Category: Process

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Project 4: Poetics of Time (Process & Final)

Final Video

My final video, entitled ‘My Day in 60 seconds‘, is a project which shows 60 segments of 1-second scenes of what I do on a particular day.

 

 

Project Proposal

Project Title: My day in 60 seconds

Project Description

The project is a 60-second video sequence which showcases different activities happening throughout the day, from when I wake up to when I go to sleep. There will be a sound track of a ticking clock, each activity will only be shown for one second (the duration between each tick of the clock). Each tick will occur on an on-beat, the off-beat will include a single beat of sound of the particular activity happening, e.g. flicking of a switch, slamming a door close, pressing a lift button etc.

I was inspired by time lapse videos and other ‘my day in 60 seconds’ videos found online.

This project is a new concept and not a continuation of a previous project.

I intend to express measured along with edited time to the audience. Also, how sound can enhance the rhythm of the video.

One innovative aspect I would say is that I will approach it in a slightly different manner as described, having each scene only last one second, and according to the beat of the clock ticking. Unlike other similar videos that have each scene last a few seconds along with a music track, I want the audience to focus more on the beat of the soundtrack and the rhythmic vibe it creates.

Objectives and Activities of Project

I will be creating an estimated 60-second video.

It is a videography project utilizing an iPhone camera.

Dimensions are standard 16:9 aspect ratio resolutions of 1920 X 1080 pixels.

Equipment for Project

The project would require the use of a camera to capture each individual 1-second shots, in this case an iPhone camera, as well as Adobe Premiere Pro to produce the final video.

Installation of Art Project

The final video will be displayed on a laptop.

Process

Here is an example of something similar I will be doing,

However, one difference is that I plan to have mine more quickly paced (at 1-second intervals), with the underlying sound of a ticking clock. The reason why I decided on having my scenes as 1-second shots is because I wanted to incorporate sound and rhythm into my final video, instead of having a slow-paced video, I wanted a more fast-paced rhythmic video to express both measured and edited time.

Below is the initial list of scenes I planned out before I started filming. Along the way, there were a few changes and I had to add/ remove scenes.

  1. alarm
  2. toilet door open
  3. brush teeth
  4. toothpaste spit
  5. toilet bowl up
  6. shit sound
  7. flush
  8. shower on
  9. hairdryer
  10. hairdryer down
  11. spray deo
  12. gate open
  13. throw shoes on floor
  14. wood door close
  15. key lock
  16. gate close
  17. lift button
  18. tap bus
  19. bus ding dong
  20. tap out
  21. traffic button
  22. green man
  23. gantry tap
  24. train gate door open
  25. train door close
  26. guy snoring
  27. door open
  28. gantry tap
  29. fd door open
  30. put stuff down
  31. set up easel
  32. tear newsprint
  33. put newsprint on easel
  34. charcoal drawing strokes (start)
  35. charcoal drawing (end finished)
  36. put back easel
  37. fd door open
  38. gantry tap
  39. train door open
  40. train door close
  41. gantry tap
  42. tap bus
  43. bus ding dong
  44. tap out
  45. traffic button
  46. green man
  47. lift button
  48. gate open
  49. key insert
  50. wood door open
  51. put shoes inside cupboard
  52. close cupboard
  53. toilet door open
  54. brush teeth
  55. toothpaste spit
  56. clothes throw in basket
  57. shower on
  58. on aircon
  59. lights OFF

After that, I simply filmed each scene, taking note of a few aspects such as what I was wearing and most importantly, the time of the day.

The scenes will be filmed from my POV and hence it does not allow for any shots taken from a tripod etc.

I had to download some sounds online which I could not record, example, the honking of the car when I was crossing the road, I didn’t really want to purposely have a car honk at me, I would have to piss the driver off if that was the case. Also, the pooping sound was taken online, it was surprisingly hard to get a good sound of poop splashing into the toiled bowl.

Consultation 1

For the first consultation, I had to show Wen Lei a short concept of my video, to show the transition of the scenes and how the sounds appear.

Consultation 2

One problem with an initial version was that there were some scenes with a slight pause at the start, which made it look awkward as I was waiting to execute the action, rather than film it ‘naturally’.

Slight pause at the start, awkward
Continuous action, more natural

Secondly, I had to insert a couple more scenes between ‘ending class’ and ‘going home’ as it seemed too similar to ‘leaving home’ and ‘entering classroom’.

Challenges faced

One challenge was coming up with 60 scenes which produced a single or double beat which will fit with the rhythmic beat of a ticking clock. Once the filming was completed, stitching them together was relatively easy.

Conclusion

This project has taught me how to work with both aspects of time and sound, even though this project was time-based. The rhythm is important as it sets a pace for the audience for them to follow, in other words, creating causality via sound, that being said, if this rhythm is broken, the audience may get disoriented and lost.

 

 

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Project 3 : Impossibilities of Being

For this project, we were tasked to study how rhythm can be achieved through the use of exploring composition, transformation in a visual sequence, how sound and image can reinforce or contradict each other, and explore literal and metaphorical use of sound with image.

Serenity

This short video is about a ninja who has found himself in a secluded mountainous area, basking in the calmness and serenity of the environment until a crow disrupts the peace…

Task 1 & 2 – Visual Sequence & Soundscape

30 Places I’ve never been

  1. Open Sea
  2. Haunted house
  3. Cruise
  4. Mountains Area
  5. Space
  6. North Korea
  7. Volcano
  8. Desert
  9. Girl’s Toilet
  10. Dinosaur Era
  11. Graveyard
  12. Farm
  13. Canyon
  14. Disneyland
  15. Warzone
  16. Minefield
  17. Whitehouse
  18. Seabed
  19. Observatory
  20. Submarine
  21. Power plant
  22. Animal shelter
  23. Castle
  24. Hollywood
  25. Bollywood
  26. New York City
  27. Circus
  28. Villa
  29. Beach house
  30. Azkaban

30 Sounds I would hear at selected location (Mountainous area)

  1. Wind howling
  2. Waterfall
  3. Birds
  4. Trees swaying
  5. Bees
  6. Thunder
  7. Avalanche
  8. Bears
  9. Leopards
  10. Grass swaying
  11. Hikers
  12. Campfire
  13. Crickets
  14. Goats
  15. Eagles
  16. Wolves
  17. Airplane flying by
  18. Airplane crashing
  19. Nearby village
  20. Rain
  21. Running water
  22. Fishes in ponds
  23. David Attenborough narrating for National Geographic
  24. Volcanic eruptions
  25.  Man-made explosions
  26.  Trees burning
  27. Trees falling
  28. Someone shouting, echoes
  29. Gun shots
  30. Dragons

Step 1: Rough Storyboards

My first step of pre-production was to draft the rough storyboards, where I planned the camera angles, composition of elements, and sequence of events for the entire video.

Initial rough storyboards

Step 2: Soundscape

Based on my storyboards, I used the internet to find the sounds that would appear in each shot. I also recorded a few of my own sounds for use in my Hi-Fi storyboard and final video.

Sounds from free online sources:

Sounds recorded using the Zoom Recorder:

Underlying Piano Melody (Non-diegetic sounds)

I also created some simple piano melodies to help bring out the emotion of the character (Applied in Final Video, after Hi-Fi consultation).

Step 3: Low Fidelity Animatics

I then converted my storyboards into an animatic, along with the soundscape. I also used this stage to plan out the duration for each shot.

Step 4: High Fidelity Storyboard

The final step of pre-production was adding the colours, reflecting the overall mood of the film. Sounds were also recorded and finalised to be added into the final video.

The initial walking scene was removed as I wanted the first shot to be more impactful, i.e. dropping the audience right into the establishing shot of the vast mountainous area.

Task 3  – Final Video

Once again, here is my final video entitled Serenity.

Breakdown

Mood graph for my video. Character is at a location, encounters a problem, solves the problem, and everything goes back to normal.

Mood Graph – Serenity

Visuals

A sunset theme of orange and purple was used to evoke a sense of serenity, it also signifies the peacefulness at the end of a hard day’s work, or in this case, maybe the ninja had just finished assassinating someone and is taking a break in the mountains.

Soundscape

There are three main parts for the soundscape in my final video: The ambience, the sounds created by the different elements in the video, and the underlying piano melody.

Ambience

The waterfall and howling wind are the two sounds which can be heard throughout the entire video. It immerses the audience into the location, as if they were there themselves. The intensity of the sound of the waterfall is manipulated according to the scene, i.e. the closer it is to the ‘camera’, the louder it will be.

Sounds of elements

Due to the constant sounds of the ambience, the sounds of the other elements in the video had to be loud enough to be heard, but not so loud as to make it unnatural.

Underlying piano melody

As mentioned earlier, the purpose of the piano melody is to bring out the character’s state of mind and change of emotion throughout the video. The main idea was to have a serene melody for when he is calm, and an off-key note when the crow disrupts the peace. A repetition of notes is used for the scene where he takes aim at the crow with his bow and arrow, which creates tension.

Research and References

I was heavily inspired by the short film ‘Palmipedarium’ by Jérémy Clapin. The film has great ambience and subtle sounds in a relatively quiet background which really immerses the audience into the film. It also has brief moments of an underlying melody which brings out the characters’ state of mind and emotions. There is no dialogue so all the attention is really on the characters’ performance and soundscape.

Lastly, the artworks of Pascal Campion has always been an inspiration for many of my illustration based projects. His use of colours and ability to tell a story through an image is breathtaking.

Artwork by Pascal Campion
Artwork by Pascal Campion
Artwork by Pascal Campion
Artwork by Pascal Campion

Conclusion

This project has been fun as I was able to incorporate what I’ve studied when pursuing my diploma in Animation, going through the pre-production process of storyboarding and animatics right down to the final video, although it was just until the animatics part. It has allowed me to think more deeply on how important sound is and how it affects visuals.

Classroom Exercise – Analysis on Rhythm, Movement, Causality and Duration

rhythm – regularity or irregularity? any repetition? movement – successional or oppositional or stillness? is there presence of attack, sustain and decay? causality – clear expectations or unexpected? easy to track or not easy to track? duration – too long or too short? length of time effective?

Rhythm – A regularised repeating of movement or sound

There is the continuous soundscape of the ambience, i.e. the sound of the waterfall and the howling wind, creating a sense of calmness. There is also a continuous use of a consistent colour scheme of orange of purple throughout the film.

Movement – A shift or variation in the location of an object, light or sound

There are a few moments of successional movement, where the audience is attention is focused to where the main character is looking and pointing the bow and arrow at.

An example of movement can also be seen in the difference between the smooth-moving clouds and the staggered movement of other elements (animatic animation).

Causality – The principle that everything has a cause and effect

The story is relatively straight forward to understand and predict, when the crow interrupts the character’s calm state of mind, and when he puts down his bow and arrow, the audience can predict that he is going to shoot the crow down, an expected outcome. There is a brief moment of anticipation or suspense when the character eyes the crow while pointing the bow and arrow at it for a few seconds, taking aim at his target.

There is also a causality of sound when the character pulls the bow string back, the audience will expect the sound of the bow string snapping back and the sound of the arrow whizzing through the air.

Duration – Whether the time allocated to the work is effective

The video lasts 1 minute 7 seconds, which is around the required duration of the video in the project brief. The duration is also effective as it manages to illustrate the story being told. The story has a start, middle and end.

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Project 2: The Subverted Object

For this project, we were assigned an object and we had to produce a series of images that captured the object’s denoted and connoted meaning.

Task 1 – Denotation

For Task 1, I captured the object’s physical attributes, where the object is commonly seen, and the practical function of the object. I paid more attention to the camera angle and composition of the fork, as well as keeping the background interesting, but not so much as to distract the audience from the object in focus.

This image focuses on the fork’s shape and form, mostly on the tines. The background of wood and plants is a contrast with the fork’s hard metallic structure.

Task 1 – 01

The fork in its ‘natural habitat’. A portrait shot as opposed to a landscape shot in order to capture the entire length of the fork in the compartment. A touch of green in the background to add colour and balance out the dull greyish colours.

Task 1 – 02

The basic functionality of a fork. In Asia, we tend to use chopsticks for noodles, while it is the Western culture that uses forks.  I also wanted to portray a more classy dish, and therefore went for spaghetti. 

Task 1 – 03

Task 2 – Connotation

For Task 2, I subverted the object’s meaning, showing what it is not meant to be used for, and touching on the object’s cultural meaning.

You obviously don’t drink soup with a fork. I made the soup in the bowl too watery and had to dip the fork in another bowl of thicker soup to make the soup on the fork more thick and slimy. I took quite some time with this shot, as I was trying to recreate the camera angle I envisioned in my sketch.

Task 2 – 01

The fork as a murder weapon. There were too many colours going on in the original image, and the background was predominantly orange, I had to convert the image to grayscale and blur the background, leaving the fork unblurred in the foreground and the red of the blood.

Task 2 – 02

In order to create the burning fork, I had to wrap cotton wool around the tines, applied a little bit of thinner, and light it up. I had initially wanted to photoshop an image of a flame onto a fork but that would defeat the purpose of a photography project, and the blending of the flame and fork would probably not look as good.

Task 2 – 03

Task 3 – Text and Image

For Task 3, we were to give one of the images from the above tasks a title, and have it serve to clarify or emphasize something in the image, or to expand or explain the significance of the image. I chose one of the pictures of the object’s subverted meaning as I wanted my title to be more engaging for the audience and not tell them what they already see.

The image I chose for my poster was a person scooping soup with a fork, accompanied by the title “Alzheimer’s, Prevention starts with you.” This poster aims to show us the intellectual and behavioural disabilities caused by Alzheimer’s, and tells the audience that it can be prevented and that they themselves have the ability to prevent it.

However, as Wen Lei pointed out, replacing ‘Prevention starts with you’ with for example, ‘This is what Mary sees everyday’ would have had a stronger impact as it engages the audience more emotionally.

A2 Poster

Final Layout for Critique

The layout of my printed images on the wall for critique during class.

Final Layout for Critique

Key Concepts & Ideas

Below are the initial sketches I made before I started on the project. As shown, I managed to use four of my initial ideas for my final six images. I have also included some of the inspirations I have gotten for a couple of my images.

Initial sketch of ideas

For this image, I was inspired by an IKEA breakfast menu, where they had the food on one side and the text on the other, against a simple background.

Task 1 – 03
IKEA Breakfast –
http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_JO/ikea_food/ikea_restaurant.html

 

For this image, I was inspired by how angry mobs in the past would bring along torches and pitchforks, and hence I decided to combine the two, and have a hand holding the ‘pitchfork’ up high like an angry mob would. I shot it in a pitch black background to direct the audience’s focus solely on the burning fork, inspired by a poster image from Hell’s Kitchen.

Task 2 – 03
The Simpsons –
https://incrediblevanishingpaperweight.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/the-future-of-angry-mobs-and-the-end-of-pitchforks/
Hell’s KItchen –
https://www.eater.com/2012/5/16/6586205/gordon-ramsays-hells-kitchen-casting-talent-donkeys