Thinking process

Initially I thought of video recording my next project but I've changed my mind. I really like the choppiness that is involved with stop motion. It gives it a little more personality. Not each snapshot is perfect, some are blurry, while others capture the sun's ray.

I am still trying to think of a story/poem that symbolizes my childhood or me in the present time...that's the most challenging part!


N-Gage - Behind the scenes - Movie: Terrace from Åke Brattberg on Vimeo.

Click here for video #2

TAIS and InterAccess

Mood board

Project Three

Creative Brief
1. Title—possible name, working title

2. Overview—description of concept
For this assignment, I want to make a video based on my scarf/scarves. I mentioned how I got my very first scarf when I was quite young, and how its precious to me because it was a gift from my aunt. I am still unsure about how I want my movie to be directed. What I do know is that I want to incorporate blushes of color in my video, but at the same time the overall quality to be a little saturated, mystical and over glowing; hazy with splash of color. Some key words to describe my thoughts would be: loose/unreserved, calm, intoxicated, cheerful

4. Audience—who is the intended audience and how this will be considered in project?
Don't have a particular age group that I want to considerate as of right now.

5. Key Message—what do you want your audience to learn fromd your work?
Being able to move about at own will without any bounds or restraints.
6. Content Planning—what content you will include and how will it be structured?

8. Bibliography—relevant sources used in work

9. Visual/Conceptual References—images and ideas that inspire your concept






Blades of Glory - Main title The first half of the video.

I like..

... THIS video.

10 objects

1. Bangles
On my 16th birthday my mum gave me 12 gold bangles. They are very thin, lightweight and have diamond pattern that goes all around. I still wear them, and haven't taken them off ever since. They're so precious!!!

2. Scarf
When I child, many 5 years old or so, my aunt hand sewed a scarf for me. Its made out of cotton with white flora lace stitched to the sides. The color is hard to describe. I'd say something between pink and grey. Its small for me now, but I still keep it with all my other scarves.

3. Diary
Got my first diary with my brother. I wrote absolutely everything in it... when my dad returned from a business meeting, what he got me and my brothers. What I had for breakfast before going to school. Who my friends were. I even included drawings of what had happened.

4. Candles
I love candles. I am not too much into the ones that are scented because inhaling those can cause some harm to the body, or atleast I think so... but once in a while they're not too bad. As strange as it sounds, I like to light candles when I have projects due and i'm up all night. It gives me some sort of calmness, like 'everything's going to be alright' feeling!
5. Teapots
I have a small collection of teapots at home. Majority of them are old, not antique though. I dont know why I collect them, maybe its because they have their own individuality. They are elegent and unique.
They are also really great conversation pieces. Once in a while I invite my friends for tea, and they love it.

6. Flowers
I like flowers but it is more for their shape and color and not so much for their scent. They so unique and highly detailed. Sometimes even looking at one makes me think about how it was created...all of that beauty from a seed!

7. Little Blue Purse
My mums crafty. She is so crafty that she can pretty much do anything. I sometimes call her super women, seriously! In any case, I recently bought two meters of fabric, light blue in color with lines of silver tread. I didn't know what to do with it, so my mum made me a purse. She added small diamonds, fake ofcourse onto the strap. Its so beautiful, you'd think its made by some high end company. I still haven't had a chance to wear it anywhere but soon!!

She made me a blue purse out of this fabric I got from Fabric Land. I had gotten fabric but didn't know what exactly to do with it, so my mum said she'd make me a little purse, and at the end, it looked lovely. If I were to wear

8. Rugs
My dad collects rugs just like other people collect stamps and coins. The meticulous craftsmanship that goes into producing one rug is priceless. There are thousands and thousands of tiny knots to make up a pattern, and this is done by hand. At the end of the day, just rubbing your hand against the wave of knots is incredible. Okay, so where am I going with this!? Around 10 years ago, my dad gave me a rug as a present. Its roughly 1.5m x 3m, don't quote on me that, I am just guesstimating! Unlike your ordinary rug it has doves flying, reindeer's in the forest, very fantasy like. Its precious to me, it was given to me at a young age where I did not appreciate it, but now it holds a little place in my heart.

9. Camera
I enjoy taking photographs so I saved up, and got myself a SLR and its the next best thing I have. When I have nothing to do around the house, I just pick up my camera and start shooting. I even go outdoors for fun to take pictures, but its more interesting when you have a subject to take photographs off.

10. Kite
Have this long kite since childhood. I'd say its at least 3 meters in length. Its transparent, plastic like and rainbow in color. When I was a little, my dad and I would go to the park and I'd climb on his shoulder's and grab the string from him. Its one thing that is symbolic of my childhood. It brings good memories and always a smile to my face.

Issues

If you've seen my rough cut, you can see that the numbers appear suddenly. What was once clear becomes white. The 10 seconds is really making it challenging because I can't show the process. I have to speed up my video in order to make it one second.

I am having a perspective issue. I want my video to be captured from two angles. One, staring down. Two, from the side. But I dont have two camera's and i dont know if i'll be able to sign out two camera's at once. Also, how do you position a camera so its staring down?

What more can I do besides just making the numbers appear on a black surface? Should I include my hand when I am spraying Windex or when i'm wiping out the number...as the next number appears?

Should I add a filter?.. nothing too cheesy and obvious.

Rough Cut

When I first started, I really wanted to explore the concept of growth, expansion and distortion. I didn't want the numbers to just come into sight from no where, but instead evolve from nothingness.

I started off playing with food, in particular a bunch of liquid substance I could find around the kitchen. I came across a substance that would dry clear as glass if left in the open for roughly 15 minutes. But once water was applied to it, it would quickly turn white. Just as I was experimenting around, I replaced water with Windex, (the spray window cleaner) and this was able to give a bubblier affect.

I was able to come across a video that is quite similar to mine. Here the artist has taken salt and formed it into the letter Q. He is able to make the salt disappear by dropping drops of black ink on top.

***

Creative Brief

1 . TITLE: alchemistic - black and white awakening - shift
2. OVERVIEW: What was once nothing and had little value turns into a substance of great value. Similar to chemistry, mixing of chemicals with one another. Cause and effect.
3. AUDIENCE: Children to adults.
4. KEY MESSAGE: There is no story line to follow besides the countdown.
5. CONTENT PLANNING:
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY:
7. VISUAL REFERENCE:

***

Mold, Lentils & Stitch

I started off with a bunch of ideas, and the ideas still keep coming as time goes by. At first I wanted to do something really big, and I was thinking of big scale art work--ofcourse only with numbers. Similar to what Neil from Art Attack does. Then ofcourse, being one women team I had to simplify my ideas. Here is a list of what I've come up with so far that could be doable.

1- Taking photos of a residential building over sunset and sunrise. Would have to film this a few times, maybe over a 4 day period. Much would have to do with the lighting. People coming home, turning their lights on + off. In the end, I'd photoshop the numbers within the building windows, as if it were naturally sequenced to show up as a number 3.
2- Paint rusting and pealing off naturally to form numbers. Could be done with paint, hair dryer, water and wood.
3- Human figures forming into numbers
4- Silhouette of hands forming into shapes and then numbers
5- Growing mold and fungus. I was very serious with this idea and began to research on how to go fungus. But one problem: you need time and patience because you can't control mold. When it appears, it appears, and usually in small quantities.
6- Growing lentils. This is a work in progess. I have my lentils planted and watered and I'm just waiting for stems to grow. I started Sunday and its been around three days. The lentils have become fat causing their outter skin rip apart..maybe thats where their stem will branch out from.
7 - I just thought of something today and it has to do with stitching numbers. Im thinking of videoing myself stitching numbers in a gradient manner. I think it'd be so neat!!




Once I see a little stem growing ill add more lentils around the numbers so they are not so obvious.

From Me To You

From Me To You from Maryam on Vimeo.

Heartbeat critique

Heartbeat from Justin H on Vimeo.

Note: the video posted above is the final version of the project. this critique occurred with a previous version (rough cut).


We like the gentle approach Justin took to this project in comparison to the first exercise he produced entitled "Death From Above". We have a strong appreciation for both, but the contrast was apparent immediately. We felt a calmness while watching this video based solely on the visuals. As it stands in his rough cut, Justin has yet to add audio, but we would hope that the audio adds to this feeling. By capturing it in still frames, and using the tiny toy robots, he succeeded in developing a quirkiness that speaks louder than an overall message. In short, character is the dominant element of this piece.

That is not to say that a message cannot be speculated. If we were to guess, we would assume that the idea behind this video is something concerned with love or life. There is nothing literally human within this piece, but the way Justin approached the subject matter (the tiny robots), he lent to them a sort of 'human quality'. They appeared friendly, warm, and happy beings in the natural environment. By use of interesting camera angles, Justin sparked a sense of curiosity from both the perspective of the viewer and the robots. The was a strong sense of exploration, being that it took place outdoors and there were many close-ups involved.

Concept development: Seemed to be well thought-out and constructed in terms of narrative, timing and framing. There appears to be no climax to the piece as of yet, but perhaps this is not part of the story structure. We would recommend perhaps trying to develop one.

Creativity: Use of the toy robots was interesting to establish a subject and narrative. There was a great amount of experimentation involved in terms of camera angles and focus.

Technical and Aesthetic Quality: The still images used in this video beautifully shot in terms of composition, focus, contrast, and colour. There is evidence of a high level of aesthetic understanding and technical skill.

..the making of the video

We meet today and discussed over briefly what we intend on doing for our project. Its actually quite challenging since our sound is a blend of environmental and mechanical (unnatural) sounds put together. We are planning to portray everything by using abstract images, nothing to literal and obvious, butttt....at the same time we dont want to create something so abstract that has no connection to our whole theme. I dont know. I just hope at the end of the day people will be able to distinguish what we were going for. That's our whole goal right! I think that's one issue that allot of the groups will have to overcome, make sure their video relates back to the theme. Oh, we're also using illustrations, not too much... well maybe, we're still working on it!!!

Sound

We wanted to explore language through all mediums of communication. Computer sending data to the printer. Air pilots communicating to their stations. People talking in a restaurant or simply a person writing a story on a typewriter. We used the method of mixing sounds together well at the same time exchanging it back and forth.

Our sounds were extracted from freesound.org.

137_anton_keyboard_typing
17185_rensamba_nightingale_song_3
26760_zeroagtime_baby_crying1
3808_noisecollector_unkraut_misik_female
11723_833_45_atc
.....more to come

Noises Around Me

Exterior Noises
Location : Outside of TEL building
Time : 12:13pm

- truck pulling in reverse
- girl talking on the phone
- shoes rubbing against the floor
- cars passing by
- two girls saying goodbye to one another
- truck hits the speed bump
- 2 honks in a row
- plane passing by
- dead leafs being blown by the wind
- papers flapping in the wind
- construction, drilling
- coins in a pocket
- bag banging against someone's back
- shutting a truck door in the background
- opening bag, zipper
- car accelerating
- girl in high heels + flippers
- birds clipping over my head

Interior Noises
Location : Accolade West
Time: 11:34am

- doors opening and closing as people walk in and out
- elevator ring , doors opening and closing
- bag dragging against the floor
- a mother with a stroller talking to her child
- people talking to one another, or on their phones.
- a man's echo directing someone to go downstairs
- high heel shoes
- wind noises rushing in as the door opens
- cell phone ringing as people pass by
- running
- sipping juice

My Circle Experiment

Hello,

Here is my second video : )

My Circle Experiment from Maryam on Vimeo.