On a walk this summer, I filmed a variety of short video clips to familiarize myself with a new camera. Reviewing the footage afterwards, I chose what I felt were the best of the visual results to play with and edit.

I had no intention of creating a story or insinuating a story line. I simply stuck what I considered the best imagery together in a one minute video⏤collaging one sequence and leaving two other segments spare. My purpose was solely to keep a record of the results. On a whim, I decided to add music afterwards.

For me, the music instantly turned the random scenes into a story. Not one I had intentionally envisioned, but one that emerged for me out of my own personal history once I experienced the imagery with the spare musical notes.

One of my professors had recently commented that we could put any imagery together in an exhibit and viewers would make meaning out it⏤that our desire for meaning is so strong we will make associations even among unrelated things.

If you’d like to put the theory to a test, watch this minute-long piece and let me know if you sense a story in it. And if you do, what might that story be?

 

Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell a story. Make some light.

KATE DICAMILLO