The newest episode of Unbound; Lo! and behold!
Friendly reminder that you can find the full playlist of Unbound here and my page about the BTS here!
Unbound is a series I make predominately for my family and friends who know me well, so it feels a little strange putting here in a more public place. I sometimes qualm at the idea of a video ‘blowing up’, despite the lack of quality. The people in my life who do watch them, however, love them, which fills me with so much joy. Sometimes I’ll get dismayed at the idea they only have a few views, then all of a sudden a friend will message me completely out of the blue to say they binge-watched a whole bunch of the episodes, and that makes everything completely worth it.
All of my Unbound videos are stories about my life, condensed into about ten minutes and then put to whatever song was bouncing around in my head at the time. Sometimes they are adventures, and sometimes they are just days in my life. This video takes place central in that Venn diagram. A lot of people watch them because they find them funny, for whatever reason, but aside from the parody at the beginning, there isn’t really any here. I hope people like this one because it’s part of that balance in the videos that I want to create. Of course, I want to show some truly funny and natural interactions with my loved ones and intersperse them with wry writ, but I also love to capture the subtle beauty in the world.
These walks I recorded are walks I embark on pretty much every week, but they’re always different in some small way, and I’ve been walking them for over five years. The clouds are always differently shaped, the sun shines on a different leaf in a new way, and there’s always colours we just walk past and ignore. Looking at the world through a camera lens has massively changed my perspective. I no longer see the humdrum everyday life, I see the sky as a painting, and buildings as framing devices. Even while writing this paragraph, I got distracted by the clouds outside the window, and spent almost eight minutes staring at them, marvelling at the delicate paint-strokes of silver and dark, and where the gaps gave through to brilliant azure. I thin k that’s what I was trying to capture here in this video, and I hope one person at least gets to experience that.
This video was, in a way, inspired by one of my new favourite Youtubers; Kraig Adams. Kraig, a very nice guy indeed, as judging to his replies on my inane comments on his videos, makes hiking videos, beautifully framed in some of the most breath-taking parts of the world. His life-style is very minimalist, as is his approach to film-making, no words and limited music; just the diegetic sounds of nature. Obviously, I am nowhere near his level, nor do I really intend to be, as we just make different types of videos, yet I must still admit where the inspirations lie. Go check out his videos for some of the most relaxing and awe-inspiring hours you can spend on Youtube.
This still has some of my experimental techniques sprinkled in; I tried two different scenes with colour correction , one came out extremely faux and obvious looking, but I just loved the way it combined with the next scene, so if you have an eye for film-making, it should be obvious, and will probably annoy you greatly. I also have been having a problem with the new GoPro, where the files had a strange buzzing sound. I have since fixed it, but at the time of editing this, it also caused the files to lag like crazy on the preview, so I really wasn’t sure how it was going to come out until it was rendered, but I think my leap of fate paid off.
Finally the elephant in the room; the beginning. A little horrific I know, and the lip-synching got all scrambled in editing (That’s it, I swear), and I had to re-do the head shaking part, hence the sudden growth of facial hair. In other news, the raw file of that head-shaking part is absolutely terrifying if anyone wants to see it.
UNBOUND 