FLOW, 2017
Experimental film for 3840 x 480 LED screen
Debbie Ng
The ebb and flow of modern society makes for a complex and diverse world. The demand for something “harder, better, faster, stronger” has taken its toll on our planet, leaving us in disarray. This abstract film was inspired by the pressing issue of climate change, and how the desperate pursuit of technology and convenience might have worsened the situation. The film features a series of melting experiments, symbolising the idea of irreversible and unpredictable change.
FLOW explores inevitable change in an increasingly digital and automated world through the abstract imagery of melting liquids.
We’ve all heard the (painfully cliche) phrase, “change is the only constant”. And for the evolution of human kind, that definitely rings true. We constantly reinvent ourselves, discovering new ways to do things, desiring something harder, better, faster, stronger. The result is a more complex, diverse and chaotic environment, which might not necessarily be a bad thing.
Inspiration/references
When I was thinking of what to create for the media wall, I was mildly obsessed with those oddly satisfying videos on YouTube — most of them being timelapses of things being melted.
Source: College Humor
Mmmhm look at dat.
Watching something melt in real time is really boring, but taking a video and speeding it up changes everything. And with that in mind, I scoured the interwebs for inspiration.
Initial moodboard, derived from stuff I found on Pinterest
I started out by pinning some cool images of liquids flowing.
Ice Crystals Timelapse by Shawn Knol
This is a timelapse video of ice crystals melting, and the artist achieved the rainbow/oil slick look with with cross-polarized light. I really like that he shot in macro, as this zoomed-in view looks much more fascinating, and we can see every single detail. It gives us a completely different view than if we were just looking at the object with the naked eye.
Pills Dissolve In Macro by Macro Room
This is a pretty simple video, but the visuals look really cool. I like the interaction of colours and different textures that were produced from the melting pills.
I thought about how the imagery of melting objects can be linked to the constant changes in society. Change is not something you can prevent from happening, and although it makes for a more complex, messy and diverse world, it has its own beauty too. I tried to infuse this concept into my film, which involves melting every day items like ice, food colouring, oil and butter.
Process
I started experimenting with food colouring and ice, and also tried more unorthodox objects like eggs, butter, and nail polish. Not all of them were successful at conveying the melting look I was looking for, but it produced interesting textures. I have two previous OSS posts with more behind-the-scenes of my experimentations (here and here).
I tried capturing the visuals in photo and video timelapses, but I prefer the photos because the pixel count is much higher (5184 × 3456), compared to the capabilities of my camera in shooting video (1920 × 1080). Since the media wall is 3840 x 480, I would have to fit at least three video clips side by side to fill up the width of the wall. The dimensions of the photos leave more room to play with scale and position.
Ice + food colouring in oil
I mixed water and food colouring in an ice cube tray, and froze it. Then, I placed the ice cubes in oil. The way the melted ice flowed looked pretty interesting, but after a while, the ice cubes seemed to interact with the oil to form a weird barrier and they couldn’t melt fully.
Ice, salt and food colouring
I saw a Pinterest post about sprinkling salt over ice blocks, and seeing them melt in irregular shapes. I decided to try this out, and added food colouring to show they way the ice melted. Some of the shots look like glaciers, which left me pleasantly surprised.
Butter
Post-production
First, I imported my photos into Lightroom to do some colour correction, then imported everything into Premiere Pro as image sequences.
To work around the unique dimensions of the wall, I placed multiple clips side by side to try and avoid an extremely cropped and narrow view. I masked the clips to blend the edges, making it look like one cohesive video clip.
before masking
after masking
I was also experimenting with glitch effects to incorporate my concept of a digital world, and realised that some of the effects worked better on After Effects.
Because I had never worked on After Effects before, it didn’t occur to me to edit the entire film using the program. I was putting individual clips into AE, applying effects, exporting the clips and putting them back on my PP project. Longfei saw that I was doing a lot of masking and told me that it’s way easier on AE… and it was! Masking on Premiere Pro was horribly laggy, but it was much faster on AE.
I abandoned my PP project and started from scratch on AE.
What my messy timeline looks like.
I found a plug-in for pixel sorting, which I wanted to incorporate into the film because the effect looks like a computerised, glitchy version of melting/flowing. I’ve also been experimenting with RGB split and other glitch effects. I want the glitches to come in intermittently, increasing in frequency in the middle and towards the end of the film.
I’m aiming to finish compiling the clips by next week (week 12), and focusing on final details and minor sound effects in the lead up to presentation week.
colour manipulation, mirroring, masking etc to fit the 8:1 aspect ratio
experimenting with pixel sorting in After Effects
ICE + SALT + FOOD COLOURING
I found a science experiment on Pinterest, where salt was sprinkled over blocks of ice and made the ice melt in a cool way — it reminded me of the uneven shapes of glaciers. So I grabbed food colouring and froze some blocks of ice to recreate the experiment. I took timelapses of these formations with a 3 sec interval.
RESULTS
I tried small blocks of ice first, and shot from top down because I liked the changing colours of the food colouring that came about as the ice melted.
I used a bigger ice block so I could get a clearer shot of the food colouring trickling down. This looked pretty cool hehe
Another shot of the big ice block, where I went a lil crazy on the food colouring.
INCORPORATING INTO 3840 X 480
I played around with mirroring the footage and masking some clips to combine them together, so I could work around the 8:1 aspect ratio. I’ll work on creating new visuals based on the current batch of clips I have (i.e. shift the position of the clip so it shows other parts that are hidden because of the dimensions of the wall).
PIXEL SORTING
I wanted to incorporate some glitching into my film, and decided to try out pixel sorting because I feel like it kinda gives a computerised melting effect. This clips are from my initial experimentation, and I’ll keep working on it. (Ina likes the pixel sorting effect!)
CHALLENGES
By far, the biggest challenge has been filming these melting timelapses. Logistically, it takes some work to put everything together, and the medium I’m working with is quite unpredictable. I’m also quite impatient, and I get antsy about the timelapses and wonder if anything’s changing. Because of that, I’ve stopped timelapses short and missed out on potentially good shots. You never really know until you render the image sequence in Premiere, so it takes some experimenting (and a whole lot of waiting).
Another challenge is packaging the clips into a cohesive film. Since it is an experimental film, it’s probably going to look pretty ambiguous and abstract to the audience, so it’s important to maintain an underlying theme so it doesn’t look like I just threw a bunch of random clips together. I have some ideas for the flow of the film:
Colours — light colours at the beginning, progressing to darker hues
Movement — slow, calm visuals to fast and quick transitions
Form — organic melting to computerised, mechanical melting
I’ve more or less settled on the concept for my project, which is an experimental film about change. It is human nature to be unreceptive to change, but sometimes the chaos that it creates can be beautiful in its own way. This message will be represented by objects melting, solidifying, etc (solid – liquid – gas).
I’m still in the process of working out a sequence of shots that can bring across the idea, but in the meantime, I experimented with some photo and video timelapses just to get a feel of how the film could look. I borrowed a friend’s zoom lens (Sigma 18-200mm Macro) to shoot these timelapses.
EGG
I fried an egg on a pan and let it cook naturally. I like the plastic-y look it has as it is solidifying. Slightly uncomfortable from watching it but looks kinda fascinating too.
ICE CUBES
I experimented with coloured ice cubes in vegetable oil. They produced interesting effects, but the mixture of the ice cubes and the oil created a weird film covering the ice cubes, preventing them from melting all the way.
MILK + COCOA
I heated milk in a pan and added cocoa powder. I really like how the milked bubbled up, but I’ll have to play around with colour saturation because it looks quite dull currently.
Notes from consult:
Ina told me to check out colour field painting, which involves highly simplified compositions with large sweeps of solid colours. It’s a style I’ll research more about, might help with the melting ice cubes.
The shots need to be dramatic so it doesn’t get boring. (storyboarding + planning of compositions need to be done!)
Consider mirroring the video to cope with the 3840 x 480 aspect ratio.
So far, I’m feeling a little lost (hopefully in a good way). Interactive art / large scale art is pretty new to me, and I’m interested to see what I’ll end up creating this sem. We were asked to come up with some ideas of what we’d like to make to go on the media wall, and I came up with two. Both of them are intended for the theme of ILLUSION.
IDEA #1: Moving Memphis Patterns
Memphis was a design collective started by a group of designers who did NOT hail from Memphis, Tennessee, but instead from Italy. The name came from Bob Dylan’s song, “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”, which played repeatedly during one of their meetings. The movement came about as a rejection of minimalist design in the 70s, and traces of Art Deco, Pop Art and 1950’s Kitsch are consistent with the Memphis style.
I’ve been in love with Memphis patterns for a while now, and thought of creating my own patterns inspired by the Memphis style, and animating the patterns to bring them to life. The bright colours and moving geometric shapes could look interesting on the media wall.
An example of animated patterns (and a questionable pairing of music).
IDEA #2: Solid to Liquid to Gas
I was thinking of using film as a medium for this project, because I’m more comfortable with it than programming/animating. While looking around Vimeo for inspiration, I saw a timelapse video of ice melting, and thought it looked pretty cool. There’s something oddly satisfying about watching a sped-up video of something morphing and changing its state.
The idea of objects changing state (solid to liquid, liquid to gas etc) can be a metaphor for impermanence and the transience of life. Still trying to further develop this concept.
I really like how the ink reacts with milk and creates this marbling effect.
The glitching and fast cuts are something I would like to incorporate in my project.
