YouTube Illuminations

Since the friend of Billy Collins created a YouTube animation of "Forgetfulness," I've been intrigued with the idea of matching video and text. Some people I know felt that many of the animations were too literal, but to my thinking these echoes made the poem more accessible.

Thinking about animating a new poem "Song for Sophie Clementine" I harkened back to a previous attempt. Years ago with a Super8 camera, a colleague and I tried to match a moving images of twin compasses to her reading of "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning."

Here are some answers to a few questions I had before making my recent attempt.


What kind of a script or scenario is needed?
To make such an attempt, the idea of the poem must be clearly in mind.
Anything that conveys the main idea of the whole poem or each part of the poem can be used.

How many images does each poem require?

I believe this depends on the nature of what is to be shown in the poem. A simple lyric can get by with one image. A narrative like Billy Collins requires a series of images that erase. In a sense there is only one image but many variations on that images.

What kind of sequence did your video require?
Before reading the "Song for Sophie Clementine," I tried to set up one key image that would unfold during the audio reading and then to reread the audio while the text is visible. The clementine in a bowl of blueberries seemed to offer the right image to play off the reading.


How will the author know when the proper balance has been found?

When text and the images inform each other, the video offers an illuminated moment similar to what many people saw in the Billy Collins performance.


Why is this worth doing? I believe it will allow us to focus on some of the performer tricks that make each stanza or image more accessible.