Monthly Archives: October 2016

the 20 second preview

DISCLAIMER:

The 20s preview is just a preview so i didn’t use tripods so my hands are shaking like crazy because i didn’t have a tripod in hall. but i just wanted to test out the concept.

Also i left the audio as is because it contributes to the setting. if that makes sense.

For the film, I planned out 2 versions: one is based on 老师’s suggestion and one is mine (because I’m still deciding which one to do).

differences

the circled versions are the different clips of the same scene, each made for either v1 or v2. but the overall concept only differs in terms of the colour editing.

So essentially, this film is about using colour psych to depict how a person takes on the day.

my original idea: depict the person’s day and their mood changes throughout by adjusting the clip’s colour accordingly. it also can show how some things that make other people feel (a negative emotion) can make another feel (a positive emotion).

other version: make everything desaturated and nua-y to show that the person is feeling very sian throughout the whole day no matter what they do.

the reason why i’m undecided isn’t because i have no feels for it, or i’m unsure of my idea, but because both are feasible and adhere to the overarching idea so i’m not sure which one to choose.

editing

Here i’ve adjusted the aspect ratio slightly to give it a more film-y look, and also because to me this film feels a bit like a documentary of how different people compute different emotions for differing or similar scenarios.

changes

So this is a scene where the person is studying. this could also be left colourful to show that while people may find studying a chore, not everyone does (but in this 20s preview i desaturated this clip for both versions just because). as you can see, the change in colour really affects the mood of the clip from regular monotony to melancholic after tweaking stuff here and there.

that’s it for the process. not too much of the fancy editing, but just basics are changed for the full effect to be there. i’m thinking of doing about 10s of 10 scenes (since it’s 1min 30s = 90s minimum and I think any longer per clip and it’ll be very mundane and draggy) but that all depends on the scenes i can possibly do.

trippy for 2d – strange compositions

I’ll just start here.

2

 

The ground is the separation of life and death, which is also the only condition based on which love is forced to end while still being felt. Naturally the arm is coming out from the heart, beyond the grave, trying to hold on to the loved one desperately. it’s supposed to look morbid and creepy because of the context of the film.

I really like the significance of the design w.r.t the quote. It’s also quite creepy which is a nod to the entire tone of the film. That part was especially creepy and that’s why the quote stuck with me even though I have most of the script memorised :-)))))

The ground-y texture was used to give the “hand coming out from under the ground” feel in a way similar to the original in the video above.

 

3

 

The bait in this image is the human head (to represent the human bait) and the fish is half a gun because gun:human just as fish:bait (aim is to catch and end their lives).

I manipulated the scale and proportion on this one. The head is small in comparison to the gun-fish to correspond to the size comparison between fish and bait. Also the form of the fish was altered because while the head on the hook is more obvious of what it’s supposed to be (the bait), a floating gun wouldn’t have done anything except look like a floating gun. So it was edited to look like a fish.

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Initially the gun was left in full with only the fish head removed but laoshi was right when she said it looked too disjointed. So the handle was removed to look more properly fish-y. The scale was also adjusted because in the original one, the bait looked way too big in comparison to the fish because the fish was too small.

4

I think this image is quite literal, with the eccentricity being symbolised by the test tube and the beer bottle is the drunkenness, both spilling in to the person’s brain filled with knowledge on other things.

I found this image to be a bit static even though I edited it from the original (which felt even more stiff) below.

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The elements in this original felt very isolated – like just a single brain with 2 bottles floating over it. So  tried editing it to make the tube and the bottle flow together with the brain so that the eyes move in that direction from the bottles to the pouring to the brain itself to give a bit of unity to the entire image, the eyes following a circular motion.

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This is my favourite quote, and my favourite image. The girl + the wings represent the “good”, and the “illuminati” symbol represents the supposed “evil” – which is why it was scaled to be the same shape as the other eye. So it shows even the good dabbles a little bit in the bad in order to achieve good. The moon represents the world they are protecting, and also a nod towards superheroes like batman who usually save the world at night (which is also largely what they did in the movie). The illuminati symbol was integral to the film (Free Masons) and kind of is the basis for this quote.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VUp9DzFVWY

So the cherub is meant to be an innocent man, who appears to be part of the “bad” (illuminati symbol) but in reality is still the angel (wings) who tries to protect others (moon).

The moon was scaled down to the size of the head in a sort of Justinian-like halo pattern because that’s to represent the good of the person. The moon was used instead of the earth to symbolise the night, and since the night symbolises darkness, these kinds of people = angels of the night. There is also unity, which is shown by the entire design fitting within a circular form (except for the wings that stick out but overall it fits within the circle).

I’ll include the process and the reflection in the next post-

the happening: silkscreening edition

After submitting the designs, getting the ‘cher to review them and then choosing one out of the approved ones, it was time – for tote bag printing.

First step was to cover the screen with some blue emulsion (name tbc) that would hold the design onto the screen. After giving it an even coat on my first try (yes i’m bragging but I thought I’d get paint everywhere except onto the screen) I left it to dry in the big dryer.

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After it dried, we got our transparency paper w/ the design printed on it and taped it to the screen. After that it was put in the blacklight machine that embossed the design in black onto the blue.

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After getting the print backlit onto the screen, we had to go into the “secret sink room” to wash off the print using a very noisy water gun to remove all the black embedding from the screen to get a transparent layer where the logo is supposed to be.

After gun-washing the thing for about 10 minutes to get off the print, we got an amazing result from it.

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I was a bit annoyed because the print from the NS print shop /side eyes/ came off and my angel had a random hole in her head. Spoiler alert: managed to get it off with some Beta-something. (name tbc)

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Rui Rong’s, Qiu Min’s, Arianne’s and mine.

Fast forward one week and we got out the dried screens and started silkscreening.

First we tried on the paper.

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I was feeling unnaturally confident so I decided one test print was enough and that i didn’t need to clog up the holes unnecessarily.

I then went ahead and printed on my first bag (the personal one from Muji)

And it came out quite well – nothing too blotty or illegible, so in that momentum (and before I lost my confidence), I quickly screened it onto the final bag used for submission.

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And voila.

I admit, the design’s quite small compared to the bag but I liked the composition and, more importantly, I loved the quote.
Plus my non-ADM friends seemed to like how it looked so looks like I got some objective votes too hahahaha. (which seemed like a good omen because in the future not everyone’s going to understand the process anyways and they’ll just go with what they see.)

I really did enjoy the process, right from the quotes research to the learning of the PS process (I will definitely use halftone a lot more from now on), the creation of the compositions & the silkscreening itself. I learnt alot about not being too obvious and direct with designs and how better to put across meanings in a more modernised and stylistic way.

I hope we do more silkscreening because I wouldn’t mind some artsy t-shirts 😉

4D FOUND IMAGES: PROCESS

thinggo

I liked the idea of being able to tell a story through the setup from location to weather but the thing that always stands out for me in terms of working cohesively with the story is the theme/colour scheme. I’m not good at expressing myself through words so I really had the feels for this project as compared to the “Perspectives” idea that I scrapped. The title of the video (Who Needs Words Anyway?)  is kind of an exasperation kind of thing, because my inability to formulate thoughts as words annoys me LOL. I also felt like this would help out with my final film which would also follow the same concept.

At first even though I was really excited to start, I didn’t know how to. While researching on “colour psychology” I found this video that gave me an idea on how I could put together the video clips to show the changes in colour corresponding to the changes in the  mood/tone (down the colour spectrum).

color-wheel-poster

used only music videos because they’re shorter (~ the final film’s length) so it’s more likely to show more emotion in a shorter timespan. Also 老师 said that I should use clips instead of stills (I was planning to put the stills in a flipbook-esque format to show the progression of colour) like I intended to because “it makes more sense” so I compiled around 2-5s snippets from over 30 M/Vs and arranged them from black – starting with aqua – ending with green – and exiting with white [the black and white were added just to complete the spectrum]. Initially wanted to do vibrance & saturation but maybe I’ll leave that for the final proj because it didn’t fit in with this one.

CCA exhibition review – The Sovereign Forest by Amar Kanwar

Adithi Surya (01) 14S414

 

“The Sovereign Forest” exhibition by Amar Kanwar offers an immersive insight on the pressing issue of environmental degradation, loss of natural habitats and displacement of inhabitants that is plaguing parts of India, as well as other areas in the world. He offers a voice for the people who are unable to defend themselves against the government or big corporations. His collection of work through various mediums such as film, photography, audiovisual exhibits, performance art.

 

The exhibit starts off with a film (The Scene of Crime) shot in third person. There are 10 maps in total, that bring us across 10 stories – all of which are the result of being affected by the environmental battle between the two parties. The periodical anecdotes that appear as text emphasise the tragedy that the people of Odisha are being faced with, and the fleetingness of it is similar to the lives of those who perished in this war.

 

Amar also makes the exhibition personal by adding actual documents, such as newspaper clippings and petitions started by the people, to allow us to see for ourselves the goings-on as well as the processes the villagers had to undergo. In the seed room, which acts as a form of “performance art”, there is also photobooks to accompany the countless containers of seeds which depict the hardwork that went into growing these crops. It emphasises the pain of having their livelihood and all the years of hard labour be eradicated by The Man.  The personal documents such as identification card of a villager is also accompanied by a book of farmers who had taken their lives after being unable to take the repercussions of the higher-ups’ decisions. He also adds in an anecdote from one of the victims, Nidhan, that allows visitors to feel for the people as they go through trials and tribulations while attempting to protect what they call their home. These are pivotal in making their suffering more real to us as the viewers, helping us to feel what they felt in the moment. Littered around the exhibition area were large books with more videos projected onto one side of the book, while the other side had a phrases such as “the tree of insurgency” to narrate the war against the enemy through metaphors. The final set-up, an image of a tall tree-stump accompanied by a voiceover through an overhead speaker, stimulates our audial and visual senses for a more immersive experience. All in all, “The Sovereign Forest” proved to be eye-opening and is an effective way of conveying the pains and the tribulations undergone by the affected in Odisha to third-parties, and also gives us as a first-world country a taste of how corporations aren’t always doing what’s best for the country and its people.