Indifference (2002)

Indifference was a university project in 2002 where a series of three linked videos themed around street life were filmed and presented as part of an interactive CD Rom, put together in Macromedia Director.

This was our first experience of video editing and we ran into a number of problems along the way, and it isn’t until the final film that I feel we really hit our stride. All three movies are available to watch via the YouTube playlist below. Note that the border, distortion and video effects were all designed to make the movie fit within the interactive CD Rom.

 

Indifference – Parts 1-3 (2002)

The Making of Indifference

“We work everyday,
Yearning for a good future,
Desperate that one day we may be rewarded and our dreams come true.
And while we dream?

We hide, we hurry.
We ignore people in the street, pretending we don’t notice them, hoping they will ignore us.
We have a right to be like this.
We are busy. We are tired. We work so hard – why should we stop?

It’s not that we don’t care.
The problem is that it’s not as if we do care either.
We are not bad.
We are not good.
We are just indifferent.”

Indifference - a screenshot of the CD Rom presentation.

Indifference – a screenshot of the CD Rom presentation.

Indifference was a university project and my first experience of filming and video editing. We were split into teams and tasked with filming a movie and presenting this as part of an interactive CD Rom. The theme we were given was ‘street life’, which we developed and expanded carefully. We decided that the term “street life” could apply to the indifference of people when walking past those who suffer in the street. An example is the ease with which people avoid the homeless when in a major city such as London. We then placed this on a global scale and looked for examples of similar traits: we compared this indifference with that of an average persons indifference to wars in far of places. We used this as a basis for our project.

We started by filming different groups of people in the street of Canterbury. We also several different approaches such as running with the camera and shooting from the tops of buildings.

Due to the nature of our project and how we intended the final result to look, we did not plan the shoot before starting. We selected key areas to film and moved between them in order to create a very fluid, very dynamic series of films created solely by the events of the day. The result was a range of exciting footage featuring real people and locations, ranging from homeless people, people with disabilities, happy people, sad people as well as beautiful pans across rooftops and interesting shots of real places.

I spent many long hours trawling through the footage, selecting clips and editing it together using outlines drawn up in discussions and developing our initial ideas based on what we had available. I concentrated on looking at individual people in the crowd scenes, picking out those people that looked as if they had a story to tell, or those whose upset and misery was displayed clearly on their faces. I found many suitable people who unintentionally helped us in dramatic ways – a homeless man singing on the street, a lady in a wheelchair and so forth.

I edited our footage together and decided this would be best split into three segments, each with it’s own narrative and which delves into the concepts a little deeper. While I worked on this, the rest of the team used the internet to find suitable photographs to use in the CD application, along with slides and a graphical interface I developed in Adobe Photoshop.

Due to a series of technical faults the recording of the final narration was delayed until the early hours of one morning. This caused us to slip back in our schedule and so re-recording of the commentaries was not possible. This was very unfortunate as the first two commentaries are very poor due to equipment failure as well as pressure to complete the task in time.

 

Indifference – Part 1

Indifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - Screenshots

 

Indifference – Part 2

Indifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - Screenshots

 

Indifference – Part 3

Indifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - ScreenshotsIndifference (2002) - Screenshots

 

Presentation: Macromedia Director
Editing: Adobe Premiere 6
Audio: SoundForge XP
Textures, slides: Adobe Photoshop 6

Next production: Four Go Rolling