This project is part of the Parsons "Time" class that is part of the first-year curriculum.
For this project, we had the opportunity to make a video about any topic that we wanted to and using any style and format. I decided to do a video essay that relates to the question: What is love? I went to Central Park to film different scenes and situations that, in my opinion, represented some form of love. It was important to me that this video didn't revolve around only romantic love, as I believe that there are many, more underrated, forms of love. Combining my own thoughts with the raw footage I had I wrote the following essay:
When it comes to love, we all think we know what it’s about
No one has to explain it to us.
But if we were asked “what is love?”
It would be almost impossible to come up with one common definition.
Even the dictionary can’t agree on only one; it has more than ten.
Some people describe it as:
listening to music
taking a morning stroll
moving slower
giving yourself a treat for no reason
being able to say “party of one”
filling a room with music
having fun doing the simplest things.
There are also moments that make us feel love
when we feel our presence in the world
when we are one with our body
when we are somewhere we always wanted to be
when we make every day a fairytale
when we realize we are living the life we’ve always dreamt of.
Some people express love
by painting the perfect picture
by creating mini versions of themselves
by holding tight
by walking hand in hand
while others wag their tails.
Love is having support
being independent
thinking about yourself as the main character of your own life.
It’s the light at the end of the tunnel
the umbrella in a storm
a shelter when it’s raining
water when it’s hot.
Love can freeze time
it can evaporate
It can add color
it can create a passion
It can create you
It is knowing how to be alone
having little moments with other people
meeting others with whom you become one.
Love is everywhere because it surrounds us
because we replay our favorite scene
because we eat good food
because we conquer our fears
because we dress up for ourselves.
Love is
beautiful and horrible
hot and cold
pleasurable and painful.
We all need and want some form of love
but how can we find something
if we don’t even know what we’re looking for?
I wanted the essay and the video to have a format that uses so many examples about what love is so that the spectator can see that love is really everywhere. I then used Adobe Premiere to create a video that had the essay as its subtitles. I added filters and color changes in order to mimic the effect of how I saw the world while looking for examples of love in central park. This is the final video:
The final part of the project was to create a printed component that accompanied the video. I created a folding zine that includes the full essay as a poster on one side and a book format on the other that complements the video. I designed the whole zine using Adobe Illustrator and printed each booklet on one piece of paper.
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