Art School Musings
Reflection
It was fun to play around with the camera and just relax and take some pictures. As you can tell my family had fun with it. I found staying in shutter priority hard as I found myself wanting to play around with depth of field more then motion. This may have been that the type of motion shots I would have wanted to take would have needed a tripod and I had left mine at home. I can’t wait to learn more about using light room.
In the first part of this exercise, we worked with kinetic text in Adobe After Effect. We added 4 different types of animations to the Hellooo text that synced with the audio. The animations are sliding in from the left, pivoting on an axis, character offset, scaling in, and a wiggler. In the second part of this text exercise, we exported what we created in After Effects on a transparent background and put it onto a video sequence in Premier Pro.
For this project, I decided to choose a theme of being excited about summer. I thought that this would be a fun thing to explore as we are getting closer to the end of the school year. I started by selecting a few beach videos that I thought would work well together. After arranging the videos I found additional sounds to help create the scene depicted in the videos as well as some music. For the audio, I wanted to have the scene audio trail into the music like how you see it in movie openings. I hope that this will create a sense of excitement and anticipation. It took me a few tries to find a music track that fits with the helllooo acapella track and didn’t feel out of place.
Concept and Intent:
I am fascinated by the idea that we all have a different idea of beauty not universally defined but perceived differently by each person. The core of my concept lies from the famous phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Through exploration, I want to highlight how people’s understanding of this word differs. My desired outcome of this is to create an open dialogue among the views on how our definition differs based on a person’s beliefs, background, and life experiences. There is no right or wrong way for us to view the world and I hope that this will inspire others to embrace their view.
Approach:
For this project, I’ll conduct interviews with 3-4 individuals to explore their unique perspectives on beauty. Intent to utilize split screen, single Channel Video with Sound, and possibly motion graphics.
Length
Approx. 2-3 min.
Concept and Intent:
I want to document and share the intricate process of crafting Psyanky, traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs while sharing my personal experience with the cultural heritage. While going to a Ukrainian Orthodox Church growing up I got the experience of a glimpse into Canadian Ukrainian culture and learned a little bit about how to make pysanky. I intend to take the viewer on a nostalgic journey of my memories of going to church while I make a pysanka in preparation for easter.
Approach:
For this project, I’ll conduct interviews with 3-4 individuals to explore their unique perspectives on beauty. Intent to utilize a split screen, single Channel Video with Sound.
Length
Approx. 2-3 min.
This video follows me making a pysanka (Ukrainian easter egg). In the video, share with viewers about the process of making pysanky, how I learned this skill, and why it is important to me. My goal is to increase understanding and awareness of this art form and create a nostalgic tone.
Shooting the shots that I wanted for this film was fun, but also a bit challenging at times. Where I had the camera for the point-of-view shot of working on the egg made it awkward to work on the egg itself, and I had to focus extra hard to keep the egg in the frame. I was slightly impressed that my lines on the egg came out as straight as they did.
I ended up deciding to record the voiceover in chunks. I found that I kept stumbling over my words when I tried to record it all in one go, and I knew I was going to break it up anyway. So by doing it in the smaller chucks, I would be making fewer cuts to take out the umms and awkward pauses.
Overall, I am happy with how this project went. I found editing the section where I have the screen split into quarters to be the most difficult part. The transition between the video and the stills is still a little awkward to me and something I would work on if there were more time. The other thing I think could use a little extra work would be the foley some of the sounds don’t match up nearly as well as I would like and I would probably have benefited from recording my own.
I started out my drawing process and concept formation by looking at Pinterest for images that I felt drawn to. I was drawn to forest photos as well photos of children photos. I wanted something that would convey hope and after some thought, I came up with the concept. I wanted to do a drawing of a child figure going down a path in a forest-like setting. The idea was that childhood is like a journey that we all go through and the light at the end of the path is adult hood. Adulthood is something that we idealise as a child and coming of age is seen as this period of metamorphosis where children become adults which I depicted as a light and the end of a tunnel. I looked through a number of photos I had taken over the years of my youngest brother and played around with different compositions. I settled on a composition where the figure is facing away from the viewer and is standing still in the middle of a pathway. The cropped perspective with the figure more of to the side is what I felt help stray away for the interposition that the meaning of the drawing was to do with the passing of a child.
This drawing was a challenge with all the details and at the start was particularly worried about how the hair and clothing would turn out. In the end, I am quite proud of how the clothing turned out I feel that I manage to portray the highlights and shadows well. I am happy with the texture that I got in the hair although the value range could have been better. One thing I hope to do when I get the drawing back is work on the background a little bit more by adding some more vines so that the one dose not look out of place and take away attention from the main subject and composition. I have also been thinking about the background and the suggestion of what the child would be moving into the light towards and was thinking of maybe putting in a faint suggestion of a city scape. I feel that it would fit the theme well as often when we are grown up it is expected of us to get a well standing job in the work force. Also many teenager are eager to move to the city from a small town once they graduate high school.