4D Project 1: Alter Ego

We were tasked to create a 1 min video with a dialogue/monologue scene with a few words through a central issue which would characterised the person as to who he is.

Elaboration

I like to have order in my life and do things one step at a time.However, life doesn’t always go according to plan, and I will run into obstacles or unforeseen circumstances at some point in my life. These unforeseen circumstances can hinder or even stop me from reaching my goals. Therefore, it resorted me needing to think on my feet and do things out of my way to overcome these obstacles. I strive to be able to adapt to such changes accordingly. This is a quality trait I’m aspiring to work towards and get better at in the future.

With reference to the video, the Lego instruction booklet acts as a guide for me to build my life. Sometimes, there may be a more convenient way of working things around to overcome these obstacles. Just like in the video, I realised it was hard to find the correct piece that I wanted, so I had to think of how to combat this situation in order to make it easier for me. I sorted out the parts by colour, which succeeded in helping me find the pieces more efficiently in order to finish building the Lego set.

Research Phase

Before this, we were tasked to list the characters that resonate to us, describe their characteristics and arrange by order of importance.

Selection of characters

1)The Flash

Passionate about saving lives
Likeable character
Good relationship with friends and family
Runs fast
Thinks quick on his feet
Able to adapt to situations quickly

2) Carl Allen (Yes Man)

Spontaneous
Humorous
Unexpected adventure

3) Louis Cole

Traveller
Inspirational
Influential
Find adventure in everyday situations
Strives to go green

4) Casey Neistat

Filmmaker
Innovative
Creative
Not afraid to be politically incorrect
Works his way up from the bottom

List of other characters

Fiction

Daryl Dixon
Super Mario
Walter Mitty

Public Figures

Jimmy Fallon
Charles Trippy
Will Smith

Personal

Matin Fellani
Rohanah
Riduan
Yong Wei
Mohd Alif

Reflection

Overall, I had a good experience learning how to profile characters and adapt it to my own video. Hopefully, this will help me in creating more characters that resonate to me and improve on future videos. Even though there wasn’t a lot of dialogue in the video, I felt it was quite a feat coming up with lines and performing these lines in front of the camera.

Impossibilities Of Being

The Concept

My photo series is built upon the idea of ‘Limitless Possibilities’. The main inspiration behind this photo series is the idea of giving life to inanimate objects and how it interacts with the real world.
My 3 key transformations are teleporting to different places, origami and finally lego.

For the first set, ‘Teleportation through different places’, I was inspired by how it is always a hassle having to travel from one place to another. In the Singapore context, I can imagine the frustration for someone to be travelling from the east to the west every single day just to get to school, especially if it involves early mornings. The process can be very tiring and time wasting. Therefore, I imagine myself having the ability to teleport to different places and giving me this superpower to manipulate space and be wherever I want to be with a blink of an eye.

Next, the introduction of origami in the next part of the series is inspired by how we can be manipulated to become anyone or anything for a day, just to have a little taste of what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes. Basically, the idea of morphing and giving life to inanimate objects allows me to better understand this object and how it interacts with the world around us.

Lastly, the introduction of lego inspired me of how if we had the ability to create something, out of anything without any form of boundaries. As compared to the real world now, there is no cash involved and you have the free inventory of materials to create anything you want based off of your imagination.

The stop motion style helps me to animate inanimate objects to become real and alive and is seen to be moving on its own. I created the sequence in such a way that the whole 3 key transformation is interconnected in the same world and its not 3 separate ideas altogether.

Artist References

This video is by MICHAELHICKOXFilms.

I’m a really big fan and collector of Lego so I watch a lot of little Lego stop motion videos that inspired me to use it for my video. I love how smooth the movement of the characters in the video and how their shots have a sense of focus to the main character.

Another great example of the use of stop motion is by a Youtube User called PESfilm. He uses everyday objects that people tend to overlook and use it to his advantage by adding in to represent another object. I like how he is so creative in his work and how this video itself is enough to represent what stop-motion is really all about.

Final Photoset

In this photo series, I start out sleeping in my room as the camera zooms in my head to reveal my imagination. My imagination takes me on a journey of me teleporting from a public transport, to different places, where I end up at park. I revealed a bunch of scrunched up coloured paper from my pocket and it forms to become a origami butterflies. The butterflies fly away as I release them. One butterfly ends up sinking into a pond which then turned into a whale breaching above a bunch of Lego creatures doing a whale watch in a boat. The Lego boat docks on an island which reveals a house, which contains a guy lying on a wooden bed. The camera zooms in to the Lego head to reveal back to me sleeping on my own bed.

Reflections

Overall, I had a really interesting experience making this whole project come to life. At first glance, it may seem like a lot of work for me to do considering the amount of time given to complete this project. However, as I slowly touch on each individual part, the whole sequence became much clearer for me and I was able to piece out the whole sequence with ease. I’ve also learnt a few camera composition techniques and how each composition can achieve different effects for the audience.

Project 1A

Project 1A

Task 1: Me

The first photo mainly represents my passion for travelling and finding adventure. The LEGO campervan represents my dream of wanting to gather a bunch of friends, and going on a road trip in another country in the future aimed with just a map and getting lost. It also shows the items that document my adventures to share with people.

Next, this Point-Of-View shot of me shows that I’m holding a DSLR camera that was given by mom 5 years ago, and that was when I became more interested and passionate about photography and videography. I stood on a rock overlooking a scenery to represent that, through this camera, I hope my works will reach to greater heights one day.

Lastly, this collection is based upon my love of collecting LEGO mini figures as well as their sets. The focus point in this photo is a LEGO representation of myself photographing a unicorn. This represents my idea of trying to photograph unique and breathtaking sceneries and people and try to share it with everyone but the main focus for this image is my collection of LEGOs. I like the idea of building something out of nothing and that LEGO has allowed these imaginations to flourish and let me experience a ‘different’ realm.

Task 2: Object and representation of self

This series is based upon my kickscooter which has been with me since 2 years ago. I took these 3 images in 3 different places to give a sense of travel/adventure. I like to commute to places through park connectors using this scooter as it allows me to see and experience new things that are usually overlooked. For example, when we take the bus, we are often too familiarised with the route and busy with our technology but when I travel with my scooter, it allows me to see things beyond the usual route and gives me a lot of freedom to roam and convenience. The second photo of this series represents the idea of movement from one place to another and gives a sense of speed.

Task 3: My World

For this series, I decided to shoot Bras Basah Complex and played with the idea of lines in my series. For each photo, lines are featured to give a sense of direction and shape. Back in 2012, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time and money in Bras Basah Complex, because of my passion for music. I love how this place gives me a sense of nostalgia and has retain its unique vintage look amongst the towering skyscrapers surrounding the area.

Reflection

My key takeaway from this project is that I had a lot of fun going to these places to take these photos and enjoyed the process as well. I had to think hard of how I want these images to turn out in terms of framing and placement of objects and how these objects represent what I want to portray. One of the major problems for me was when there wasn’t enough sunlight for me to capture the shot perfectly. Due to the haze, it made the sky appear gloomy than it should be and this restricted from being able to get what I want. The idea of having to have 3-5 images only for each series really pushes the boundaries of how I want to tell the story because I have to carefully manipulate and position objects to get the intended outcome.