After much discussion between our group and our teachers, we have decided to start a completely new video from scratch and so, consequently, are scrapping our first idea. There are many reasons for this change; once we uploaded our original footage to the Macs, in which we are editing our piece, we found out that the editing software we are using, Final Cut Express, did not allow us to create the desired effect. We had wanted to use the split screen effect during our narrative to make the two people clear to the audience and avoid confusion. However, the split screen effect that was available to us was different to what we expected in that it cropped a good portion of our footage to enable it to fit on the screen. Without cropping the clip, our video would consist of two small boxes (one on the left and one on the right) which would display our narrative. This was not ideal as the boxes were incased in a black surrounded which meant our video lacked its meaning as you could not see the narrative clearly. We attempted to reorganise our footage to allow us to keep the narrative without the use of split screen but it did not work as the narrative became very abstract and so the audience would not understand the narrative.
Once analysing our footage, we did notice issues with mise-en-scene. One particular example of this is the difference between the two houses. We used the same house for both characters to enhance the conncetion and alhough we attempted to clutter the house to make it look unkept for Dougie, we had forgotten about hiding family photographs and such items which go against the meaning we trying to create about Dougie being abandoned and unloved.
Realising all these issues, we knew that we would have to refilm most, if not all, of our current footage and even then we believed that we would not have a video which reflected our potential. Therefore, we decided that a completely new narrative would be the most appropriate option. For a while, we brainstormed ideas surrounding the concept of childhood and growing up as that was what our old idea was based on. We debated using the song 'Fireflies' by 'Owl City' as this song does capture the essence of childhood. Yet, all the ideas that we came up with were half-hearted and not as strong as we wanted. So, after a weekend, of deliberation and research, we found the song 'Jar of Hearts' by 'Christina Perri.' It's low tempo and sombre lyrics heavily contrasted the quirkiness of MGMT's song and so allowed us to completely forget about our old idea and create fresh possible narratives to work with. Our final idea played with the concept of dwindling love between and boy and a girl. We follow the journey of a love letter written by the boy (which he screwed up and never intended to send to his love) as it attempts to find the girl that it is written for. We also wanted parallel editing to show the journey of the girl at the same time to create an emotional connection with the letter and the general situation. We wanted to personify the letter to make the letter the protagonist rather than have a character and actor as this would allow us to film in a period that suited us and so we would not be held back by waiting on other peoples schedules. The few characters we did need we could act out or find a friend during the hours in which we needed them.
One thing that we did want to maintain from the original idea was the use of stop motion, which we have decided to heavily incorporate into our new idea as it is the most appropriate method to make the letter (an inanimate object) to look like it is travelling of it's own accord.
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