Project In Practise
This section focuses on the practical development of my project, showing the different visual experiments, ideas, and outcomes I tested along the way. It also includes feedback from crits, which helped me reflect and push my work further. Through making, testing, and refining, I was able to apply my research and develop a clearer and more resolved final direction.
Developing Immersive Video Content
After presenting my video experiments in my crits, I started thinking more about how they could feel more immersive rather than just something to watch. The way I displayed the videos, through a phone and QR code, made me realise how important the viewing experience is. From this, I began developing my videos further by exploring more immersive approaches, such as POV and ways of making the viewer feel more involved. I also gathered more visual references and continued experimenting with different editing styles, pacing, and formats to push the idea further. This helped me move beyond simple video outcomes and focus more on how the audience interacts with and experiences the content.
Self-Experimenting with Immersive Content
This work was developed and presented during my first crit, where I focused on exploring immersive video through a self-experiment using ASMR sleep content found on social media. I created a POV-style video showing myself watching the content, while layering voiceovers of my inner thoughts to reflect how the experience felt in real time. I used techniques such as repetition, pacing, and sound layering to recreate the feeling of scrolling and overstimulation. The feedback I received highlighted that this approach felt more raw and less performative, encouraging me to continue developing more honest and immersive outcomes. The image shown captures a moment from this process, where the experience begins to feel more intrusive and overwhelming. This helped me move my work forward into a more personal and experiential direction.
These slides show the full journey of my project from the very beginning to where it is now. It includes my early class notes, assignment structures, proposal ideas, and initial research question ideas that helped shape the direction of the project. I’ve also included planning stages, to-do lists, and how my ideas developed over time. Alongside this, it shows my research process, participant communication (emails, WhatsApp), and consent forms. Overall, it highlights how my project has progressed step by step across the year, showing clear development, organisation, and decision-making throughout.
Initial Ideas & Direction
This mind map shows my early ideas around brain rot, social media, and mental health. At first I was thinking quite broadly and even looked into the biological side of how social media affects the brain. After speaking with my supervisor, I was told not to focus too much on the science side, but instead look at how these trends actually affect people’s mental health in real life. This made me start narrowing things down and thinking more specifically about how mental health is portrayed on social media. From there, I started exploring more experimental ideas like social experiments and making something more immersive, thinking about touch, feeling, and overall experience. Even though these ideas were quite rough, they really helped me figure out the direction I wanted to take my project in.
After this, my supervisor encouraged me to visit more exhibitions and think about how space can shape the experience, referencing Douglas Gordon. This made me start thinking about immersion beyond just video, and how the audience moves through a space. I also decided to visually scamp my ideas, exploring how I wanted the exhibition and final outcome to look, focusing on an immersive concept. I experimented with different ideas like zones, hanging phones, lighting, chairs, and mirrors, constantly refining these based on feedback. This process helped me better understand how to create an immersive journey, leading me to develop a concept where the audience moves through different stages reflecting social media and mental health, ending in a sense of reality. You can find the link to my exhibition reflection slides here.
Exploring Space & Exhibition Ideas
Developing Immersive POV Through Journey
Building on my scamps and second crit, I focused on making the work feel more immersive by testing how the journey could be experienced in practice. I created a visual Canva board to map out the stages (aesthetic → pressure → reality) and then translated this into a physical setup using printed posters. To push the sense of pressure, I placed a phone in the centre playing TikTok content that instructs the viewer what to do, creating a controlled and overwhelming experience. I also began exploring POV-style video to place the viewer inside the experience rather than outside of it. This process shows how I tested and developed immersive ideas through both digital planning and physical presentation.
Third Crit – Immersive POV Video
As part of my third crit presentation, I developed this idea further by making the video experience more personal and interactive. Influenced by artists such as Molly Soda, I began recording myself watching and reacting to content, sometimes without fully being aware I was being filmed through my MacBook. This allowed me to capture more natural and unfiltered responses, linking to the idea of self-surveillance. I then edited these clips using CapCut, experimenting with layering, pacing, and combining footage to create a more immersive outcome.
To present this, I created a QR code that viewers could scan to watch the video themselves, making the experience feel more direct and personal. This shows how I applied both making and presentation in practice, using technology to shape the viewer’s experience. This process also led me to realise that video would be my final outcome, as it allowed me to best communicate immersion, personal experience, and self-surveillance.
I also used voiceovers throughout the video, speaking my inner thoughts as the experiment was on myself, which helped communicate the internal experience more clearly.
Shaping My Experimental Video Concept
Following an online tutorial with my supervisor, I decided to refine my direction by focusing on a video exploring expectation vs reality, based on my research and earlier experiments. I applied this by creating initial storyboard drafts, both visually and written, mapping out each stage of the narrative and how the journey would unfold. I planned specific scenes, transitions, and use of techniques like POV, voiceover, and pacing to show the contrast between social media expectations and reality. This helped me organise my ideas into a clear structure and begin developing my final outcome in a more intentional and practical way.
You can find the link to my storyboard drafts. originally the experimental video duration was going to be 2 min. However, based on footage and my footage I decided to lengthen the video more.
Organising My Footage
I organised my footage by sorting clips into folders based on each stage of the journey. As I was editing in Adobe Premiere Pro, I wanted to make sure everything was organised efficiently, so I could work more smoothly when building the video. I reviewed and selected clips that matched my storyboard and script, then trimmed and prepared them ready for editing. I also planned where to use layering, repetition, and POV shots to keep the immersive feel. This helped me stay organised and made the editing process more structured and intentional.
final Script
After working on my storyboard, I started building my final script by writing and refining my voiceover to match each stage of the journey. I made sure the content matched by breaking everything down into clear scenes (expectation, pressure, reality) and writing it out step by step. I used the script to guide the structure of the video, testing how it sounded alongside my visuals and adjusting the pacing and tone to keep it immersive. This helped me clearly organise the narrative and apply my ideas in a practical way, making sure the video flowed and communicated the experience effectively.
Tutorials & Skill Development
To develop my editing skills, I watched a range of tutorials on Adobe Premiere Pro and 3D anaglyph editing. I followed step-by-step guides to understand how to cut clips, layer footage, and adjust timing to match my storyboard. I then applied this by experimenting with anaglyph 3D effects, using red and blue colour channels to create visuals that can be viewed through 3D glasses. I tested this by duplicating footage, offsetting layers, and applying colour effects to achieve the red/blue separation. This process helped me learn new technical skills and apply them directly into my project, allowing me to create a more immersive and interactive viewing experience.
Editing Process in Practice - First draft.
These screenshots show my editing process in Adobe Premiere Pro, where I put what I learned from tutorials into practice. I built my first draft by organising clips into sequences, layering footage, adjusting timing, and testing effects like the red and blue anaglyph for 3D viewing. I found the 3D glasses part quite difficult at first, but through trial and error I worked out how to make it clearer by adjusting the colour channels and slightly offsetting the layers so it worked better in the background. I also started adding on-screen elements like likes and comments to reflect social media interaction. After showing this to my supervisor, I got feedback that the likes worked well and was told to push it further by adding more comments and engagement. This helped me keep developing my work and improving it in practice.
My first draft to the video:
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Practice & Development: Exploring Typography
While developing this project, I watched different Adobe Illustrator tutorials because I wasn’t fully confident using the software, even though I had some experience with it already. I wanted to learn more about how to fill letters with phrases and create layered typography effects, as this became a big part of my idea. Through watching tutorials and experimenting myself, I started testing different drafts, layouts, font styles, and text placements to see what worked best visually. This helped me build confidence in Illustrator while also developing my project further, allowing me to create more immersive typography that reflected overstimulation, repeated social media phrases, and mental clutte
Typography in My Exhibition
This project started from ideas around healing, mental health, overstimulation, and hidden thoughts. I began mind mapping words connected to self-help culture, anxiety, overthinking, and subconscious feelings, exploring words like healing, within, underneath, and unravel. I kept coming back to BENEATH because it felt deeper and connected more to hidden emotions and what people keep inside.
I then started turning these ideas into visuals through scamps, typography experiments, and Canva development boards. I explored influencer phrases and repeated self-help captions, recreating them through layered typography to show how overwhelming and repetitive these messages can feel online. Using Adobe Illustrator, I experimented with different fonts, layouts, spacing, and hierarchy before finalising a bold tall sans serif style. I wanted the word to feel large, immersive, and slightly crowded, almost acting like bait on the wall to draw people in while reflecting mental clutter and overstimulation.
Based on feedback from Hannah and others, I realised this was the strongest way to present the project within the exhibition space because it made the installation feel more immersive and impactful. The typography wall acts as a visual highlight leading viewers towards the experimental video experience through the 3D lenses. While researching, I kept noticing how repeated social media phrases and captions are what keep self-help culture constantly circulating online, so I wanted to use these repeated phrases to raise awareness around pressure, overstimulation, and the way healing is often presented through influencer culture and endless scrolling.
Developing My Experimental Video
For my experimental video, I created a second draft where I adjusted the blue and red background, making it lighter so it wasn’t as overpowering. This helped shift the focus more onto the content itself rather than the background colours. From the first draft to the second, I managed to lighten the blue and red 3D glasses element, which created a better focus towards the middle of the screen and made the visuals feel more balanced overall. I also added more real-life clips to make the video feel more authentic and relatable, helping it connect more strongly to my overall theme of healing and the reality behind the content shown online.
Initially, I wanted to make my video quite short, but after watching a range of experimental videos, I noticed that many of them were around five to six minutes long. This inspired me to make my own video longer so I could fully explore all aspects of healing content shown online, while also contrasting it with the reality behind it.
After making these changes, I realised the structure of the video had become much stronger and more clearly developed. At this stage, the process became more about refining and making smaller adjustments rather than changing major parts, because the main concept and flow were already working well. After my second draft, I also wanted to include more black backgrounds within certain sections and change the ending of the video. I decided to remove the “I don’t know anymore” part because I felt it no longer matched the direction and tone of the final piece.
Second draft here:
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Here, I am showing my third draft, which is the most developed version of my experimental video so far. At this stage, the structure, editing style, and overall concept are much clearer and stronger compared to my earlier drafts. I focused on refining smaller details such as the visuals, backgrounds, pacing, and the flow of the video rather than making major changes.
This is not the final version yet, as I am still experimenting with some edits and improvements, particularly with the ending and overall atmosphere . However, this draft shows the progress I have made throughout the project and how my ideas have developed over time. I also finalized the background sounds "Rob Hicks out the other side" sound after this draft as I wanted it to have some form of sound in the silence part of the video.
Final Typography Installation
After a lot of visual development and experimenting with small details, this became the final version of the typography piece. I wanted the final outcome to feel bold and visually connected to the overall theme of the project.
For the installation, I’ll be getting it printed by a printing company that makes removable wall vinyls, so it can be stuck directly onto the wall and peeled off afterwards. I’ll be measuring the space carefully so it fits properly within the exhibition area and has a stronger visual impact.
Overall, this project really helped me improve both my creativity and design skills. Using Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop throughout the process allowed me to experiment more with typography, layouts, and editing, and I feel much more confident using them now. By the end of the project, I can see how much my skills and creative thinking have developed through creating my final outcomes.
Exhibition planning
For my exhibition planning, I created a list of materials and equipment needed to help make the space feel immersive and interactive. This included projectors, 3D glasses, headphones, extension leads, lighting, and a TV on wheels to display the experimental video. I also planned the layout of the installation to make the typography and moving image work together within the space.
Alongside this, I developed the idea of placing a bowl within the installation with a question written onto it linked to the themes of the project. Viewers will be able to interact with the piece by writing their own response onto post-it notes and placing them into the bowl after watching the video. I wanted this to make the audience feel involved within the installation while encouraging reflection around scrolling culture, overstimulation, self-help media, and the meaning of healing.