I chose to go into a nearby patch of woods that I used to walk through a lot as a child with my family, and although it was raining fairly heavily I carried on, as I thought it would help to build an atmosphere and make for interesting background noise. I had planned to take some ambient noise off the internet and use it in these parts, but my camera picked the sounds up so well I didn’t need to in the end.
I didn’t take an extraordinary amount of footage, because due to my planning I knew exactly what I needed and where it had to go in the film. I took several landscape videos, using my tripod, for the establishing shots at the beginning, then moved onto the few scenes where I was actually in the frame. These were the ending scenes from chapters one and two, and although chapter three also ends with videos me in the woods, it’s more extended than the others and I thought it would be easier to film if the weather was better, so I set it up for another time.
After selecting the correct video clips, I imported them into Lightroom and edited them slightly, only changing the vibrance to the strength I saw with my own eyes, as I know the camera tends to fade the colours a bit. This was simple as the images were all taken at the same time of day and so the lighting was all the same and I didn’t have to adjust the exposure.
Then I moved the edited clips into Premier and shortened them to the specific sections I wanted, before placing them in the right place in the chapters; because they’re both the ending scenes of the chapters I know exactly where they need to be placed.
The scene above (the end scene of chapter one) features me sitting by a tree, hearing a noise from behind and then running down the path, which is almost tunnel-like in the way it is surrounded by the trees’ branches. I used this location to represent the title of the chapter and the metaphor of a person’s mental health declining being like “going down a rabbit hole”. The main subject, me, is slightly out of focus/blurry and the natural lighting mixed with the camera exposure at the end of the “tunnel” means that the white clothes become very bright at the end. This was done on purpose to illustrate how the mind loses focus when in a state of ill health and that important things often become difficult to see clearly.
I know I still need to add a couple of landscape scenes of the outside of my house, in my room and the bathroom, as well as possibly a view of the sea to show the natural environment of Jersey, but I think the landscape clips I have already work very well and can easily be re-arranged when necessary without losing any of the atmosphere they create. I’m also very happy with the way the rain and birds and other ambient sounds were recorded by the camera and is so clear in the final footage.