Migration Experimental Video Task

After considering everything I had researched about Migration and also considering how I could make my piece I decided that the idea that I would pursue was my first idea actually based on the fact that as soon as you type migration into the internet it jumps to the assumption that your talking about humans. Personally as an animal lover I find myself thinking about birds and wildlife migration as well as just human migration. Initially before doing any research into this theme I wanted to do something that could add an animal element into my piece because this is an interest of mine. It was then when I discovered how the internet jumped to the conclusion of human migration that I realised this might be possible. To show the observation I had made about this and how the media bombards us with this information like this which only makes the situation more extreme that I realised I could take the current human migration news story's which you can find all over the internet and combine them with animal documentary's about migration. I was slightly concerned about this idea as I didn't want to offend anyone in case they thought that I was simply comparing these migrants to animals (which I am not). Instead I am emphasising how the media exploits these situations and how I observed that vast amount of human migration stories on the internet with out even trying to. Also part of me feels like its in an animals nature to travel and migrate to keep themselves alive and safe and personally I feel like if humans need to do the same to keep themselves and there family's safe they should be able to (but this is more of a personal opinion).

To make this piece I would need to find footage off the internet to use so I went onto YouTube as this is the main source of videos on the internet for a massive audiences therefore it help add to the point I was making about the media bombarding us. I simply searched migration and found some news stories that came up but all were not suitable because as much as I want to make a point I still need to be careful when selecting appropriate material. I then typed in migration news stories and loads of videos primarily from BBC 1 News came up so I went through these finding appropriate material. I then downloaded these. Then I went back onto YouTube to find animals migration documentary's for my footage. There was a wide variety of these so I picked ones which had a mixture of animals so some were based on birds whilst others on mammals like Zebras. Once I had got a wide range of imagery downloaded I began editing. Editing was slow because I had to source through each news clip finding audio which made an impact and then I would have to go through all the animal imagery fining something which matched because I wanted the two different elements to fit together quite well. If they flow together it will take the audience longer to realise what is going on and then this will hopefully allow them to process the information slowly in the way its intended and also feel quite shocked in about what I am trying to say (hopefully shocked with me and not at me). Once I had put it all together I reviewed it back and realised once gaining some feedback from peers that it didn't make as much sense as I would have liked because its about the media yet there isn't a strong link to the media. I then went back to editing and decided that in order to make the media present I would add in some imagery of news paper front page stories again on the same theme of human migration. I put these in between each different clip from a different news story and I tried to get a mixture of positive and negative story's which matched the clips appropriately. Lastly I decided it was too quickly cut so to add more of a flow to it I used a TV static effect as well in between the clips and the newspaper images to give the audience time to process what they had already seen. This static TV effect also again adds another link to the media. Now that I am happier with how it looks and also how it portrays its message here it is:

Personally I feel like this isn't as strong as my previous piece but I think its because I had less of an artistic interest in this project because I was very worried about trying not to offend anyone but still trying to make a point. I think that because its a very current topic at the moment that I felt like I needed to try and be sensitive about it however I am concerned that this piece as much as I don't want it to could still be interpreted in the wrong way because people might think I am comparing humans to animals which I am not doing at all. It needs to be de-constructed by the audience so they are able to grasp the meaning I have put into it which is why it may be appropriate for some audiences like people with an artistic grasp on de-constructing imagery and people who are up to speed on the migration news but other audiences with out this knowledge may not read into it enough which is worrying. I am happy with the look of this piece though because I have tried to edit it to the best I can in the time frame I had adding cuts that make it flow and trying to have mixture of good and bad points in there. I feel like this is a piece which still needs further development to try and make something stronger but I am happy with what I made in the time frame and with the knowledge that I had.