How to show separation in a group...

            I was in the separation group for this project.  It was an interesting experience.  The way we went about doing our video was unique.  I am not a huge fan of group work just because I have found it hard to depend on people.  We also had someone leave our group, which we didn’t find out till 2 days of the project being due so I found that a little stressful. 

             For the individual part of the project, I found it hard to portray separation without putting a little of myself in there.  It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do.  I went through a bunch of different ideas.  I first thought I wanted to show separation in a personal way and showing how I went through an eating disorder and how I separated myself from the world, but also show how I overcame that and separate the unhealthy me with the healthy me.  I thought that would be a different type of separation but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be so open with the class.  I than thought I would do the typical separation of home and school life but I wanted to show it in a different way. 

            The way I decided to go about it was show through pictures of where I have traveled and lived but also shows the traveling aspect of it.  I am always traveling and have had the experience of living in different places so I wanted to show kind of through my eyes of the separation of my life.  How I have felt I have had separate lives my entire life.  Once I got the idea set I just had to figure out how to show that through videos. 

            I started out with a book I have of traveling spots, I wanted to show the traveling aspect of the video in an abstract way.  I than decided to use the video of a bridge, I wanted it to be a symbol of separation.  A bridge has two different ways of separating a place over the top of the bridge or under it.  I found it unique in its own way.  I went on to showing the pictures in my apartment in Buffalo; I showed myself looking at the picture to make it seem like I was remembering the different places I have been. 

            The next section of my video was my room back home at my parent’s house in New Jersey.  I wanted to show a little part of who I was. I faded to a bus ride to show a traveling aspect of separation.  I showed a video of my dog jumping, I know that no one knew this but that was a video of when I lived in Europe and I adopted a puppy, but I wanted to show how it was a different place by the traveling part before that.  I than showed a video of me at The Stone Pony, which is a bar in New Jersey.  That again was an older video, which was to show the separation of my day life to my nightlife a little.  I decided to end my video with me traveling from NYC back to Buffalo to show the end of my traveling and being separated from those memories and coming back to reality. 

            Choosing the music was a little hard for me because I wanted it to show separation somehow as well.  I decided to go with “Heartbeat” by Childish Gambino; I wanted something fast and upbeat.  This song is exactly that; it starts out low and soft but within 30 seconds of the song the beat gets loud and fast.  Which I thought shows that traveling life style, sometimes it can be low key and quiet but at other times it is fast and you're always on the go.  The song itself is not about separation, but I didn’t want it to abstract in a way showing the song and the video.

            The group video was a lot more stressful than the individual one I thought.  The fact that we started with 4 people and than ended with 3 people was hard.  Our group didn’t talk about having our videos the same, which at the end I thought was smart since we were doing separation.  The class before spring break, our 4^th member didn’t say anything about thinking about dropping or that he was having any issues.  He even said that he already did his video and just had to have a few things but everything was fine, so we all thought okay everything will be good.  I get a text from Liza about two days before break was over saying that we needed to add more time to each of ours because one of our members dropped the class I was shocked.  That’s actually when I decided to add in the last part of the traveling to my video to get the correct time we needed. 

            When we got back from break, technology decided to fight against us.  We were having trouble with saving, loading and transferring information.  It was not working with us but we didn’t let it get to us.  We ended up winning and finished it on time.  For our actual video together we shot it the day we got back from break and just wanted to show something cute and corny.
             I think that the people can communicate in so many different ways that sometimes we forget all the different ways.  One of the ways to communicate something is through a video, also known as visual communication.  I think this is great form of communication because it hows things in a different light for people.  You can describe separation through words very easily but being able to show that through images and movement is more meaningful.  I find it the same way as communicating something through a form a dance or music.  You have to piece things together and really watch to find the meaning, but if done correctly the thing you are communicating will show through.
           I believe that our separation video did show exactly what we wanted.  We had three different concepts of separation which helped get the subject matter across better.  I think that because of the different scenarios we had, it allowed our audience to really see the separation we wanted to show.  The music we went with also, might have not been about the subject matter, but it showed and had the feeling of being separated with something else.  

            At the end of this project I think we did very well for having so many issues.  We each showed not only separation but a little bit of who we are also.  Our video was clear and showed separation in a unique and different way.  We got three great videos that showed a strong understanding of the word separation but showing and understanding it in an abstract way through our eyes.  I think at the end of this project, it was a good experience to have, with working in groups and also using iMovie.