Before I chose Nexus as my elective, I saw a few works done by my peers in Year 2 Semester 2. I was really inspired by their creative work and I knew that I could put my final work done in Nexus in my portfolio for future use.

Idea 1 

This video in particular, intrigued me and inspired me to take on Media Art Nexus. I want to create something similar. This is a Lady Gaga concert intro for Coachella 2017 and I thought the transition and concept is really experimental and cool.

I found out that it is produced by a creative studio in London called Lobster Eye founded by Andrea Gelardin and Ruth Hogben.

I proceeded to find out more about the studio and discovered that they produced the interludes for Lady Gaga’s Joanne Tour Concert too.

I love their work because it’s very stylised, and weird at times but it can really attract attention because of the fast transitions and interesting visuals.

Some of my favorite stills

I also like this bathtub scene where Rihanna shot for Samsung: Antidiary x Samsung. Once again, it is pretty stylised and ‘cool’. I like how it is so minimalistic yet captivating. I believe it is not only because they engaged a superstar like Rihanna but also the use of water as an element in the video.

My favorite stills

Lastly, I also like the campaign done by Gucci for fall/winter 2017.

Instead of casting models, they ventured into a different style and played with imaginary and fantasy. The campaign include monsters, aliens, and characters inspired by the movie, Star Trek. I saw the campaign before Ina mentioned about it during the first week of school. I love the visuals because it is so different from usual campaigns that we saw for luxury brands. The direction and style is beautiful and stunning.

With these inspirations in mind, I am thinking of producing visuals with a Chinese model and playing with the 4 elements: Earth, Fire, Water, Air. I also want to experiment with video transitions, making it look trippy and fast.

Shooting Techniques Tutorials

On how to work with drones. I intend to use it in one of my shoot.

Also working with gimbal and using Zhiyun Crane. One of the best gimbal for DSLR.

I will be working with a model so this video is great for preparation.

Also will be working with lights in some shoots.

As the senior batch had mentioned that one of the challenges faced is the long panel with made it hard for them to fit one video in the long panel alone because the other side will be empty. Hence, I might put several video clips together like the ones seen in Kendrick Lamar’s MV, Humble.

And also something similar to the intro of this video showing the Holi Festival in India.

Post Production Tutorials

Most of my time will go to post production. Cinematic LUTS could help me speed up with my work.

Effects

Tutorial to split the clips for the long panel.

Idea 2

I was thinking if I ever were to ditch the stylised model shoot, I could try something more abstract and aesthetically-pleasing like filming the process of bath bombs dissolving in a water container. Footages of bath bombs dissolving are mesmerising and calming to watch. I will take close up shots of the bath bombs dissolving and piece the footages together. I believe it will look beautiful when it is screened on the panel.

Stills

Ultimately, I will do either one but to be honest, I am very tempted to try out both ideas and try to merge the two concepts together. I am still trying to conceptualise the entire idea but this is the rough idea of what I am planning to do for Nexus in this semester.

Dan