An honest critique of a piece is alway valuable. It is especially so when the author is entering new fields of medium beyond carefully wrought sentences and language and voice to incorporate audio and visual effects.
It was pointed out to me that in discovering the joy of Photoshop and effects, I got quite carried away. As a matter of fact, it occurred to me that Recycling turned into a movie so easily that there are only two text-based images included aside from the titles and credits. I forgot to include the written poem! Now that was awfully authorly of me, taking away completely the reader’s interaction with the words by replacing it with my own audio rendition. What should have happened, didn’t. Instead, if the reader should choose to eliminate the munchkin audio, the poem is completely unreadable.
Or is it? Shouldn’t the visuals tell the story as well? And, those visuals have to be clear enough to tell the story–if not in the exact words as written by the author. Mine clearly didn’t.
There’s so much to learn besides the software and playing with images and depending on the Echo effect until I get a sound card that allows bass and treble adjustment. There’s learning how to tell a story in images alone. There’s learning–if I should choose to incorporate it–to tell a story through music.
What elaborate changes a simple poem needs to undergo to turn itself into a production that still needs to maintain its simplicity.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology