self portrait

Artist Statement

The form that my self portrait is taking is in the form of a video. This project was all about identity, so since I am a video production major I felt making a video for the self portrait would be best. I guess you could say that my major of video production is part of my identity, it's only fitting that I would make a video. As for the content of the video I wanted to incorporate the town where I grew up. “Space, both geographic and virtual, is another recent basis of identities, a direction that attests to the interdisciplinary character of recent research on identities.” This excerpt comes from Judith Howard’s “SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF IDENTITIES”. I believe where you come from or the place you call home is a big part of someone's identity, that's why I chose my town to be the subject of the video. I more specifically chose to focus on an aspect of my town rather than the whole town itself. I chose to focus on the beach. The video starts with a shot of my house then cuts to a shot of my alarm going off early in the morning before the sunrises. It then follows the process I go through to get ready when I want to go to the beach to watch the sunrise. Then the rest of the video contains different cinematic shots of the beach in Long Branch (my town).

The reason I chose to focus on the beach so much is because it’s the part of the town that I enjoy the most and is probably the most appealing part of the town. The beach is no more than a 5 minute drive from my house. I’ve spent a lot of time on the beach with friends and family over the years. I even work at one of the hotels on the beach during the summer. So it’s safe to say I spend a lot of time there. During the months of winter, fall, and spring the town is relatively slow and quiet, but once summer comes around the beach is packed with a ton of people thus causing the town to have a lot more traffic during the summer months. Over time I’ve realized that not everyone is so lucky to live a walking distance from the beach. So the reason I created the video was to not only show a great part of where I live and come from, but to also allow people to somewhat experience the beach even if it's just through video form.

The video is very much related to work I’ve done in the past. I took a photography class at my previous school, that introduced me to the camera that I used to make the video. During the time I was taking pictures I would go and use the beach as a subject/backdrop for the photos quite a bit, especially during the sunrise. As for my professional aspirations, I hope to work as a video editor at a production company, or work on movie sets working behind the camera, or even work in a television studio.

Some videographers/video content creators that inspire me are Peter Mckinnon, Justin Escalona, and duo of photographers that go by the alias ‘Mango Street’. The style my video is shot in was inspired by Justin Escalona’s small cinematic sequences that he puts in his videos. Peter Mckinnon is very informative when it comes to anything video or film making, and I often watch his videos when I don’t know how to do something I don’t know how to do. Although I don’t do photography much anymore, Mango Street inspires me enough to make me get back into it when I have more free time.  

video: https://youtu.be/O-ffslLwWC0