Premiere Pro: Self Portrait

For creating my Self portrait project I first took some videos of myself infront of my laptop to use for footage. 

When in premiere pro I experimented with layering these different videos with opacity. I liked the contrast between the two videos since in one I was quite serious and for the other I was laughing at my cat in parts. I also tried using a mask to delay part of one of the videos. I made a mask over my eyes in a duplication of the video and offset it slightly on the timeline. The effect of this was quite interesting since at points it looked normal but where I move in the video it is obvious. This could prehaps represent the fact that I am getting distracted in one of the videos. 

I then went on to experiment with another idea I had where I took a video of myself holding up a picture frame of my self I then edited the video using a mask to make the video show up in the picture frame. This ended up with a picture inside of a picture inside of a picture sort of effect. I think this sort of represents how when you look at a picture of yourself, you are looking at a snapshot of your life or how other people see you. 

I also put together some screenshots of my bus pass, which each had different dates on them. I made these cover the screen for some sort of transition. I included these because these are one of the few places where I see a picture of myself in my day to day life. It also relates to identity and time, since we have to prove who we are with ID and we get a new ID when that ID expires. 

I then took some photos of me and put them together like the rembrant piece we did, by lining up the eyes in the photos. I used  cross dissolves since I don't think the photos were similar enough to do morph cuts. These photos included some when I was younger and didn't really know much about taking photos. They also show how some of the photos I only took because I was trying out filters, I don't think this was because I wasn't confident in how I looked but rather I found it fun to be able to take a photo with cat ears or a flower in my hair. 

For the 3rd part I cut up a video into small parts and randomised the order. I added some audio to this part of my cat purring. I think this cut up video sort of emulates a time lapse of me sitting in front of my laptop, it might have look more like a time lapse if I had used a video where I didn't move as much but I don't think that would have looked as interesting. 

I also made another part for the second video, which was 8 copies of the same video but I horizontally flipped the video on the right side. This resulted in some interesting patterns, it was similar to some kaleidoscope video effects.  I think this video provokes a similar idea to the photo frame video. 

For sounds I used voice recordings of my cat purring aswell as me clicking a mouse. I think the audio could have been better, however I didn't really want to use my voice (ie me saying stuff) for the audio since I don't really like listening to my own voice so using it would probably make me uncomfortable. I also had no idea what I would say for audio except maybe saying a few things about myself, which I thought would come of as a bit egotistical or kind of crazy? I think the purring sounds were much more subtle and I think they matched well considering my cat showed up quite a bit in the video. I did have some troubles with the audio since the purring was quite quiet and when trying to remove background noises it effected the purrs too. 

I also added a click sound at the end, prehaps to represent turning off the camera since at the end most of the layers of me fade out until there is one and that version of me looks up as if the lights had turned of and then looks at the screen as if noticing the other layers are gone. This happened purely by coincidence but I liked how it looked. 

To test my videos out I set up a sequence called mockup where I tried to mimic how the videos would look overlayed using opacity. This was mostly for getting an idea of the timings and sounds, since the projected version will look different. 

Overall I think my self portrait turned out ok and it made me think a lot about who I am and how I am presented in this world. Hopefully it will look ok when projected.