Edited E-poem
"The Star," Adapted From Jane Taylor
Draft Version
We had the option of creating our own poem or using an existing poem for this assignment. I decided that it would be a fun challenge to adapt another author's work and try to show viewers how the poem made me feel. "The Star" made me a little nostalgic at a moment when I missed home (cooking), so I went with it. Here's what I originally came up with:
I went with muted colors and a dark theme because it was at nighttime and also because it reflected the fuzziness of childhood memories associated with this tune that you might have. For visuals, I tried to use some floating objects, such as the moving stars in the video preview, as well as video clips and images. I admit that mine is pretty image heavy- I got exhausted with combing through videos trying to find a perfect one.
My original plan was to use many different variations of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" for the music, but I couldn't find enough that were at a similar pace. I tried adjusting clip speeds for some possibilities, but they just sounded either too much like a chipmunk or a dramatic cry of doom when I made them match the lengths of other music clips. I start my video Mozart's 12 Variations on "Ah, vous dirai-je Maman" on traditional instruments, because that is what the famous tune is based on. Then I make a dramatic transition to an electronic version of the tune, and transition to Jewel singing an adaptation of the poem for the last three stanzas.
Editing Process
Here's the feedback I got:
I kept a deep color palette and tried to keep the flow of materials. However, after watching my e-poem a few more times, I got annoyed at the amount of flashy transitions I decided to use. I also ended up not liking how image-heavy I went in my draft version. In fact, after making a trailer video for The Road, I found that I like one-screen scenes best because there is focus on one image or clip instead of four things at once. So, here are the changes I made:
- Took away frequent fading in and out of most of my audio clips
- Picked almost entirely new visuals for the second stanza (being so image-heavy seemed flashy and lazy)
- Used the three rotating stars effect one more time at "Twinkle, twinkle, all the night" because it looked like they were shining through the trees and were consistent with the background photo
- Used a consistent audio track throughout (Jewel) and tried to adjust her speed to match visuals
- Changed the structure to focus on what happened after 40 seconds in my original video, which is the second stanza of the poem
- Adjusted images in the last scene so they did not overlap on the man wandering in the snow
The e-poem became pretty different except for the stanza about the traveller wandering in the snow. However, I like it more. It seems to flow more smoothly than my last one, and the new clips/images I picked are not overwhelming. It also feels more interesting now because the first stanza of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is everywhere, but not everyone knows the later stanzas.
Overall, it was a fun challenge to arrange video and images in Camtasia to reflect the mood of a poem. I wonder how it could have been different if I had written my own. The hardest part was trying to leave the mindset of being limited to the desktop windows in a live performance. My draft version looked similar to that, where a background image acted as a wallpaper and I kept a loose quadrant style that I used in my live performance of "Variations of the Word Sleep." However, I discovered that there is a lot that you can do with video and not as many limitations as I thought. You can easily express emotions through sound and imagery, and making arrangements is easier in Camtasia.
Final Version
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