„wander the woods“ is an audio-visual film portrait of one forest in Ljubljana, aiming to portray the subjective perception of a simple walk through the woods and to capture the its individual atmosphere.

Taking walk through the forest is a way to clear your head, to calm your mind, to be alone with yourself. And no walk itself is the same. Depending on outter conditions like weather, season and time of the day, but also on ones mood and mindset, the personal perception of a simple activity like this does vary.

The idea for this project came to me while taking several walks through the forest myself. I noticed that, though i was wandering through the same forest over and over again, my individual perception of it was always a different one.

Visual and auditory footage, recorded and shot in Golovec, form the base for further work.

In order to recreate the perceived atmosphere and represent the subjective impressions gathered whilst this experience this footage was combined in an alienated presentation of the forest.

The conposition consists of several elements and types of materials that are connected and mutally influencing each other.

The film footage was edited in Adobe Premiere to the beat of choosen atmospheric music. The montaged sequences were then modified in Adobe After Effects ith effects and filters, that are providing an alienation of the footage whilst enhancing its atmosphere. Specific parameter of theses effects are connected to an audio amplitude, generated from characteristic forest noises and thus controlled by them. In that way the sound influence the resulting image. Special effects like dust particles, snow, fog and sun rays target to alienate the visual footage in order to enhance the individual ambience and  thus put the subjective perception in focus.

The project was developed during my semester abroad in Ljubljana. It was created in the winter of 2018/19 (October 2018 – January 2019) in the framework of the course »Video and Postproduction« at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Univerza v Ljubljana, taught by assistant professor Andrej Kamnik.

It was intended to create a series of short sequences like this, for which further footage was already shot. Due to the lack of time only one composition could be completed in time.