Introduction and reflection:
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a tragedy and chaos for us. It is transforming our lifestyle and the space of the city. Were the local tunnels Changed? Not really. All of the underground passageway I visited were tidy and clean, and it is not an exclusive case just happened during the Covid period. No used mask, litter nor trash on the ground, not even a poster on the wall.
What characteristic of the city can you see from these clean tunnels ?
The story could have ended here by saying pedestrian tunnels during the epidemic time are no different from those in the past and they are the oases in the city immune to the fatal virus. However, it got me rethink why (most of) the tunnels can be so spotlessly clean that we can see no sign of the Covid issue? It’s the street sweeping workers’ effort to keep the tunnels in the form we see. Street sweepers, wearing a mask under the sun, clean the road day after day when we were working from home. They make these common tunnel special. Their hard work and conscientiousness should be appreciated.
What characteristic of the city can you see from these clean tunnels ? Humble? Hard-working? I leave the title of my video as ‘Clean city’ because it is what being shown in the video. Feel it , think about it. The sweat beyond that make the city clean.
Method of research:
Me visiting 8 pedestrian tunnels in my local area with 2 cameras in 3 hours. Like most of the pedestrian tunnels in Hong Kong, they are some common and generic places, or ‘space’ for us.
Production and visual design:
I shot mostly with DSLR a 10-20mm lens to create a gorgeous wide angle view of the tunnel. It really boosted the converging effect of the tunnel. Editing-wise, I didn’t heavily tune the color of the footage, you are looking at what I saw.
Law Shan 3035566352
Reference:
Coronavirus: Hong Kong street cleaners struggle to work amid face mask shortage, Kelly Ho, 2020, HKFP
Coronavirus: Hong Kong street cleaners struggle to work amid face mask shortage
I like the whole color atmosphere shown in the video. They are candy-like, bright, smooth and harmonious. Even during the chaos brought up by the pandemic, this area seems like an utopia for the tranquil. The color set also echos with the title ‘clean’. Pure and beautful colors calm us down during the struggling period.
I like your video very much! In two minutes, tou did a good job in matching the visual content and your oral text. Every time your oral text move to another sub-topic, the video would change to the corresponding scene.
However, I still feel your visual presentation can be improved. For example, in 0:52, you talk about “bikes, bikes and bikes.” Yet, there is only one bike presented in the video. In the next scene, your camera moves to another angle to shoot a bike, but the bike is still the previous bike. It will be much better if you go to another tunnel with a lot of bike-parking lot and take video of them. Otherwise your video would contradict with your oral presentation.
In addition, in 1:12, you talk about the street cleaner cleaned the tunnel when we are at work or at school. I appreciate your content very much, but the video only shows the tunnel. I know you want to use the clean tunnel to express cleaners’ hard work, but if you can manage to take photo of the cleaners working and cleaning the tunnel, it would be much better.
I enjoyed looking at various camera angles in your video essay. For example, the part where you show the junctions of the passage and the part where you show the low to high angle from the ground to ceiling of the tunnel. By using different camera angles, as an audience, it was nice that I could see various parts of the tunnels in multi-angles, and through the transitions of the scene, it attracted my attention and was entertaining watching the video. Also, I really liked the bright vivid colors of the wall, which I think kind of contrasts with the general image of ‘tunnel’ as it kind of reminds me of a dark image. I think it connects well to your main theme of a clean city!
I really enjoy watching your video.The movement of camera is interesting and the sences you choose are suitable.And you also find an interesting link between clean and epidemic,so the idea part is also great.
Appreciate the effort to visit different underground tunnels for field research. I wonder if the cleanliness of the tunnel is only due to the effort of the street cleaners? How do citizens behave when they are inside the tunnel? Do they stay? What about people who usually stay in tunnels, e.g. buskers, street performers, street sleepers, etc. Where have they gone during this pandemic? They might be evicted/ not allowed to stay in the tunnel due to some pandemic regulations, which involves a lot of tensions regarding spatial justice. In your video, you have attempted to go beyond describing what is ‘clean’ and tried to find out who makes it so ‘clean’. Yet, I would encourage you to think through ‘how’ it became clean and whose rights were neglected during the cleaning of the tunnels.