Reflection on the process of producing this project
I chose this location for my video because it is truthfully my ‘happy place’. I fell in love with Paris as a sixteen year old girl, and a part of my heart will always be there because I have experienced the city not only as a tourist, but also as a citizen. I feel a strong connection to this location because when I am there, there is a certain energy from the people and the surroundings that feeds my spirit and my imagination. I have always loved history, fashion, art and the French language; Paris has all of those things to offer. It was easy for me to tell this story because it is one that is so personal and it is one I have experienced many, many times.
On making and following a plan
I elected to use MS Photostory 3 for this project because I had a brief experience with it in a course I took last winter. My goal was to improve my skills with the tool and to explore some of the features of the program that I had not previously used (for example adding a musical underscore and manipulating the transitions between slides). I already had a large number of photos on my computer from a recent trip to Paris, so it was relatively easy to paste together a storyboard. I had a particular chronology in mind for my narrative. First, I set out to introduce the location in a general sense, then I wanted to establish a rationale for the warm drink (i.e.: that the drink was earned after a long day of touring the city). Next, I wanted to introduce the specific location and then offer a vision of how the warm drink might be enjoyed. Finally, I wanted to leave the viewer with an idea of the implications of choosing this café in Paris and to encourage the viewer to check it out. Before I chose my images, I wove together the gist of the narration. I found the photos afterward to match the images I had in my mind. I was thrilled to discover the Freeplaymusic website, because it had exactly the kind of music I was looking for to achieve the feel of a French movie- a soft, lilting accordion underscore. I listened to the song I chose as I worked with the technology to prepare the video. This helped me to get in a mood that matched the task at hand.
Telling a story well requires a lot of careful consideration, if one wants to achieve a particular effect. Sometimes this means that the film-maker has to be open to straying from the original plan. As I began to work with the photos, I realized that I needed to reorder some of them to tell the story in a more compelling way. For example, the image with the empty chair seemed more suitable at the end, because it looked like an open invitation for others to experience the French café. Ultimately, this was the message I wanted to send, so I decided to save it for the final image. Additionally, I had decided to supplement my own collection of photos with some from the MS 2010 Clipart gallery and a couple from Wikipedia. In the end, I decided to discard a couple of images that I had chosen from my original storyboard. I got rid of some because they were superfluous and would make the video too long. I also decided against using a few others because they didn’t really have the look that I was trying to achieve. I really wanted the images to reflect the romance and the subtle energy of the location. Originally, I thought I would have a lot more text on the images, however as I created the project I realized that this was unnecessary, as I was narrating the film. Instead, I chose a few powerful phrases and words that I wanted the viewers to remember from my video and inserted them on a few select images.
Conclusion
In the end, I am quite satisfied with my project and I feel that I achieved my goal. I previewed it to a test audience before class and their response was that they really wanted to go there and experience this café for themselves. Overall, it was pleasant experience to create this video because thinking about Paris always puts me into a good mood and because I had almost no technical difficulties along the way. The only thing that still puzzles me is how to get rid of the clicking sound when the slides advance. Since this was my second time using MS Photostory 3, I was much quicker and more confident with my abilities to manipulate the images. Although it was still time-consuming, it didn’t take me nearly as long as it did the first time I tried to use this program. I see much potential for this kind of a task in a classroom or as part of a research project because through this media, one can achieve a multi-dimensional narrative that brings the viewer closer to the creator’s understanding of the reality in his or her mind.
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