This work is a companion piece to my thesis illustration project “The Edge” (https://burnsnm.myportfolio.com/the-edge-illustrated-book) and is meant to be a representation of the memories and visions the character see when she peers into the void. In fitting with the concept— all of the used footage was collected in a manner like a video journal through the course of the last semester I attended college. In many ways, these images literally are my memories.
I worked with layering and transparency as well as color grading techniques to give the images an abstract, otherworldly appearance, pushing them away from their original appearance in the same way that, when we re-live our memories, we recreate them in ways that differ from reality. We can never again experience them exactly as they originally were— for even a video can not capture the way the image appeared to our eyes or the exact emotions we were experiencing at the time. The title choice “Evanescent” refers to the transient nature of moments; how quickly do our experiences fade like vapor into only memories? And then how quickly do the vast majority of our moments fade from our memory altogether? And would it not be worse for us to somehow vividly remember our every waking moment? So there is this emphasis on the importance of the functionality of memory.
The inclusion of the dance aspect was sort of an unexpected decision. I have had plans for this work for quite some time and had not originally envisioned that as an aspect of it. However, as I worked on the piece it seemed more and more appropriate. I have recently been exploring physical movement and my physical self through experimental and expressive motion and dance. I am looking to discover the ways my body moves to different tones, rhythms, and moods expressed through music and sound. I have been doing this for quite some time and I have also been looking for a way to incorporate it into my video works. As it relates to this work, I have recently been thinking about how often when I re-live a particularly strong memory I will find myself physically repeating the gestures I performed in the moment I’m re-living. For example, as I’m thinking about the way I greeted the bus driver this morning, I might find myself recreating the way I waved hello. So then how much of our memory relates to or is stored in our physicality? (Eg: Muscle memory? Etc?) I wanted to use my experimental and expressive physical movement and dance to represent the physical process of recall and re-living.
The sound design was also a very important part of the work. I found a fitting CC audio track that emphasized the climaxes and used the audio as cues for when to cut from shot to shot. The atmospheric background noise track I created myself with personally collected recordings of important sounds in my life. The background audio builds in volume and intensity, emphasizing the breathing sounds of the character at the climax and then, in keeping with the conceptual theme of the evanescent, fading into an incoherent but warm static buzzing into the credits.