Thanks to Michael Branson Smith below are three ideas for experimenting with video. They’re all pretty straight forward, and they give you a specific focus and set of limitations to work through—which can be helpful. If you are looking  to experiment with video try one of these. And if you want to submit a video to the ds106 assignment bank, and I don’t thing any of these are submitted,  consider it a freebie—and define the difficult level based on your experience creating it.

Make it Backwards

In this assignment, plan and execute a scene where in you play it backwards for the desire effect. In the above scene from Orpheus, the character rises from the dead in a fairly haunting and surreal way, an effect that Jean Cocteau creates by playing the scene backwards. Can you create a similar effect by planning a scene that will add dramatic effect by playing it backwards?

Reproduce They Live

Play with point of view and effects to give your viewer a sense of meaning beyond the reality of the image. In John Carpenter’s 1988 cult class They Live, he uses a pair of sunglasses and black and white film to give the viewer a sense of seeing the alien-driven consumer reality that controls us all. Experiment with point-of-view and alternating color/black and white to create your own short scen from They Live.

The Old Gloves Through the Window Trick

What Jean Cocteau understood as well as anyone in cinema was that the form was one big illusion. The above scene, once again from Orpheus, reinforces that. How might you create a sene of the other worldly on video using some tricks that Cocteau demonstrates in this scene? Perspective, camera angles, and props go a long way towards momentarily convincing the viewer they’re in another world.

Below is the video featuring Michael Branson Smith, Mike Bosland, and mI talking about two of the three approaches above, we cut cut off before we could discuss the third thanks to my deep issues with technology