The Concept
Seeing the world through new eyes — starting with a twig.
The chapter I selected, How to Look at a Twig, discusses how a twig can be seen through new eyes. There is no real way to tell the age of a tree in the winter because the twigs on it are all dead. These twigs, when newly formed, grow buds on them. I thought this would be interesting to select because of the endless possibilities that can be done with the ambiguous context of the reading with the object. I also had this idea when I picked my younger brother Harrison to play the role of the main kid. I knew that him being younger would mean the story would have to be primarily simple, being something that someone his age would do in relationship to a twig. Here is when I came up with the idea of building a twig house. This would perfectly capture this feeling of endurance and persistence in the direction I wanted to take the story.
Production
Documentary instincts, family cast, and a Saturday morning shoot.
So, I filmed various natural clips of the twig house being constructed on a Saturday morning. For the filming of shots, I primarily took the same action from three separate distances and placed him on the side of many shots using the Rule of Thirds. I used a steady 60 fps frame rate and auto-adjusting white balance with a high shutter speed. This gave all my clips a smooth effect, a style I would eventually change later. There were a lot of general close-ups of sand, twigs, bark, and other natural objects, including the finalized twig house at the end. I assembled the final twig house and shot it before all other clips to use Harrison to recreate the look of it when building his half-made version. The sand chapter was blended in accidentally, as I only realized after filming the shots that sand had become a big part of the video.
Voice, Narration & Animation
From AI voice to British narrator — and hand-drawn animation in Scratch.
I decided to put the clips in iMovie and arrange them in an order I liked using a voice-over narration idea I got right before filming. Writing a general script, I gathered heavy inspiration from the source book, school textbooks, and nature documentaries. I felt these sources described the action in the same way the book intricately conveys a sophisticated look at the object in question. For the voice, I used a text-to-speech British AI voice online; however, despite how advanced it was, it still lacked that human personality. So I scraped it and had my other brother Alex be the narrator instead in the accent.
After aligning his audio with the older audio, it was clear that I was missing shots for some lines, such as when the twig object was first shown. However, I had another idea to combat this. Rolling with the simple documentary look of the video, I decided to animate drawings to demonstrate the actions being narrated onscreen and interspersed them with the live-action clips. I hand-drew these drawings and then animated them in the block-based programming Scratch. I had used Scratch back in 7th grade, but ever since then, if I ever needed to animate something small, I would use the program. It is way easier than any other animation program because I think I know by now how to fully utilize it.
The VHS Decision
The finishing touch that changed everything.
As I progressed with my edits, I would edit clips into a winter look at the beginning of my video, add an outdoor room tone, and use a green screen effect to show Harrison running towards the nightlit house at the end. I was nearing the end of production, with a logo screen and end card, until I got a unique idea. Ever since the Photo Roman Assignment, I've wanted to do something in video editing using a VHS filter. About a year ago, I started to really get into VHS Horror Videos on YouTube. These videos take the VHS retro aesthetic and overlay it onto some unnerving base video, such as custom Emergency Alert System videos that show made-up analog TV alerts, such as aliens invading Earth. I love this style that a modern look at VHS can have where you just feel that sense of uneasiness watching even the initial blue screen with static sounds.
It helped that this video already showed the qualities of an old VHS tape, such as the stylized logo, nature documentary style, and no showing of modern technology. It seemed like the perfect time to use the style as it also perfectly combatted the nature theme with its mechanical aspect. This decision prompted me to apply an old filter to the project, 4:3 bars included. I even made a boot-up screen and custom company logo in Scratch for the producers of the fictional tape, Quartz Productions. I would export and upload both the VHS and original look to my video to accurately show the technical aspect of the project clearly.
Reflection
What the project proved about following an idea wherever it leads.
I think my vision for this project grew with the time I had to try new ideas and experiment with what choices could make it better. I think it succeeds in what it was meant to do: show the world through new eyes, whether that view is through examining a twig and what this object can do or the clouded and distorted aspect that analog video has on the project. I think if I were to change anything about it, it would be to do prior research on how to convert the video to a VHS format because I did none of that and was frustrated when I realized I needed a DVD/VHS hybrid player, which I wouldn't be able to get for an entire week to use, and not buying a capture card being forced to record the TV screen playing the tape with a tripod. Overall, though, these problems would only add to my experience in video production and help me fully realize my idea of how to look at a twig through one's eyes.