So, I thought it would be kind of fun to be both abstract and literal with this poem. 

[3:02] YouTube clip of Tree of Life Trailer

And I found all the clips of the family from the Tree of Life movie trailer. The Tree of Life is a movie that was created in 2011 starring Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, and I’m glad that I remembered that this movie existed, because I think that the clips from this trailer went along great with the aesthetic that I was trying to portray in my video. It had some great visual effects and just images of nature, and a family interacting with each other. So I was really pleased with that. I definitely utilized the movie trailer a lot.

[3:52] Music video for song on YouTube

And then, for the song that I chose… It was really hard to find something that matched the mood or the tone that I was going for, but I finally found a song that I think fit that perfectly, which is “Slip” by Elliot Moss, and it has a very mesmerizing, smooth, and kind of mysterious feel. I thought it was pretty interesting, because the music video for the song actually looks a lot like my e-poem. So I thought that was really cool, and I think it fit perfectly.

[4:25] Video Software

 It was actually the last thing I added to my e-poem, so, after I added the song, I went back and kind of changed the clips. I fast-forwarded and slowed them down to match lyrics of the song so it moved more smoothly and went along with it better. For instance, at the very end of my e-poem the lyrics of the song “Slip” say, “Into your hands,” so for the last clip I showed a picture of the little boy’s hands kind of reaching up, which I thought ending up looking really cool. There were some other times within the video that I would synchronize the lyrics of the song to the video clips I used, and I think it all went together really well. 

[5:06]

Overall, I had a great time making this e-poem. It was definitely a learning experience, and it took some getting used to, but I think that the outcome was really rewarding, and I really enjoyed it.