The Weight

This is my entry to the NATA finals. The theme we were given was "a dark confession."

This mostly stems from the fact that my video The Monster Is Me appeared to be glorifying suicide. I considered going back and editing that video, but it was becoming apparent that I was never going to actually get around to doing that. So, I guess if only to clear my conscience, here's The Weight. It's about a guy who misses his friend's last call (which is the "dark confession") and how at first the guilt of that weighs on him (hence the name of the video), and then he gets the opportunity to answer the call and prevent it.

Did this video accomplish what I wanted it to? Visually, sure. Storywise? Not quite. It wasn't a matter of poor planning this time, since this was storyboarded and everything, so I knew how it was going to go. It's just that now, having worked on it for a month, I feel emotionally detached from the characters, which is probably the result of trying to get too much out of characters in too short a time to properly develop a backstory. Any empathy for the characters probably doesn't come from the video itself.

So what have I learned? Basically, if I want empathy for characters in a situation like this, I need to make a more detailed story. Next video, I guess.

The music was by the talented Josh Woodward, whose music is found on joshwoodward.com.