A Love Story: Caffeine Addiction and University Life

(Forgive the blurry quality of this video clip; for the original, click here)

For this week's PUB 101 assignment, we were required to make a story out of media, whether it was a sequence of pictures or a mini-film, with little or no guidelines to restrain our creativity. Since I was in no mood (and have no skills) to create a full-length motion picture, I settled for a 15 second long film montage that was easily made possible on Instagram. I had to shift through many uninspiring ideas before I came to the conclusion that I want to create something with a mixture of daily student life, fashion, and coffee.

Coffee is such a huge part of university life (and life thereafter) that it is a highly-relatable subject to discuss how much caffeine one has guzzled over the past few days in order to pull several all-nighters. Other topics include favourite coffee shop locations (hipster and independent spots vs. more corporate establishments), how coffee is drunk (black vs. double-double), how environmentally-friendly one is (reusable mugs vs. paper cups), and how much of one's pay cheque is drained by one's coffee habit. I can recount, as I am sure many others can, numerous occasions in which coffee has almost literally saved my life and sanity by bringing warmth to my fingers and mental function back to my brain. All in all, I think it's safe to claim that coffee brings us together in so many unexpected ways.

Back to the riveting story of my publishing assignment, I drew the most embarrassing little storyboard for my "cameraman" to follow so that we could get the "filming" over with as soon as possible. We headed over to a local coffee shop that was not Starbucks since I did not want to promote their easily-recognizable merchandise nor be stared at in a more crowded environment. I started off with an "establishing shot" of the coffee shop, then cut to a scene of myself pretending to be busily working on a class project, and so on. While the original video clips featured me fully savouring the flavour of my coffee, I found that the 15 second maximum greatly challenged my already limited story-telling capabilities. As an end result, I'm sure that most of my viewers see it as being a random montage of my outfit, my coffee, my work, and the coffee shop, rather than a coherent story telling of my love of/addiction to coffee.

Ultimately, I gained a much deeper appreciation for the abilities of my friends who are professional-grade videographers; they are able to create such profound, artistic, and, most importantly, intelligible stories that far outstrip my mediocre efforts. Let's just say that I won't be quitting my day job (or Publishing minor) any time soon to pursue a career in film.

Check out the original post in Instagram form here.