For this task, we took a series of 100 photos to create a 10 second stop motion video. And the video was a recording of what felt like labour to us being completed. I went on a darker route for this topic, as labour is not a fun and happy topic for me.
First Video – my messy room
This video titled “my messy room” was my first attempt at this task, but it ended up being 30 seconds long with a total of about 200 photos. I went with the concept of how this work consists of 2 different kinds of labour. The first is having to wake up, and the second one is waking up to a labour that must be completed (cleaning my room).
Waking up having to get past another day felt like labour to me, when I was a bit younger. My room was a mess. Looking at the mess that was in my room felt like a reflection of what my life was like. Waking up to a messy room making you feel the need to clean your room, but not having the strength to act on it felt like a lot of labour, emotionally.
I made this video slow with a low shutter speed, as a metaphor for your brain and body starting to wake up, with the sluggish feeling. The camera then gets a close up shot of her rubbing her eyes, and looking around her space. It then reveals that she wakes up to a mess that is on her bedroom floor.
When she looks directly at the camera, the intention was to connect her to the viewer. She looks into the camera with a “i can’t be bothered” look to her face. In the end, she turns the alarm off and goes back to bed; As this was too early for her to deal with. The rain sound in the audio was to represent her emotions of feeling overwhelmed.
Second video – eating
My second video titled “eating”, touches on the emotional labour of building up the courage to eat. In this video, she uses utensils to eat half a piece of a biscuit. This shows that she considers this small amount of biscuit as a meal. People struggling with eating can’t consume a lot due to mental health, so you would count the smallest amount of food as a meal, as a fear of gaining weight. This one was in the 10 second range with exactly 100 photos.
To be honest, I don’t really know how to feel about this work. There are improvements that I would like to make in my future stop motion videos.