To create my video essay, I used iMovie on my iPad. I screen-recorded the scene I wanted to analyze, uploaded it to iMovie, and added a voiceover. You may notice that I was speaking fast—that’s because I had a lot to say but not enough time, so I apologize for that. This was a great assignment to work on, and it was my first time using iMovie and considering a movie’s editing and filming style to effectively tell a story.
Category Archives: videoessay
Video Essay
This is my scene analysis after the large-scale massacre in Black Mirror’s “Hated in the Nation” epsisode.
I’ve always loved Black Mirror for it’s original thought-provoking episodes and intense story-telling nature focused on exaggerating modern day issues and technological advancements. It was cool to be able to analyze scenes from a show I remember watching years before this assignment and peice together specific reasons for why I love the story telling of these episodes so much.
I enjoy watching youtube videos of people breaking down scenes from movies and shows on my own so it was cool to try and replicate a category of content in a way that I am already used to seeing done regularly. Although I started to record a voiceover unpacking everything that was going on in each scene, I realized that I wasn’t as fluent in analyzing a show right off the dome and that it would be better for me to try writing a little script with key points in it. After finishing this assignemnt with only a handful of scenes covered and an audio of 2 minutes, I wished that I could have written something up about this show instead to unpack more and give the show the credit it deserves.
I ended up using an editing app on my iPhone to piece my analysis together after struggling with Microsoft’s editing platform on my laptop. YouTube instantly blocked my video for copyright so I posted to Vimeo instead.
This assignment gave me another reason to rewatch the entire Black Mirror series, especially after going through some personal life expereinces over the years that have gave me new perspectieves on heavy topics like this show touches on. I look forward to reading deeper into the episodes as I watch them back and pay closer attention to the editing and cinematography of each one.
Attack of the Robotic Bees – Black Mirror Video Essay
I love video essays, especially for movies and tv shows. I watch them in my free time a lot and I really enjoyed watching the Tony Zhou videos. When I was making my video essay, I was trying to emulate what I had seen in the videos before. In this video, I talk about the world building in this episode as well as the movement composure and the audio in this scene. I also tried my best to incorporate that “Therefore & But” method in this video although it was a bit of a struggle. I really wanted to talk about those three things, but I had trouble figuring where the “Therefore” and the “But” went and I had issues trying not so say “and then.” When I was making the video, I recorded my script and added it plus the scene into Adobe Premiere Pro. From there, I tried to cut up the scene so that what I was talking about matched what was being shown.
Help Wanted!
The biggest challenge of this assignment was finding a scene I could use in my video. Normally, if I want to use a video from YouTube I screen record the video. However there were essentially no full scenes on YouTube, even this one wasn’t the full scene and it was blurry. I tried to google how to do it, but most answers were talking about using pirating websites. I liked this assignment and I wouldn’t mind doing it again in the future for another class or for a final project, so if anyone has any tips on how to download high quality scenes in full please leave a comment. I need help!
The Bees Knees
The video essay I created was an analysis of the Black Mirror scene examining the surveillance bee that had “malfunctioned” and was involved in a death. It was interesting to examine how the editors most notably used different camera angles to shift the audience’s focus, and to also set the presence of technology. I noticed more closely the usage of close ups to convey emotions of characters by focusing of their eyes as was frequently mentioned in the videos and had a lot of fun looking more into a show past its initial context/plot. Please take a look here!
Looking into Cyberpunk Edgerunners
WARNING: Huge Spoilers ahead!
Cyberpunk Edgerunners is a wonderful playground for cinematography. There’s so many amazing scenes I could go into deep detail for, but the one that I couldn’t resist choosing was Maine’s death scene from episode 6 called Girl on Fire. The episode shows how Maine is struggling with Cyberpsychosis, but him and his crew must continue the mission as he gets worse and starts losing control after his girlfriend was killed. Once Maine accepts that its the end for him, he sacrifices himself while the main character David tries to help. Here in my video, I go in a deeper dive into the cinematics of this unforgettable scene.
Video Process
Editing a video for the first time was more complicated than I originally thought. I had to find the exact scene from Cyberpunk Edgerunners I wanted in a good enough length then I had to learn how to use iMovie to edit in the narration of my voice before uploading it to Vimeo. When I was doing my analysis of the scene I originally had a long descriptive script to voice over it, but I couldn’t keep up with the exact shots I wanted to talk about, so instead I chose to say the main points that drove each scene like the fear in certain expressions or how certain shots portrayed foreshadowing that an intense fight scene was approaching. I wanted to keep the original audio alongside my voice with it, but I thought it might be too distracting so instead I kept only my narration for the scene.
Cyberpunk Edgerunner Cinematography Overview:
- Lighting: Most of the grim scenes use dark lighting with harsh colors like red lining on faces and bodies to set the tone. In the gentle scenes where Maine feels at peace, it is sunny in an open field without the use of any dark color schemes.
- Angles: The shots chosen are taken from very specific angles depending on the emotion used like David’s fear always being full face or the focus being on his trembling hands while holding a gun. Also in most scenes they are capable of making Maine look overpowered from his cyberpyschosis by using low angles where he’s towering above.
- Expressions: Throughout the entire scene emotion is used very well from eyes widening and trembling from fear and shock, or Maine’s eyes softening as he understands this is the end for him. Shots showing sweat, tears, and even the shot of David’s pained scream at seeing Maine die tells how the characters are feeling even without the audio to hear their dialogue.
- Camera Shots: They use various shots to build up suspense like showing how MaxTac is on their way with shots of the aircraft landing or the soldiers heading in. I also think the use of switching between Maine’s hallucination perspective of him being peacefully in a field while David sees the grim reality of their situation helps the viewers understand that Maine is accepting death. Lastly, I wanna add that the final shots being in slow motion makes the viewers feel the impact of everything happening before the shot of his death.
Loved in the Unclaimed Land
This assignment to do a video essay was really fun! I enjoyed revisiting Black Mirror (as did a lot of student in the class).
The episode “Hated in the Nation” was freaky for sure. I did have to stop looking at some scenes for the sake of the intense builds, but I really loved how they did it. I think that Black Mirror does a great job creating a world that is distinctly not ours but could be.
Creating the video essay was tough at first because I wasn’t sure what scene to do. I liked the suggestion to do a scene that is, for lack of a better word, not important or something that doesn’t cover a big plot point. Because the point of this assignment was to focus on the film of it all not the plot. I also had a hard time getting audio due to Netflix’s strict privacy rules, so I wasn’t able to get audio for this assignment which really bummed me out.
To make this I filmed the scene I wanted on my laptop and put it into iMovie. I then recorded my script in Voice Memo all in one recording and spliced it in iMovie. I also went to YouTube and found a Black Mirror starting title and included that in the beginning and end of my video.
Overall, I had fun with this process. I don’t think I’d make video essays on my own time, but I do enjoy watching them so it was fun to be able to do one myself.
Holding a “Black Mirror” to the World
I decided to watch the episode of Black Mirror that was linked on our weekly ds106 page for the video essay assignment, and I enjoyed both the episode and the process! I thought the premise of the episode was really interesting, particularly the integration of social media within the plot.
To make the video essay, I first wrote my script and decided which scenes I wanted to use. I then utlized OBS to record my screen while playing Netflix in order to capture the episode. I did record the episode audio, too, but didn’t end up using it. I recorded myself in Audacity, and brought everything together using ClipChamp. I cut up the clips I had recorded earlier and pieced them together. I added some background music from FreeSounds and lowered the volume of it so that it would play under the audio of me speaking. I discovered that ClipChamp has an auto-caption feature, so I used that to quickly add closed-captions to my video. The captions required minimal editing, so I exported and saved the video.
I had some trouble getting the video onto my blog, initially. The file was too large to upload directly to WordPress, so I instead published the video to YouTube with an unlisted link and included that instead.
Overall, I think making a video essay was enjoyable but not something that I would do on my own time. I watch a lot of video essays already, and I think I have a standard for them that I don’t feel like I necessarily met. While I’m sure I could get there eventually, it doesn’t feel like a skill I’m presently going to work on.
Video Essay
The Groundstar Conspiracy – Wikipedia
For this assignment I decided to go back to the Technoir movie I reviewed before choosing option two for this assignment.
I chose from 7:55 to 9:10 or so to analyze I am not a specialist and there for cannot be expected to point out every detail don’t judge to harshly, analyze the scene yourself and see what you notice. I did my best to take notes from the article and videos we had to watch this week. I did struggle a bit trying to figure out what scene to use but then decided this would be best due to the crowd. They mentioned that large crowds can be used to express certain emotions or used to draw your eyes to certain places. In this, the crowd did the latter. I looked at the lighting, their positions, the clothes they had to wear, and the scene around them. Watch the solider fidget with his gun and how many other stepped lightly. Tried to cover plenty of bases without overwhelming the viewer.
Bees Video Essay
M. Marshall 2.14
As everyone else has, I watched something and created a video essay on a scene from it. I watched “Hated in the Nation” from Black Mirror.
Of course, this is not a reflection on the full episode, but it definitely freaked me out a lot.
After I watched the episode I considered what scene to analyze, and I chose the one where Karin and Blue talk to the woman who sent the cake to Jo Powers. I really appreciated the level of foreshadowing that this scene gave. It was interesting to see them talk about the “death to” hashtag. Looking back and knowing she was one of the people responsible for her death, yet she was so defensive and frustrated. It was a strong reminder of the cognitive dissonance people experience between real life and their online actions.
I am hoping that as we experiment more with video assignments I will get better at this. I hope one day I will look back on this and cringe at my lack of video editing skills. I had hoped to screen record the video, but Netflix is very sneaky with blacking out the screen, so I ultimately recorded it on my phone. If I did another video essay in the future I would probably try to invest more time in figuring that out.
This one was pretty simple, I recorded the video on my phone and recorded a voice over on my laptop. I was somewhat nervous to do this so I had to do a couple takes with a general script. I still stumbled on my words some but nobody is perfect so I hope anyone reading this or watching the video essay enjoys it well enough. Here it is:
Bees Video Essay
M. Marshall 2.14
As everyone else has, I watched something and created a video essay on a scene from it. I watched “Hated in the Nation” from Black Mirror.
Of course, this is not a reflection on the full episode, but it definitely freaked me out a lot.
After I watched the episode I considered what scene to analyze, and I chose the one where Karin and Blue talk to the woman who sent the cake to Jo Powers. I really appreciated the level of foreshadowing that this scene gave. It was interesting to see them talk about the “death to” hashtag. Looking back and knowing she was one of the people responsible for her death, yet she was so defensive and frustrated. It was a strong reminder of the cognitive dissonance people experience between real life and their online actions.
I am hoping that as we experiment more with video assignments I will get better at this. I hope one day I will look back on this and cringe at my lack of video editing skills. I had hoped to screen record the video, but Netflix is very sneaky with blacking out the screen, so I ultimately recorded it on my phone. If I did another video essay in the future I would probably try to invest more time in figuring that out.
This one was pretty simple, I recorded the video on my phone and recorded a voice over on my laptop. I was somewhat nervous to do this so I had to do a couple takes with a general script. I still stumbled on my words some but nobody is perfect so I hope anyone reading this or watching the video essay enjoys it well enough. Here it is: