STREAK

STREAK

2017

Experimental film

3840 x 480 LED screen


Abstract

‘Streak’ is a kaleidoscopic alternate reality that plays on the manipulation of light and time. Through the use of long exposure photography, light entering the lens is prolonged and stretched out, giving a sense of movement through time. Drawing inspirations from Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 experimental film ‘Koyaanisqatsi’, streak showcases the dynamic movements of lights illuminating the still night. Streak aims to captivate the viewers and evoke a sense of moving forward with its quick-paced and bright moving lights playing alongside with fast paced music. The use of different neon-like colours combined with overlaying effects alters the perception and reality of the original image and brings a whole new dimension to time and space.

Music: Apex by Deep Shoq


Selected Stills


Exhibition at North Spine (Media Art Nexus Wall)

Photos by Solomon Quek Jia Liang

 

 

Streak

Streak – An experimental film, 2017


Concept / Theme

‘Streak’ captures the vibrance of an urban city fueled by lights and how the city truly comes alive at night. Using the medium of photography, I wanted to capture and create the manipulation of time by ‘stretching’ the captured image and combining it with effects to evolve an image into something new and refreshing.


Inspirations / References

Koyaanisqatsi (1982 experimental film by Godfrey Reggio)

  • The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music.

TimeLAX 01 by iVideomaking

This is a very interesting approach to a moving city in Los Angeles through timelapse.

  • Another example of the use of timelapse to create the feeling of the city being alive and moving.

Kaleido-lapse by Young Elephant (Sai)

Another great example of what I hope to achieve for my own video with the use of mirror effects to achieve a kaleidoscope effect.

Initial moodboard from Pinterest

https://www.pinterest.com/alazmir/media-art-nexus-timelapselong-exposure/

Lucas ZimmermannTraffic Lights 2.0

Photo by Lucas Zimmerman

Photo by Lucas Zimmerman

Photo by Lucas Zimmerman

 

Photo by Te-Wei Liu

 

 

Photo by Mark Burban

Photo by Andres Caldera

 


Process

It took me several nights spanning across a few weeks and a lot of patience to capture these timelapses. In order for me to get the streak effect, each shot/angle had to be experimented based on how long I wanted the shutter to be open in order to capture the moving light.

So, for example, I take about 9 seconds for each picture. I set my timer for about 20 minutes, which will roughly give me about 133 photos. If importing into Adobe Premiere Pro with a 24fps sequence, I can achieve about 5 seconds of moving visuals.

Importing

Import (Image Sequence)

Marking the beats of the song

 

 

Marking beats

Overall timeline of project

Sequence Timeline


Prototype

This was the initial test of the visuals, testing out the resolution, quality as well as the speed of the clips. The visuals are raw and have no added effects applied to it.


Methods

The effect that was widely used throughout the video is the ‘mirror’ effect which essentially reflects the image to form a more sophisticated shape/form. All of my editing (compiling timelapses, arranging of clips, applying effects) is done in Adobe Premiere Pro CC and tweaking of colours of certain images is done in Adobe Lightroom.

Reflection city tutorial by Artbeats Inc.

Mirror reflection video effect tutorial by Justin Odisho

Kaleidoscope effect tutorial by Alex Edwards


Current

 


Future Plans

As of now, I hope to get all the clips sorted from start to end by next week and also to tweak and tighten up certain transitions in between different clips to make it more cohesive. There is also room for me to continue experimenting with different effects and possibly overlaying certain elements to bring out the idea of the city being alive.

 

Week 5-7: A different direction

A Fresh Start

Following my progress from the previous weeks, I was not exactly satisfied with the outcome of the experimental film(nature) that I had created and that it was different than what I had envisioned, following a few minor problems that come along with it. With that being said, I’ve decided to put the nature theme that I initially picked for this project aside for possible future personal projects instead (when I have more time) and go a completely fresh and new direction. Referring to other ideas in the first post (moodboard), I decided to adapt the use of long exposure photography and incorporate this technique into an experimental film.

I’ve always been intrigued with how light is perceived and how amazing our eyes enables us to see the world with the power of light. I wanted to combine the manipulation of light and time to create something that we don’t get to see with our naked eyes. By doing long exposure photography, I am able to allow the shutter to be open for a specific period of time, capturing any form of light that passes through the frame and therefore ‘lengthening’ the streak of light. A normal photo captures the light at the specific point of time, almost like a freeze frame, but long exposure allows me to capture streaks instead.

For this project, I did a series of long exposure timelapses where I turn the set of photos captured into a moving image. Therefore, the light streaks captured will look like its flowing through the image, giving this sense of movement.


Experimentation

I did some test shots and was quite pleased with the results. The beauty of long exposure photography + timelapse is that there is some calculation involved to get the desired time for each angle. I had to play around with the shutter speed first to see roughly how I wanted to achieve the final outcome of the light streak. After a few tests, the best setting for me now is opening the shutter at 6 seconds for each image and then setting an intervalometer that will automatically take a photo every 3 seconds. This means that I take about 9 seconds total to capture one image. I set my timer to about 20 minutes for each framing that I wanted, which estimates around 133 photos. When I import into adobe premiere pro, I set my sequence to 24fps which means that for each set of photos, I’m able to achieve about 5 seconds worth of moving visuals.

The video below is in the 1920 x 1080 resolution. This is the overall frame of my photo before I actually scaled it to make it look more ambiguous. The reason I took a wide shot  instead of a ‘zoom in’ is because it gives me ample room to manually select the specific framing of the 3840 x 480 resolution to be.

The video below is the same video from above but with a resolution of 3840 x 480 pixels. I scaled to make it look more zoomed which allows it to look more ambiguous and more futuristic looking.

Another example of what I have so far.


Challenges

One of the challenges I’ve faced so far for this is finding varying shots for the light streaks. The best so far that fits the current theme are cars. I’m still seeking for more objects or things that emit light and it has to be moving in order for me to manipulate the light using long exposure.

Another challenge is setting up the shot properly and ensuring the camera is untouched for the duration of the shot. I have to ensure the focus is properly adjusted before I start the timelapse. There was once when the focus was off for the entire duration of a 20 min shot, which resulted in loss of time and I had to reshoot the same scene again.

I’ve also had trouble finding a suitable song to fit the fast paced movement of the shots initially. Most of the songs felt a little slow and didn’t fit the futuristic/urban lights feel to the image. However, after scouring for hours on the internet, I managed to find a fitting song for the experimental film that I’m doing from soundcloud.


Test footage

For testing on the wall, I had compiled a few scenes that I’ve captured so far just to have a feel for it and see the quality of the overall project. I guess the good thing about taking photos for timelapses is that there is a lower chance of quality loss.

To progress from here, I will be looking out for more places/things to film and also working on my edit, mainly editing to the beat of the music and hopefully combine it into a whole visual piece.

 

 

 

 

2D Project 1, Week 6: Final

Hello my name is..

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and I’m an adventure seeker

I love the idea of going out for an adventure, finding new and incredible things, and just being curious about the world. It has always been a dream of mine to want to travel to different parts of the world, experiencing new cultures, be it the city life or the countryside. I am inspired by the videos that I watch on Youtube almost everyday about how travelling brings new experiences that are never taught in classrooms. Finding adventure in a place is something I am working towards, going the extra mile to see places and do things I never thought of doing.

The items displayed in the photo above are some of the things that represent adventure to me. I included my feet as part of the photo because they are what I rely on to go for these adventures.


 

Hello my name is..

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and i’m a tree hugger

I’ve always been passionate about nature and the environment since I was young. I enjoy going for walks in nature reserves, the parks and just being out and about. I included my hand as part of the photo as it resembles my idea of wanting to lend a helping hand for the environment in the future. I feel like right now, I am not doing much to help in the conservation of earth but I hope to be able to participate in conservation projects in the future. This is also in relation to my idea of seeking adventure.


Hello my name is..

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and i’m observant

I’ve always been an observant person. I am quick to notice certain things in the environment. Sometimes, I just tend to notice things that people normally overlook and analyse them more in-depth in my head. The binoculars view implies the idea of using a binoculars as being observant, to look out and see things beyond what people actually see. It always amuses me sometimes at how I can remember small little details of people and objects around me that people don’t really take notice of. In addition, being observant feeds my habit of people watching. While waiting for my bus, I will sit down by the bench and just watch people go about in their daily activities. It is always interesting to see people’s reactions, how they walk, what they are carrying and I just wonder like where they are from, where are they going, who are they meeting etc.

 


Hello my name is..

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and i’m a visual storyteller

I’ve always been fascinated about cameras and different tools of storytelling. I developed a strong interest in photography and videography since I entered polytechnic back in 2010. My interest amplified when my mom bought me a Canon DSLR as a birthday gift and up till today, I am still using it for different purposes. As the years went by, different cameras were introduced to me and I was intrigued at how each camera has its own way of defining itself and its delivery methods. Therefore, I am now using these tools as a way of telling my stories. I like to film and take photographs when I travel to different countries, and put up short videos on Youtube so I can share it with the rest of the world. It is one of my ultimate goals to travel around the world and film. Also, the reason I chose to photograph parts of my name in different polaroids and then combining it together because its with these different parts of my life, when brought together, becomes a whole picture.

Overall, I had a good learning experience from making each individual composition all the way from the thought process up to the execution process, facing certain problems along the way but eventually finding out the solution to it, as well as the generous feedbacks from my classmates during consultation and during my presentation 🙂

You can view how I did all of these compositions here, BEHIND THE SCENES!

2D Project 1, Week 5: Behind The Scenes

This is the behind the scenes of my final product for Project 1! If you’ll like to check it out, click HERE!

Adventure Seeker

For this piece, I had to go around the house finding objects and items that meant ‘adventure’ to me. Initially, I wanted to play around with the idea of negative space which was brought up by Daniel during the group consultation. However, after much consideration, I felt that the use of negative space would mean that I would have to find even more objects around the house and that was already a challenge to begin with. I decided to settle with my initial idea of using objects to make the typeface instead which require less work. Below are some the images that eventually led to the final output of this piece.

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Setting the scene

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Making sure the items are placed properly

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Side perspective of the scene

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Test shot #1

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Test shot #2 (without shoes, tighter crop)


Tree Hugger

For this piece, there were a lot of hands-on work to be done prior to the execution.

2D Typography

Firstly, I browsed through the internet looking for a suitable font. This font is called ‘Cheddar Jack’, I typed it out on photoshop and printed it out to act as a template.

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Once printed, I cut away all the white spaces to form my template.

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I laid the template over a piece of cardboard to create a much more sturdy template as compared to paper.

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Just like in step 1, I cut the negative spaces out.

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Materials for the next step

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Next, I used PVA glue and sprinkle the moss over the top.

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Completed product

Next, I had the idea of placing it on my arm because it relates to my idea of wanting to lend a helping hand in conservation projects in the future. It took me several different shots and how its placed to get what I want. As the sun was setting, I had to make a quick decision of which composition that I want in order to get the best lighting possible. In the end, I managed to get exactly the perfect shot which is in the other OSS post.

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Test shot #1

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Test shot #2

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Test shot #3

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Test shot #4


Observant

My initial idea for this piece was that I wanted to feature myself holding a pair of binoculars looking out and fitting letters of my name in between the lens, but after the group consultation, they suggested that I can consider using the inside view of the binoculars, basically in the perspective of the user using the binoculars. Therefore, I resorted to the use of Photoshop to bring out the binoculars effect and create my typography from there.

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I started out with an A5 sized blank canvas.

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Next, I found the binoculars effect on google and decided to put it first as part of my composition.

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Next, I used a photo from a photowalk about a month ago in Coney Island. I really love this photo as it fitted with my overall theme of having earth and nature tones.

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Next, I typed out my name letter by letter and painstakingly placed it in different parts of the path/forest. I decided it was best if the letters were spaced out throughout the composition so it doesn’t look like its squeezing to one side. Then, I played with the opacity of the letters so it does not look as striking and bold to make it fit into the forest. I also erased parts of the letters so as to make it appear that the letters are sort of hiding behind the trees and leaves (gives more depth to the letters).

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I went to look at more examples of how the view of a binoculars should look like and I added more details to it, giving it a measurement bars, making the whole binoculars effect more realistic.

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Visual Storyteller

For this piece, there were a lot of preparation work to be done before actually getting to the final product. Firstly, I engaged the help of my friend who is good at doing typography to mimic a font called Edo SZ.

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We first tried it on paper first to get the feel of how it is going to turned out.

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As I wanted the ‘paint’ look, we used gauche paint and a thick paintbrush. After numerous tries on paper, we were confident enough to do it on the acrylic piece itself. The idea of painting it on an acrylic piece is so that I could manipulate the background easily. As it is transparent, I was able to hold it up to any background that I want with ease and took a polaroid photo of it. Below are the shots that I manage to take with my polaroids.

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It wasn’t easy trying to frame the shots and getting the polaroid to come out the way I wanted. It took me a few wasted tries to finally perfect the form that I wanted. As it was taken with a polaroid, it felt like a surprise every time the photo comes out because even though you frame the shots, the outcome will be slightly different even with a slight change in lighting conditions.

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The whole acrylic piece itself against the background.

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Visualizing the outcome of the final typography with each picture combined

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Putting it together.

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Test shot #1

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Test shot #2

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Test shot #3