Creative Self-Portrait

I’ve always wanted to do a piece where I could just be real and profess something about myself that I don’t always like to face. This video project was my way of reflecting on myself at this point in my life and being HONEST about things I don’t often discuss. Be advised, even though this project is shown to other people in the form of a spectacle, the process of creating the video and the product itself are deeply rooted in trying to better myself.

This style was inspired chiefly by a spoken word poem performed by Rudy Francisco called “My Honest Poem”, which can be found here if you’re curious. I saw the poem online a few months ago and then live two weeks ago. I became enthralled with trying to do the same, especially since I know I’m a person who rarely exposes myself to the world like that. I’m usually the listener so it feels good to be on the other side for once.

The creative drive behind this video was to be as honest as possible with myself and my audience. The writing of this piece was a mix of small little blurbs I would write about myself in the drafting period as well as organic talking in some of the voiceovers. Some of the lines deviated from what was originally written for the sake of being genuine. Visually, I knew I wanted small videos of me just doing things naturally as I talked about myself in the background. I tried to stay away from videos where I knew I was being recorded to maintain that effect. The slideshow that opened the piece was decided on toward the end of the creative process but I think it was a good way to set the tone for the rest of the film.

Technically, this wasn’t all that complex. I gathered/shot the pictures and videos I wanted see as I wrote specific lines in the drafting process. I mix and matched different lines with different backgrounds until I got the desired effect. I did struggle with having music in the background while multiple prerecorded clips were playing. I had to manipulate the software to get this to work the way I wanted. I ended up plugging the voiceovers into the multi-music option and recorded the soundtrack from my laptop with the voiceover option on the app. It worked and allowed both voiceovers and music to overlap each other. That was my biggest issue while trying to work this project and the VideoShow software.

Sources:

Sample “Note TO Self- J. Cole (Instrumental Remix with hook)” form Youtube.com. Uploaded by TheOtherTrain, May 4th, 2015.