I know may be this topic is not necessarily a blog post worthy. Especially not a university art blog, but something I want to talk about is actually a serious issue for a lot of students and frustrated youth. And may be this will look like a justification, but again, this is something I went through I want to mention it since it might affect y future works.

Depression...

But it's true. I was in a very bad place last year and it affected everything I was doing. It went to the part, where I wanted to drop out and do nothing. The apathy was terrible.

I would wake up the morning, stare at the ceiling and question myself if this life is what I wanted, does it pleasure me, am I fully satisfied? The more I thought, the less I wanted to actually get up and so things. I lost time, I missed lectures, I barely could manage myself, because I was deep in my emotions and thoughts.

I forgot my self worth...
I forgot my dreams...
I forgot myself... 

My grades and productivity dropped dramatically. If you compare my first year and second year marks, you'll see how badly organized I was.

Most of my friends tried to re-assure me, but I didn't listen& It was hard to look in the mirror and see a person who is actually capable of so many things. It was hard to see someone nice there, so one day I nearly smashed it. I didn't, because I was weak physically. That day I was getting ready to go to a lecture, but after the incident I just broke down on the floor and didn't go anywhere.

It was really hard to fight for myself. Once or twice I got suicidal thoughts and every time I reassured myself that that won't change anything, it won't help me, cause there will be no me. 

But I can happily admit, that I have healed. I managed to get out of a dark, empty and misty highway and find my yellow brick road to my dream. I found myself again and I am grateful that it happened to me. Not a lot of people are able to fight it. I do sometimes still get stressful and anxious, but who doesn't nowadays?

What I can definitely  say in the end? Never give up. The entire world can be against you, but people around do care, do listen and do wanna help. May be not somebody you want to hear, may be not somebody you know well, but there are people around that will listen and drag you out and help to fight the darkness. Don't hide feelings and emotions, talk them off to anyone who is ready to listen to you. And dream. Dreams are the most powerful thing that we can have in our lives and sometimes only dreams can give you the power and the energy you need to get through hard times.

xxx

Recently due to my love towards one music boy band, I really got into symbolism and decoding meanings in videos and film. But I also know that to hide hints in films or videos you have to make research to back it up. In our group of 4 that we have for a dance video I am the one responsible for part of the research and meanings behind the video.

The idea of our video is to show that every art is art, no matter where it comes from. We took hip-hop and contemporary styles, because they considered to be from different worlds and sometimes people, who do high art tent to not accept the underground styles, as hip-hop. For us, we don't see a difference in these art form, since they are art. Our statement is quite clear. These two styles can work together.

First of all, we decided to place this video in the theatre. Theatre has always been a representation of high art, moreover placing this "dance battle' between two different styles on the theatre stage makes viewers feel like they are assessing or criticising the battle. It also will make the battle more official.

So straight away on our first very brief meeting I remembered my recent research of Sherin Neshat. Her piece  Turbulent had the similar idea, though the meaning behind was different. She put two singers on the stag to judge by others. We will not split the screen in to, but our dancers will definitely start from two opposite sides of the stage, so that we could show the difference and the conflict.

So in the very beginning I will say that I am not a fan of Avid. I think there is only one great difference from Premiere pro - is the file sharing system and honestly that's it. May be it is just me being very used to Premiere and being biased because of that or may be I am too dumb to actually get used to editing in Avid.

Also, after the actual shooting in November I realized that I am more of the producer than and editor or any sort of post-production person. I tried to make the edit as good looking as possible though, but I wasn't that interested in it. Honestly.

Beginning.

Frustration.

Pros.

Results and conclusion.