Hahahahehehe

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

— Kurt Vonnegut

I always choose laughter. In tense situations, I am usually the one laughing, while everyone else mopes. Studies on laughter have shown it to relieve stress and improve quality of life. I can personally attest to this, as laughter has helped me get through some trying moments in my life. Laughter is the main way in which I deal with stress and it never fails to help me relax and feel better.

In this collage I tried to capture the joy and lightheartedness that laughter brings to people. My original plan was to record all my own photographs and videos and sound. However I soon realized that capturing laughter is not as easy as I expected it would be. One major obstacle was the speed of my camera. It takes several seconds for it to snap a picture once I have pressed down on the button. By the time it finally does take the shot, the moment has already passed.  Another obstacle was that the laughter often died off as soon as people saw the camera aimed at them. Many people seemed self-conscious about having their laughter recorded, though I believe that people look their best when they are smiling and laughing.

Another, different, kind of obstacle was the fact that I am technologically challenged. Just the simple task of cropping the clips I wanted in my video took me a long time to figure out. Fortunately I finally realized there was a ‘help’ option where I could type in my questions and this quickened the video making process greatly for me.

The first half of my collage along with the last three clips in it, are my own images and videos. All the still images are pictures I have taken in the past, without this project in mind. However all the movies have been recorded over the past couple weeks. I decided to include pictures from the internet to add some more body to my video, as well as to give it more diversity.

Choosing the music for my video was easy. I immediately knew to look through my show tunes in order to find the kind of corny music I was looking for. Just this week, the popular television show Glee performed a cover of “Make ‘Em Laugh” from the musical “Singin’ in the Rain,” which I immediately decided to include in my collage. The other song, “I Love to Laugh,” is from the musical Mary Poppins. These are both fun, cheery tunes that I think everyone will recognize. I also included the sounds of sitcom laughter to accompany a series of close-ups on laughing mouths.

Overall, I am happy with my final collage. I just wish I had been able to capture more laughter on camera. However, I think the few pictures and video clips I had were effective in portraying the spirit of laughter.