Video Diary Summary

Keeping a video diary has been very interesting and in some ways challenging. My initial aim was to to record my reflections at the end of everyday, for 5 mins, for a week. However, given my current schedule with the play, I found it very difficult to record at the end of everyday, as it was often so late and I felt so tired (see Video Diary 2). Having thought about this and discussed it with Nicole Carmen through these blog comments, I decided to change my brief, as I felt the pressure I was putting on myself was counter productive. So, my video diaries ended up spanning a period of 2 weeks, rather than 1 as originally intended. Although I felt slightly disappointed with myself for not sticking to the task I set myself, I think that in the end this longer time period probably turned out to be interesting as it covered more events.

I feel very mixed about how useful the video diaries were as an effective tool for reflection. I enjoyed the challenge of having to orally express myself and thinking on the spot, and was certainly surprised by how difficult I found it simply to talk for a few minutes about my thoughts, as I normally won't shut up! I think the main issue was that of self-censorship - I knew that I was going to post my video diaries on the internet, so I therefore felt it would not be appropriate to mention people's names or be too negative. There were days when I was feeling very frustrated and wrote lots of strongly worded comments in my private journal, but these would nto have been suitable for the video diary. This led me to question 'Is there any point in reflection if it is not fully honest?'. In many instances I was thinking one thing, but saying another, or censoring myself so much that the thought got a bit lost.

Having said that, I have enjoyed watching the videos back, and looking at other people's video journals. Nicole made a comment that one of her friend's said she had a very expressive face, and they got far more from that than just words; this is certainly true and it's fascinating to see the way our whole energy can shift on a certain day, depending on how we feel. I suppose it's very useful for those of us who are performers to have an awareness of how we present ourselves and come across.

So ultimately, a valuable experience but probably not something I would keep up, unless it was intended for the purposes of entertaining others rather than personal reflection. What does anyone else think? Has anybody else had a similar or contradictory experience of making a video diary?