53intake_Chan_Nga_Yin_15039989_Project2_Blog4

Blog 4

Study of The 1960s For Me我的六零年代 by Choi Sai-ho (2015/5m23s) (in term of content and categorizing footages)

Study of The 1960s For Me

The 1960s For Me 
(2014 / 5m23s / Original footage : 720×576 dpi. / Final output : 1920×1080 dpi. /Color)

Video link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYiEQ3vDubI

Synopsis:

Drawing inspiration from the sounds, instruments, style, texture, mixing and record back spinning of 1960s pop music (the likes of The Beatles, The Doors, The Velvet Underground), modern sampling methods (such as the remixing styles of Unkle, Amon Tobin and the composing styles of The Chemical Brothers) is used to re-present, synthesize and “musicify” the content of Ya Si’s poems. It also references the line from Bob Dylan’s 1960s classic Blowin’ In The Wind, “The answer is blowin’ in the wind”, to correspond to the line in Ya Si’s poem that pays tribute to the song. This is recited in a recording by singer-songwriter Jing Wong. The Hong Kong historical footage of the 1960s is used to construct the visual.

Acknowledgement: Historical footage provided by Public Records Office, Government Records Service, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Flow of the video:

The poem (voice over), the content and the visuals are complementing each other in the video. The story is about a man’s life, thinking and feeling in Hong Kong in 1960s. He was not happy with the environment, confused with his positioning. The footages show a lot of information to support the story. The content of the footages includes important history in 1960s such as the impact of Typhoon Mary and Typhoon Wanda, ribbon-cutting ceremonies by The Governor of Hong Kong and the opening of tunnel, fashion, social problems, general living status in Hong Kong, lifestyle, street view and religion. Those footages can give a clear image of lives in 1960s and people’s frustration.  It starts with the victory of a historical event, observation of men, women, social problems, then expression of feeling and thinking.

Editing:

Simple footage stitching with zoom in and zoom out. The footage itself contains a lot of information and signification. Those are the fact that the artist added the poem (voice over) to show the humaneness.

Interview with Choi Sai-ho:

At the beginning, he got a list with tagging and Ya Si’s poems. Then, he produced the soundtrack draft, looked for the right content of the footages with the poem. At last, combined everything and adjusted the music, and the speed of different footages.

Categorizing footages

I am going to make an excel to gather all the footage information with a tagging (keyword). After compiling a list, I will then start with the storyboard.