tabletop video

For my tabletop video I wanted to do something interesting with perspective and space. The set-up of having a camera simply pointing down at a table and doing something in front of it seemed one-dimensional and not very exciting to me so I started thinking of ways I could take the video as far away from the table as possible. I realized that the camera was in a kind of bird's eye position and started experimenting with satellite images that I found on the internet in order to give the impression of flying high above the landscape. I found one that was large enough that I could print sections of the photo on sheets of paper and line them up to make an image a couple of feet long. This allowed me to slowly pull the images through the frame making it seem as though the camera was not only moving, but soaring through the sky rather than just standing still over a tabletop. I tried the idea with my own camera and it looked pretty good so I decided to go with the idea. I knew I needed something else in the video, though, both to give it an angle and because there was no way I could print a picture long enough to move through the frame for the full time of the video. Since the point of the video was getting out of the restricting space, I decided to start the video in a defined space to create contrast. I got the idea of first making a paper airplane (something you would do on a tabletop) in front of a picture of an airplane hangar, the place where an airplane is the most confined. Then I could use the satellite images to allow the paper airplane to take flight, representing the spirit of imagination that's the whole idea behind making a paper airplane.

I felt that the performance of the video went alright, but could have gone better if I had practiced with the actual camera and set-up rather than at my house with my camera. When I practiced I had my camera close to the surface so that I watch the camera's screen and see what I was doing and make sure the image was always filling the screen to keep the illusion of flying believable. Having the camera close also made it easy to know where to hold the airplane so that it looked like it was flying above the landscape. Not being able to adjust the position of the camera and instead controlling the distance with just the zoom made this more difficult. The other problem I ran into was having to pull the images through the the tripod legs which was awkward and made it tough to move the image smoothly; an important element creating a realistic feeling of motion. During the performance, I also pulled the image through a bit faster than I had practiced, so the timing was off and I ended up lingering on the "The End" photo longer than I would have liked. One other thing that threw off the performance was that the music I intended to have playing during the flight part of the video was not turned up enough to hear (I don't know why because I checked it before I began) so I was trying to reach under the tripod to turn it up and pull the images smoothly at the same time! Because I was so busy during the performance, I couldn't really watch the screen to see how it was going, but besides the these few difficulties I think it turned out alright. It was a fairly complicated performance- as far as getting the timing of everything right and keeping everything where I wanted it in the frame- and I knew it would be tough, but I wanted to try because I thought the idea had potential to make a cool video.