Astral Woods (Patreon)

No ambience if you really only want half the experience.  

I asked Jack to give me an hour to post this and cook dinner so good luck to me cause I have a lot to say. 

I haven't moved the camera and microphone from the spot I left them in the last failed attempt. But I've made some changes. I decided the daylight setting wasn't realistic enough but I could probably make moonlight work. I couldn't possibly make the lighting work out - but it could possibly be a convincing ethereal experience. That was my thought process in going from light fae to dark witch, and lo and behold, I feel so much more comfortable in my skin being this character. Most of it is because I'm not really changing anything about myself in this video. Beautiful witch - check. Deep thoughts - check. Playing with fire - check. 

I've had some transformative moments very recently (thanks Jupiter retrograde) and there is this idea/concept/memory that I wish I had the words to explain so I could share it with you. But the best I can do is tell you how much more real I feel being alone in nature than anywhere near people. How much more free. I realized that the difference for me between nature and people is that nature grants me the right to exist whereas people don't. This realization changed me a little and I wanted to convey this in that video, along with telling you more things you need to hear. 

Most of it is honestly improv, as per usual. If you know how I work on my videos, you know that I rarely have a script - just a general idea of how I want the video to look and feel. This is one such project. I start by reciting one of my favorite poems (that I wrote) and one grand entrance later, I play with fire, smoke, different herbs etc... Unlike the other attempt, this video is everything I like. Dark, mysterious, enchanting... And even though I wasn't sure where I was going with it, I personally feel like there's something so impactful about somebody speaking truths with such conviction that it makes you instantly believe them. This is what I tried to achieve here. I haven't met many people nowadays who speak truth and even less people who have conviction. And I believe this is one of the things that confuses us so much. No one is convinced of anything, no one is convinced of us, and we end up doubting ourselves. Let this video challenge all that shit. 

For this video I prepared a few different things to burn and I thought I'd only end up using the sweet grass but I found out mid video that the smoke didn't really show up in the very dim lighting so I just burned everything I had. Sweet grass, white sage, palo santo and an incense blend I like to use. I even noticed I still smelled like sweet grass the day after when I went out. I didn't mind, and as hypocritical as that sounds because it bothers me when other people wear too much (awful) perfume, I felt confident and beautiful thanks to being drenched in that scent. There are some really tingly rustling and cutting sounds in this video and the gentle blowing came out nicer than expected. 

The most tricky part of this whole video was honestly getting the lighting and recorder position just right. I still haven't moved any of it, by the way. Not because I want to reuse it the same way necessarily, more because it was so difficult to assemble that I'm dreading disassembling it. I ended up going with the red lamp for the front lighting because red light was the only one that illuminated my bright skin but not the dark curtains. With every other color light you could easily make out the patterns on them (they're actually tapestries but I draped them over a pair of leggings jammed in between my wardrobe on one side and tied to a lamp that's tied to a ladder and jammed between the ladder and a wire clothes dryer for hold on the other side so... let's just call them curtains) and as I'm writing this sentence let me just demand points for creativity. Unfortunately, the red lighting wasn't quite bright enough to give me the visuals that I want so I wrapped two strands of fairy lights around the lens also. And that's how this ambience happened. I changed the green woods backdrop to a dark woods backdrop to fit the night time theme and the lamp above me in the beginning where you might see cool toned light cast on my shoulders not only mimics moonlight but also removes any shadows from the front lighting that would absolutely without a shadow (ha) of a doubt give away the backdrop and ruin the immersion. Some experience, some logic, some trial and error. The three pillars of video creation. Any creation, really. 

I hope more than anything that this video makes you feel the way I intended. I want you to feel and be treated like a person. Like you have a right to exist. I'm exploring these things for myself at the moment. And I guess, I just wanted to share. 

//Ally