REFLECTION:
Given that I did have some knowledge of Plato and his theories on realities prior to the completion of this assessment, making a video on the topic of reality was immediately enticing for me. Thus, my goal for this video was to share Plato’s iconic analogy of the cave and relate to the modern-day perspective on virtual and augment realities.
However, depicting reality in a video was one of the various challenges I had to overcome whilst making this project. Since reality is such a board idea, I decided to use footage of the nature and environment around me, with the idea in mind that in the editing phase, I could distort footage with blur effects to visual portray distortions and changes in reality. Thus, the first thing I did during the production of this video was film B-roll to overlay over my voice. I knew that a significant portion of the video would involve me summarising and explaining the analogy in Plato’s cave, so I source a variety of images depicting the cave so that a had a large range of overlay for my voiceover. When filming my voiceover and still set up the tripod and made sure I had good lighting, as I felt that the video could use some simple footage of me, to break up all the voiceovers and image overlay. Most of my previous knowledge of Plato’s philosophy on realities came from the critical acclaim movie ‘The Matrix’. So, I knew the iconic scene where the protagonist Neo, chooses between the red pill and the blue pill would be a perfect way to demonstrate how Plato’s discoveries are being emulated in the modern day. I also sourced a clip from an animation of Plato’s cave by TedTalk on YouTube, which depict stick figures lined up in a cave on a treadmill entering tunnels labeled ignorance and stubborn and nobody on the treadmill leading to the tunnel labeled self-control. This clip would be the perfect visual to overlay as I summarise the key point of Plato’s analogy, being that society should be cautious in how blindly they accept the realities presented in front of them, and should instead be the masters of there own reality. To further develop a connection between Plato’s philosophy and the modern-day attitudes surrounding reality, I used an imagine of a figure with a VR headset on who is almost being consumed the constructed reality portrayed through his headset. I also quote myself in this image highlighting the word “indistinguishable from reality” to further convey Plato’s cynical tone regarding humanities stubbornness when perceiving reality. Quoting myself was a technique I regularly used throughout my video as I found that this was a powerful way to emphasis particular points I was making during my voiceover. Finally, for the credits I found some ‘Stranger Things’ type of background music as something I could play over the credits where I list all the images and information I sourced for the video.
Since I was already familiar with Premiere Pro I did not have too much trouble putting the production all together. However, I was defiantly surprised out how time consuming the editing process could be and thus, will make sure to give myself plenty of time for editing in the next assignment.
Information in video from:
Wright J H, 1906. ‘ The origin of Plato’s cave’. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 17 pp. 131-142, retrieved 30 August 2019.
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