There are many different tools someone can use in order to show the world how they want to be seen. One way to give information to the world could be the way someone talks to others. If the person is rude to people a majority of the time it is clear that's just their personality. Another tool someone can use is based on the music someone listens to. Although this could throw off the accuracy, it is stereotyped that certain personalities listen to certain kinds of music. Everybody has assumptions about each other, but are these assumptions correct? Probably not.
This post is about how to communicate to the world, without using words, how someone wants to be portrayed by others. Everyone has a certain version of themselves that they believe they are. The problem with that is sometimes others don’t see that person the same way. For example, if someone thinks they are friendly and kind to everyone, there might be one or two people who saw that person on a bad day and think they are one of the rudest people. It is also not possible to correctly stereotype anyone. Just by looking at someone, it is hard to tell any personality besides maybe the way someone is dressed. Even that could throw people off as well.
So, what things should someone do in order to accurately portray themselves? Maybe play a song, maybe tell someone their favorite movies, food, or book etc. This may help someone get to know more about a person. But now try to get to know someone without using any words. It just got a bit harder didn’t it? Well for a class we were asked to do just that: use a theme to communicate to others about our personalities without dialogue or text. We were asked to make a one minute video about ourselves, all while following the theme of politics, more precisely the politics of being a commuter.
There were many struggles that had to be dealt with for the making of this video including, having to make the video exactly one minute. There are a lot of things one could show so people get a solid understanding of their personalities. Yes the person is a commuter but what else can people learn about them? Maybe for a second there is a pet in the video. Maybe their favorite color is being worn or comes up a few times. There are many visual contexts that could be subtly put in the video to get a personality across. The main struggle was the use of no words, spoken or written. Another way to give a sense of personality was based on what kind of music was in the background of the video. The background music could help the viewer understand or maybe even help connect with the other person. The final personal struggle was with having to film in a group and to get all four people together. We all had to make time outside of class to film for the project (one person never even showed up). We also had to edit the project, together and separately and combine the work that we had done.
The use of video as a way of communication is a good way to go. In daily life it is easy to communicate with someone by using video (FaceTime, Skype etc.). Compared to writing a letter or a note, video chatting has taken over. This also applies to texting. Most people have given up texting for a phone call or a FaceTime. While all of these tools are useful, there is also another visual communication tools and that is photographs. The use of photographs, or GIFs help to tell a story without words most of the time. Because of all of these tools, there are many different ways a society is able to communicate. So why use video as opposed to text and photographs? Well in short, we had to for the project. But if we had to use only one of these mediums, the easiest one would be using only text. This way we could get the point across of who each group member is, and what they are like.
The last thing is the publicity and the timing. Since the video was shown to the class, it possibly swayed us to film something safe. The whole video might have been different if we were showing it to our family or our friends, as opposed to strangers that we just met 4 months ago. But I guess that also pushed us to explain more of who we are since the rest of the class doesn’t know each other on personal levels. Because of the public nature of the videos, both while filming and eventually showing the video, as a group we did not show everything we might have wanted. Another thing is that only being given one minute, the video needed to be fast-paced and cohesive in order to get the point across.
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