Starting College... Home Sick Blues

The prospect of starting at a new college and knowing absolutely no one was slightly daunting so that's what I did, I started at Plymouth College of Art.

The first project we did with the people we didn't know was Homesick Blues... the song by Bob Dylan. We had to make a video with clips of ourselves holding up signs about what we were looking forward to and worried about while starting college. We each had two or three signs each. We were put into groups of 8 and we had to think about what each of us would put on our card. My first idea was 'I won't remember anybodies names' I used this because our group was so big, so it's true I probably won't remember anybodies names but I also decided to do this because I wanted to use it as an ice breaker to make people laugh and to get the conversation flowing in an awkward situation.On the second card I wrote 'Anxious to get started' I was anxious to what this course would fully entitle, the type of assignments we would be doing and how it would differ from what I had done in the past. On the final card I wrote 'I have no idea what I want to do in the future' this was the same as everyone else doing this course I hope to get a wider range of information about what to do at university and then eventually as a job.

The inspirations for our words. 

After we had written on the cards we had to figure out how we were going to video ourselves. Having to do this with people I had never met before was strange but fun because you got to see other people's personalities and ideas. Everybody had lots of different ideas so it was good because we all knew what it was we wanted. I came up with the idea that we each filmed for 10 seconds in the first location which was out in the corridor. We decided to use this location because it would be ideal for a long shot because of the length of the corridor. This was decided as we would be able to get a long body shot. The second location was outside and we stood by a tree, we decided to do it here because we would get the name of the building behind us. This was important because we were at a new college and it would show that we were actually here and what we were doing. The shot that we did was a wide angle, this was done so we could position the camera in different places to see what looked good. This shot worked out really well because it wasn't just an average shot. The final shot was in the gallery and for my shot it was a birds eye view I wanted this because it was something where we were on the floor. I thought that this would look more interesting than being stood up in all three shots.

For the video, we used the programme Adobe Premier Pro which was foreign to me I hadn't even heard of it before, but luckily before the end I had got the grips to it... with a bit of help. Our group decided to edit the video in black and white because that's what the original Homesick Blues was in so we thought it would be fitting. We cut the clips and added in transitions, we decided to add in lots of transitions because it just made it look like fun and something you wouldn't do for a normal video because of how cheesy it would look. Each of us in our group had a go at the editing which was good because then we could learn from each other. With the music we made sure that the time of the music went with the video content therefore it wouldn't look off. I really liked the end concept of our video because I felt like we all worked well together.

If I were to do it again then I would like to change the location of the shots just so that we would be able to see a bit more of the college instead of just one route. However other than that I thought that the location was sensible to use for the first time. Also if I were to do the video again, I don't think that I would use so many transitions because I feel as though it was too much but for the first time it was an enjoyable thing to do.

I feel that I paid a significant contribution to each part, even though I wasn't entirely confident with what I was doing I think that I had a positive involvement in the group.