"A Time to Talk" by Robert Frost - Digital Poetry Interpretation

https://youtu.be/ssWXEm7TLBE

For the most part, I enjoyed working on this project. I think I took somewhat of a different approach to thinking about this project when it was assigned, which, as a result, impacted how my final video turned out. Way back when the video was assigned, instead of finding a poem I enjoyed or knew I wanted to work with, I thought about what I would enjoy filming. I just transferred schools, and while my best friend from high school goes here, I was really worried about making other friends. But her friend group instantly took me in, and now, even though it's only been two months, I've never had such a close group of friends. So, when this project was assigned, I knew I wanted to film them and to create something that represented all the fun we have together. Knowing this, I started looking for a poem that would fit what I wanted to film. I probably spent a good week looking for a poem that I liked about friendship. I liked A Time to Talk because I saw parallels between the poem and my own life. Sometimes it's hard to make time for others and to not prioritize work or school, but Frost makes the point that it is important to make time for the ones you love. I decided that instead of displaying how it's important to stop hoeing the fields to go up to the fence to talk a friend, I wanted to display how it's important to sometimes put aside school work and other responsibilities to spend time with your friends.

As for getting footage, I thought it would be fairly easy. At the time that the project was assigned, my friends and I had two trips coming up. In October, we had plans to go to Toronto (over Fall break) and to Fall into Fall. Fall into Fall is a tradition that my best friend and I have together. We used to do it when I was visiting her during my Fall break from my old school, but since I'm here now, we were all going to Fall into Fall together. All Fall into Fall entails is a day of pumpkin and apple picking and other Fall nonsense. I thought our Toronto trip and Fall into Fall would provide excellent opportunities to get cute footage for the video. But then Toronto happened, and, due just wanting to have fun and not worry about filming, I took very little footage. And then, due to people being busy, Fall into Fall was pushed back to late October, after the video was already due. So I was sort of freaking out because I lost these two chances to get really good footage for my video.

Looking back, I'm happy how it worked out. Since I didn't have footage from Toronto or Fall into Fall, I had to pull from snapchats or videos I already had. I also had to start recording some of the day to day things we do when we're hanging out. But I think these weird little videos are much more representative of our friend group than nice, cutesy videos would have been.

I used iMovie for my video. I've never used it before, but I found it fairly intuitive. I just spent a lot of time with it and didn't let myself get upset when I made mistakes. I liked iMovie because it's not exactly professional video editing software, but you also have a few more options than WeVideo.

I really liked this project and I like this approach of engaging students with poetry. I think it's fun and lets students exercise a lot of choice. It lets students dive deep into a poem of their choice and think about their feelings on the poem and how they want to visually represent those feelings. This is a cool exercise, and definitely one that I enjoyed.

Comments

  1. KimMarie ColeNovember 7, 2018 at 7:05 AM

    Learning more about your selection process is fascinating and shows how many different ways students will take up assignments and make them their own. This worked well. Your blog post and analysis reflect that decision-making too. I learned quite a bit about your process but not as much about your analysis or interpretation of the poem, or how you aligned the video with the poem itself. I was impressed by the early sections of the video where you highlight the busy aspect of life. When you move to the fun, "play time," it looks like it's not really about the poem then but about the experiences of friendship, which include all of those times to talk!

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    1. Emily CollinsNovember 7, 2018 at 10:50 AM

      Put simply, my analysis of the poem was along the lines of; making time for those you love should (whenever possible) take precedence over work and/or other commitments. I didn't really take on a strict interpretation of the whole "time to talk" aspect of the poem. I understand that for Frost, it might literally be about making time to go up to the fence and have a simple conversation with a friend, but for me, the action of making time to talk just represents making time for friends in general.

      I think the second half of my video comes off as less about the poem because the first half of my video follows a strict interpretation of the poem whereas the second half does not. There's an obvious tone shift, which was deliberate to show relief from taking a break from homework/responsibilities, but the shift also makes the video seem less about the poem. The video gets increasingly silly as it goes on, and while I thought about changing that during the editing process (I actually thought about cutting entire sections and making it much shorter), I ultimately kept the second half the way it was to be representative of my friend group as a whole (they're pretty silly). That's why I strayed a little from a more serious interpretation of the poem because I wanted to keep that personal aspect and make it about my friends, not just the importance of making friends in general.

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