I knew what I wanted this project to look like in the end. The issue, of course, was how I could achieve that. 

The "phone" light glowing on my face is actually a stealthily hidden mini BlackMagic light that I'm holding in place on the phone. I didn't have an appropriately sized gel/diffuser, so I just wrapped it in paper to make it less glaring. Because that light is not actually blue, just white, I made it looked bluer by setting up a titan tube with a soft red glow. The red offset my phone light and gave it cooler tones. 

Outside my window, I set up a big light. This part was probably entirely unnecessary, especially as I didn't use most the shots where you could see its impact. But what it did do was made some nice light patterns by going through the blinds. It looked like very bright moonlight! Still, it was fun to experiment with, even if I didn't need it. 

I wanted a slight flickering with the light on my face, so it appeared as if I were actually watching moving videos and not just staring directly into a light, so I moved my thumb over the light to create some slight deviations and some flickers. 

It turned out, the video part was easy to edit. The audio was hard. It's tricky to get overlapping, chaotic sounding audio without it sounding bad, and while still feeling cohesive. All the audio clips were from making a burner account on Instagram and scrolling for maybe 8 minutes (the burner account is because if I tried to do it on my normal account, you'd just be hearing ballet, art, and Star Wars videos! For this, I knew I had to break free of my bubble). Then, I deleted all the parts with music (which would instantly date the PSA to when those songs were trending), kept the parts with actual talking, and arranged them in a fashion I thought worked best. 
For this interview, I wanted to highlight the various unique jobs and experiences that media production can offer outside of the typical sphere of Hollywood films that is so frequently thought of. I wanted to bring attention to a different way of doing media production. I interviewed Dylan Holmes, a media engineer with a county office of education's media department. ​

In making this, I learned more about lighting. This was 3 point lighting in that it had 3 lights, but they were arranged in quite a unique way. I had one light bouncing off the ceiling, another going in through a window which helped dampen it, a wall next to that window which acted as a negative fill, and a titan tube changed to a blue hue that added a more artistic lighting to the scene. Initially, the blue was purely so I could distinguish what that particular light was doing, and it was meant to be purely a hair light. Then I liked how it looked with the splash of blue and ended up keeping it as it was. 

The framing in the scene is very intentional. The subject is framed by what's behind the open door and by the servers beside him. By having the door open, he is a dark on a light. Which is a nice contrast. If he had just been in front of the servers, the white walls and door out of frame, then the values would not have been as nicely balanced. It would have been dark on dark and I wanted to avoid that. 
For this assignment, I wanted to create a message about self-love and acceptance for loving yourself. I focused on something that a lot of young women are struggling with today---aging---to try and showcase the beauty of all humans and all who live and breathe. I think it is really important to understand that aging is a gift. And it is beautiful. I am very glad I found the song that I used in the background; it fits perfectly. I wanted age to feel like an art, and for the editing to mimic the feeling the song gives me, hence the sort of collage-style editing that I used in this. 
​Everywhere I’ve gone in the last month since I first saw this assignment, I’ve been gathering clips. Everybody around me was definitely tired of me going “Oh, A CIRCLE!!” and running over to film any circles I saw potential in. One restaurant bemusedly let me lay on the ground to get a photo of their circular light--a shot which I didn't even end up using.

I had a clear vision for what I wanted this to look like very early on, it was just a matter of making it into a reality. I thought for a while about how to encapsulate myself into a video—I wanted to try and capture the way that I am a collage of all of my prior experiences and try to smash the feeling of memories into a clip. The patterns you see, the places you go, the people that you meet. The way the world keeps spinning on despite it all. I think it is impossible to truly capture who any singular person is into a 1 minute video in the same way you cannot capture the sun in a jar. But you can see the reflection of the sun in its glass, so that was what I was going for. 

I decidedly did not keep it simple, but honestly I’ve been wanting to make something like this for a while so it was the perfect excuse to take time out of my day to work on it. (The circle edit in particular I first saw a tutorial on a few months ago while browsing editing videos, and I knew I had to find a project to put it into!). 

So, here’s a reflection of me on a glass jar.