wander the woods

"wander the woods" is an audio-visual film portrait of one forest in Ljubljana, aiming to portray the subjective perception of a simple walk through the woods and to capture the its individual atmosphere.

Taking walk through the forest is a way to clear your head, to calm your mind, to be alone with yourself. And no walk itself is the same. Depending on outter conditions like weather, season and time of the day, but also on ones mood and mindset, the personal perception of a simple activity like this does vary.

The idea for this project came to me while taking several walks through the forest myself. I noticed that, though i was wandering through the same forest over and over again, my individual perception of it was always a different one.

Visual and auditory footage, recorded and shot in Golovec, form the base for further work.

In order to recreate the perceived atmosphere and represent the subjective impressions gathered whilst this experience this footage was combined in an alienated presentation of the forest.

The conposition consists of several elements and types of materials that are connected and mutally influencing each other.

The film footage was edited in Adobe Premiere to the beat of choosen atmospheric music. The montaged sequences were then modified in Adobe After Effects ith effects and filters, that are providing an alienation of the footage whilst enhancing its atmosphere. Specific parameter of theses effects are connected to an audio amplitude, generated from characteristic forest noises and thus controlled by them. In that way the sound influence the resulting image. Special effects like dust particles, snow, fog and sun rays target to alienate the visual footage in order to enhance the individual ambience and thus put the subjective perception in focus.

TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION :

The project was developed in the framework of my studies in the field of Digital Media. It was created during my semester abroad in the winter semester 2018/19 (October 2018 – January 2019) in the framework of the course »video and postproduction«, taught by assistant professor Andrej Kamnik at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Univerza v Ljubljana in Slovenia.

Getting familiar with montage and editting techniques and the usage of Adobe Premiere Pro was one part of the course. The focus though was on the work with After Effect and thereby the creation and application of special effects and filters.

These are namely effects like dust particles, snow, fog and simulated sun rays, supporting and enhancing the atmosphere of the composition. For the creation of dust and snow the effect CC Particle World was used. Fog was generated with the use of Fractal Noise. The sun rays are functioning like a overlay filter, using the effect CC Light Burst 2.5. Because the footage was shot handheld, the Wrap Stabilizer Effects was used to get rid of unwanted movements in the sequences. Furthermore camera and motion tracking was used to make the effects act in a three-dimensional scene.

It was intended to create a series of short sequences like this, for which further footage was already shot. Due to the lack of time only one composition could be completed in time.
The project is still in development and more sequences like this are intended to be created soon.