Reflecting on “An Existence as told Through Codas,” a Video Essay

We each walked into class on April Fourteenth not necessarily knowing what to expect. Some of us had been in Professor Giovanelli’s class before, but just as students evolve, so do the teaching methods of our professors. Group work, in theory, is either a student’s most dreaded experience or their most enjoyable experience; there is no real middle ground. Yet, as a student you struggle with this fear and your interest in what is to come. Your mind is still open to the possibilities that await you. Project Four reinforced the process of writing ‘Shitty First Drafts,’ being vulnerable with other writers, and having conversations with writers, all in order to add an extra layer of depth to your piece.

Our group originally had three different essay ideas to choose from: Hannah’s “An Existence as Told Through Codas,” Charles’ “Tupac and Black Rage,” and Paul’s “The Ledge.” We decided to take a few days to read through each essay individually, and then select the essay based on a vote. We decided that Hannah’s essay was the best choice, because her essay was centered on music and experiences which with a broad audience. This jump started our process of working together, and led to a collective vision for the possibilities of our video.

Group Work

Working together is always a concern within group projects, but we surprisingly had a low-intensity, low-pressure experience, or at least as minimal as one can make finals week. We immediately put on the table our strengths and weaknesses as individual members of the group, then tried to see how we could come together to minimize those weaknesses. Charles, for example, vocalized that he would be more helpful in transforming the story itself, whereas he did not have much experience with iMovie. As the video would be an adaptation of Hannah’s essay, she offered to film herself playing guitar and gathering all of the media she could that related to her playing guitar and the experiences she wrote about in the essay. Paul, equipped with iMovie experience, would edit the video.

As a group, we did not struggle with completing assignments or making sure our video was at the stages it needed to be for each class. We did struggle, however, with communication. Though it did not negatively affect the quality of the final video, it was tough to make sure that all of us were contributing an amount that was beneficial for the group. Knowledge of our individual strengths helped us to break up the work, but the break was not always technically even. The process was smooth because we had an understanding of our various roles in the group, but in terms of knowing precisely who did the most work that helped the group the most, the answer is ambiguous.

When all of us were together in class or working on the project together, we learned to communicate face to face really well, but communicating over text in the middle of the process proved to allow for unresponsiveness. We think that the efficient manner we had while we were together in person really helped us complete a project we are proud of. In reality, there was very little need to constantly text as we had agreed on what we would accomplish while we had been in class.

Using Evidence

We thought that specifically Hannah playing the guitar would bring a lively feel to the video itself. This is the basic principle of showing not telling that we have discussed as a class this semester. We did not want Hannah to tell the audience she had serenaded her ex-boyfriend with her guitar and voice, we wanted the audience to enter the same zone Hannah does when she is performing as a musician, the effect that one can not explain completely using words. Simply video of Hannah playing guitar was not going to cut it as a five minute video, and so we reached out to other mediums and sources of media. An obvious addition to our repertoire were all of the photos Hannah could find that were of her playing, or were primary sources of evidence of Hannah’s involvement in performing. These included a wide range of types of pictures we ended up including in our video: group pictures, playful photos of Hannah with her cousins, and pictures documenting her relationship with her high school boyfriend. A main goal we had for our video was to avoid anything reminiscent of a PowerPoint presentation. For us, this meant including dynamic shots of video that broke up the film of Hannah playing guitar and slides of pictures from her past.

Aside from visual evidence, the audio of our video was of incredible importance to making or breaking the video. Originally, we planned on having at least two sources of audio: Hannah’s voice as narration and sound from her recordings of herself playing guitar. When actually putting the video together, we found that we needed additional sources of audio in order to make a diverse video that would keep the audience interested. We did this, hopefully without distracting too much from the video’s purpose, by adding clips of audio that were various renditions of the songs Hannah wrote each section of her essay about. Towards the end of the video, we used more spaces filled with silence in order to get the more serious points across. We saw the use of silence in videos we had watched in class, like ‘Dust Off’ by Eula Biss and John Bresland, and ‘That Kind of Daughter’ by Kristen Radtke, and saw it as a great use of a kind of ‘audio negative space’ that would add more depth to our narrative. Specifically, we left a silent spot after Hannah speaks about her faith and becoming vulnerable with her audience. To us, this was a great rhetorical choice because the audience, like Hannah in the narrative, can relish in the vulnerability of the moment and peace of the quiet. We also left the end of the video in silence. By doing so, we believe we leave the ending to be more left up to the audience; if it had ended with triumphant trumpets blaring, it would have implied that she goes on to succeed or do bigger things, but we wanted it to be ambiguous. This choice also satisfied our want for a relatable story that does not throw too much on to the audience, that allows for interpretation of the potential future of the character in the video.

Challenges with the Process

The first obstacle we had to overcome was deciding on certain rhetorical choices for our video. What would be the way we would choose to communicate to our audience? Would we present them with a narrator? Animations? A collection of photos or videos? What aesthetic feel were we trying to place upon the viewer? We wrestled with these questions throughout the project, because the process of trying to appeal to our audience never truly ends. However, we decided that making sure there was a focus on Hannah’s memories: including photos of Hannah’s youth, videos of her playing the guitar, and having her tell her own story through a voiceover all contributed to the almost ‘homemade’ feeling we desired to have.

Another challenge we faced had to do with evidence and ensuring that nothing could be taken as plagiarism. Our want to include video other than Hannah playing the guitar and intensify our video forced us to reach out on to the world wide web and try our luck. Though we utilized the resources we had been told about that could eliminate this problem for us entirely, we were still faced with the challenge of finding just the right video that was also free for us to use. We did eventually succeed, but it certainly added a good amount of time to the video creating and editing process.

What We Think About the Video Adaptation Genre

We discussed how this video adaptation genre closely mirrored the purpose of a memoir essay, which is to say that it does not require a large argument to be made, but can relate to the audience’s personal experience. It does not need to resolve any conflict, it just is. On the other hand, it mirrored the techniques we learned from writing our lyric essays: the form matched the content in a way that is relatable to a general audience. The essay we adapted came from the memoir genre, and so acted the way a memoir is said to, with a hint of an argument made for the relevance of music in one’s life. From lyric essays, we stole the idea that form and function are hand in hand, and attempted to send messages to the audience through all of our rhetorical appeals, not just the words Hannah had previously written. We used our video form to reach out to the audience and invite them into the beautiful world of listening to, performing, and experiencing music on a higher level.

Charles Athanasopoulos, Hannah Goodwin, and Paul Holland