Future Video Projects

These are some (probably not all) of the projects I’m working on.

Having a future (started October 2006)

I have been working on a video about having a future. It is aimed specifically at children like the child I was, who could not envision my place in society as an adult, and whose reactions to being unable to envision that place had drastic consequences in our lives. I want to show how there is so much more to our futures than the things we can imagine, or than the things others can imagine for us.

Recognizing and dealing with overload (started December 2006)

This video would also be aimed at autistic people, whether younger or older. It would be about how to recognize and manage overload, which are things a lot of us are never taught explicitly. We’re often not taught them because acknowledging the existence of things like overload and shutdown would undermine a lot of “therapies” that say that it’s possible for us to behave like non-autistic people, consequence-free, if we just try hard enough. This video would reinforce our natural ways of dealing with overload and possibly add more if the person hadn’t heard of them.

Personal dictionary of facial and body expressions (started December 2006)

A lot of people can’t understand my facial expressions and body postures (or even accuse me of having none, which isn’t true). I’m not sure whether this video will be public or whether I will only show it to staff. I have been trying to drag the camera out every time I spontaneously am doing something related to emotions or even various physical states, in order to capture these things the way they are since I can’t really bring them on on purpose. This is taking forever, for obvious reasons. I don’t know if or when I will finish it.

More going on than people think (started June 2007)

I’ve been really sick for the past couple months, and have not had as much energy as usual. One day I was thinking of all this material that I needed to write or put in video, but the moment I actually moved to do it, I was unable to write it, everything would just fall apart the moment I started moving. So I set up the video camera, pointed it at the spot I was sitting, and sat back down and kept on coming up with ideas. If anyone had tried to hold a conversation with me at the time I probably wouldn’t have been able to. I still have that video footage, but have not attached the words to it yet. The words would convey how much more was going on in my head at this time than a person might expect, and how if I’d moved and become more interactive-looking I’d have lost everything I knew, and how many people in my life have accidentally reversed this, assuming the more “interactive” I look the more I am showing understanding and thought and stuff.

Variation among non-autistic people (not started yet)

Video of a non-autistic person in a lot of different situations. Commentary on the way that, for instance, in one situation she might be smiling and socially engaged, and in another situation she might be frowning and concentrating on something, in one she might be energetic and in another tired. Contrasting her mannerisms across different contexts. And then reacting to her in the same overly-suspicious way that autistic people are often reacted to when our movements or moods or abilities vary across circumstances.

Different levels of movement (not started yet)

Showing different kinds of movement, and the different levels of difficulty of each.

Note: On YouTube and LiveVideo I am silentmiaow and amandabaggs only. Anyone else claiming or appearing to be me should not be believed unless I change this space.

Comments from when this was a page not a post:

How I Make My Videos

A lot of people have asked questions about how I make my videos, so I’m just going to answer everyone in one spot. I’ll start with the technical stuff.

Technical Stuff

I used to use a digital camera that could only record a minute and a half at a time. It had no tripod mount so I had to set it on flat surfaces. Sometimes that meant stacking books up to get it to sit right, and it often fell over nonetheless. Then when I was on CNN, many of my relatives and a family from the neighborhood I grew up in saw me. Together they bought me a real digital camcorder with a tripod, which I’m very grateful for because it makes things a lot easier.

After I get the videos recorded, I transfer them to my computer. I can edit the individual videos in the software that came with my camcorder. Sometimes Windows Movie Maker will deal with those files, and sometimes it won’t. When it won’t, I have to convert them to another file format. I use a variety of freeware tools for manipulating and converting video files, because I can’t afford commercial editing software. I use RAD Video Tools, Stoik Video Converter, and VirtualDub.

Then I put the videos and any effects I want together in Windows Movie Maker. I might record sound separately or straight over the video. I use a Dynavox VMax these days for spoken words, and may use my voice for other sounds like humming or singing, both of which I use an old, borrowed computer microphone for. Windows Movie Maker has a feature that allows you to record sound straight over the top of the video project. But sometimes I prefer to record it separately, in which case I use Audacity. Then I can just drag and drop that into the Movie Maker project.

After editing all that stuff is, I save the Microsoft Movie Maker project as a WMV file, which I then have to convert to AVI. Then I use the DivXLand Media Subtitler to add subtitles, and by then I’m usually done.

Other Stuff

Then there’s the less technical end of things. I don’t work from written plans or scripts or anything, although there is an element of planning involved. I know what I want to do and then I film everything I think I need for that purpose.

I’ve found that because I’m autistic there’s a strange expectation that everything I do on camera should be absolutely spontaneous, and that if it’s not there’s something wrong. This is not how most non-autistic people make videos and it is not how I make videos either. I use a combination of planning and spontaneity.

I’ll give examples from the video I made to show what happens when I try to boil water.

I had to show the ways that I respond automatically to various aspects of my surroundings. I did not wait until I was trying to boil water and then film my attempts to do so (which is what people in the “must be absolutely spontaneous” camp would expect of me). I set up the tripod in the living room pointed into the kitchen over the kitchen counter. I carried the remote control with me in one hand. And I walked in and out of the kitchen repeatedly.

The spontaneous aspect of this is that I did not plan out which objects to interact with, or how to react to them. That evolved naturally. I deliberately wandered around the kitchen in the manner that I do in real life, but the interaction with the objects was for the most part spontaneous, as was the stopping and not moving at certain points. The part where I sat down was my body’s attempt to take a break (I don’t normally stand as long as I did while filming this, I’m also physically disabled and normally use a wheelchair). It was a good deal longer than what I showed in the end product, and I just later filmed myself rocking from the back to fill in that gap where I sat down.

So there was that combination of deliberate planning of how the actions would take place, and then spontaneous reactions to things around me. That’s how most of my videos work, there is a combination of the two, just like there is in non-fiction videos by non-autistic filmmakers. Being autistic does not change this, it only changes what sorts of things spontaneity and plannedness look like.

I am actually working on a much more difficult video project, in which I really am trying to capture spontaneous expressions that I cannot do deliberately. I have been working on it for quite some time and it’s meant to be a dictionary of sorts of expressions, I don’t know whether it will be public or just for my staff. But it is much harder because I have to be able to set the camera up or have it set up already, while I’m still doing whatever it is that I’m doing. This is why most filming does not work this way. It’s also why this project has been going on since last December and I still haven’t come anywhere near to completing it, and why the parts I do have tend to be expressions of continuous things like pain or overload rather than fleeting expressions of emotions. (See Future Video Projects for other projects I’m working on.)

Why I Make My Videos

For the same reason that I write: To convey information that I think is useful to convey. It’s just another way of doing it, and one that I prefer in many respects. Because my interaction with my surroundings in everyday life is not word-based, it’s movement-based and all kinds of other things, and those are easier to capture on video than in a word-based blog. I really enjoy being able to communicate with people in other ways than words, and videos (even the ones with words) are useful in trying to do that.

Also, it’s one thing to describe at length what happens when I try to do things like boil water or cook for myself. It’s another thing to be able to show people, “Here is what happens, for me and a lot of other people like me, when we try to do these things.” It makes it so much more obvious how hard we are working, because it’s not just words, it shows what life is like for many of us, and it’s harder to ignore than just “And this is difficult for me.” It’s one thing to describe the way I interact with my surroundings, it’s another to actually show people, as in “In My Language,” the ways that have always (whether I’ve had words or not at the time) come more naturally to me than standard language has.

Also, a lot of people online tend to think that I and other autistic bloggers all somehow magically “look normal”. Videos counteract that impression quite well, I’ve found.

And I’ve found that it also lets people know they’re talking to a real person, not just a bunch of words on a screen. I’ve noticed that Second Life is often more civil than IRC even though they can be used for the same sort of chatting, and I think it’s because people can see that there’s person-like figures on the screen, and that they’re interacting with human beings, not just words. It’s harder to hate a person than it is to hate a bunch of words.

Hopefully that’s answered most questions people have about this stuff. I’ve tried to cover everything I’ve been asked about before.

Note: On YouTube and LiveVideo I am silentmiaow and amandabaggs only. Anyone else claiming or appearing to be me should not be believed unless I change this space.

Comments from when this was a page, not a post

“Been there. Done that. Preferred to grow.”

Found through a post at Moggy Mania:

The other story from a ‘Pillow Angel’ Been there. Done that. Preferred to grow.

I’ve read McDonald’s (auto)/biography before. And she has a webpage here

A quote from her article:

At the time of the initial publicity about growth attenuation, Ashley’s parents wrote on their blog: “In our opinion only parents of special needs children are in a position to fully relate to this topic. Unless you are living the experience, you are speculating and you have no clue what it is like to be the bedridden child or their caregivers.”I did live the experience. I lived it not as a parent or caregiver but as a bed-ridden growth-attenuated child. My life story is the reverse of Ashley’s. Like Ashley, I, too, have a static encephalopathy. Mine was caused by brain damageat the time of my breech birth. Like Ashley, I can’t walk, talk, feed or care for myself. My motor skills are those of a 3-month-old. When I was 3, a doctor assessed me as severely retarded (that is, as having an IQ of less than 35) and I was admitted to a state institution called St. Nicholas Hospital in Melbourne,Australia. As the hospital didn’t provide me with a wheelchair, I lay in bed or on the floor for most of the next 14 years. At the age of 12, I was relabeled as profoundly retarded (IQ less than 20) because I still hadn’t learned to walk or talk. Like Ashley, I have experienced growth attenuation. I may be the only person on Earth who can say, “Been there. Done that. Didn’t like it. Preferred to grow.”

[…]

This may be because Ashley is described as having static encephalopathy, a rather uncommon name for a rather common condition. Static encephalopathy just means “brain damage which isn’t going to get worse.” It’s occasionally used as a euphemism for brain damage caused by maternal intoxication, but the most common form of the condition is cerebral palsy unrelated to maternal intoxication. Ashley and I both have cerebral palsy. Ashley’s doctors may have used the term static encephalopathy to avoid the outcry that would have followed if people realized that it was being suggested that girls with cerebral palsy should have surgery to stunt their growth and prevent puberty.

I’m particularly (but pleasantly) surprised that she stood up forcefully to Peter Singer, because I know he’s a personal friend of hers, and that people often won’t challenge their friends in public. And he was badly in need of challenging here by someone in the know.