In this project, we had to use only audio/foley to present our narratives. This is a really interesting assignment and it also helped me understand how much music and sound effects can affect the mood and setting of a “film’, and how important it is to choose a suitable piece to fit at suitable place.
Story 1: Psycho Murder
Genre:Thriller
Scene description:
Sarah is being kidnapped in a dark room, she couldn’t see anything, and the silence was deafening; until the door finally creaked open, and the mysterious sound of footsteps slowly approached her.
As the footsteps reached beside her, all she could hear was voices calling out her name in the creepiest way ever. She then heard the mysterious person giggling, and then going a distance away from her, ransacking items, and then she hear him carving knives….In no time, the mysterious person ran towards Sarah and attacked her, and she passed on.
Soundtrack:
Story 2: A Chance Encounter
Genre:Romance-Comedy
Scene description:
The scene started off with a romantic jazz music in a French setting that leads us back to around 1940s. The protagonist would be having their meals, and as they got the bill and leave the restaurant, it started pouring and the male and female lead bumped into each other. Feeling the same way for each other, the two immediately had feelings for each other and they went off into a car, back to the apartment to “get a room”!
Soundtrack:
References:
To start off with the project, I searched on silent films to see how each narrative flows and also to see if the visuals still play a big part of the film, or is it heavily reliant on the audio effects.
Below are some of the reference videos that I used as a guidance to my assignment or some of which I found really interesting.
Potential topics: 1. Dance 2. Camera 3. iPhone
4. Water 5. Fire
Brainstorm process:
Water from the point of view of an athlete is motivation.
Water from the point of view of an African child is hope.
Water from the point of view of sea creatures is home.
Water from the point of view of cleaner is a means to an end.
Water from the point of view of a chef is an ingredient.
Water from the point of view of a plant is sustenance.
Water from the point of view of a swimmer is career.
Water from the point of view of a flame is death.
Water from the point of view of instant noodles is completion.
Water from the point of view of a desert is miracle.
Water from the point of view of feng shui is flow of money.
Water from the point of view of firemen is weapon.
Water from the point of view of hose is ammunition.
Water from the point of view of an eye is heart break.
Water from the point of view of a Thai citizen is new beginning. (Songkran)
Water from the point of view of a pair of lungs is pneumonia.
Water from the point of view of Singapore is contract.
Water from the point of view of a bottle is purpose.
Water from the point of view of Bruce Lee is battle cry
Water from the point of view of Science is ph7.
Inspiration:
I’ve always loved the idea of combining photography and graphic art. It could be executed in digital painting or physical drawing, which could be combined as one. It gives off a typically clean overall look and feel and an illusion of 2D animation instead of the actual 3D object. The artwork could also symbolically represent an alternate reality in which all these objects could be viewed from varying perspectives.
Just a recap, my previous oss post mentioned about my thematic approach being “The understanding of body parts – making use of different parts of the body to portray the concept, idea, or keyword.”
And notice the flow of my presentation? From a wider angle of me, to a much intimate and close up image of myself, very very concentrated on the whole idea of ME! Hahaha
Also, this whole project actually reveals that, I am a night person, for sure.
– MY NAME IS ZIYU AND I AM:
A dance choreographer
Being a dance choreographer, I told my dancers to just lie down on the floor (they followed my instructions even though they don’t understand why haha). Because this was shot during one of the rehearsal, I wasn’t able to get the number of people I need as most of them are still having practises for other segments. Hence, I got some of them to stay in position while I did the switching, lying in different positions and forming my own name! Previously, I named this header “a dancer” instead of “a dance choreographer”, but after much consideration, I realized that I do not only portray that I am a dancer, I actually choreographed and directed the dance, this image, their poses and positions! I chose this location and setting, a road at night, because I’d like to emphasize on the idea of me being a night person – it’s so late that no cars are even passing by this road!
To further push this image, I photoshopped my shirt to purple on the I in my ZIYU; as this whole project is really concentrated on myself, thus “I”. I chose purple because my name Ziyu is usually mispronounced as 紫玉 (purple jade) instead of the actual 姿羽. So it’s purple me, and I am a dance choreographer!
A Narcissist
In my previous post, I mentioned that I wanted to make use of Dada art to form my name, playing with black and white, child and current me respectively to portray how much I’ve grown into the current narcissistic me.
However, an idea suddenly struck as I was having my shower, #showerthoughts haha and I tried out using mosaic tiles to fill up my name, and form an image larger image of myself – so it’s a lot of myself, in my selfie, within my name, for the “my name is” project! Is this Ziyu-ception?! HAHA but yes I got the inspiration from a marilyn monroe mosaic as seen here: And upon which, I did one on myself, the choice of my larger image selfie came when I recalled that I won the selfie of the month hosted by cathay. My selfie was printed in large format, pasted on the huge wall beside cineleisure and cathay, published on their website and instagram and I received a $100 flashpay ezlink card! That was a really memorable image of myself, thus I picked that. 😛 So from this large image and the other pictures I have of myself, I created the mosaic, but was too satisfied because of the random empty spaces here and there, so I compiled even more images of myself!
and formed this full mosaic of myself as seen below! Then, I used the Horizontal Type Mask tool on photoshop to form my name and separated out the name and the background. Then I adjusted the background to greyscale, and my name to remain as colourful and vibrant to portray me! I then added fx like stroke and drop shadow to make my name more outstanding.
Here’s a close up of the final work And here it is!
Nocturnal
In my last post, I mentioned that I wanted to try neon lights as it brings out the night life, using the same concept, I tried to execute but it didn’t turn out as expected, thus I changed the idea, which I will elaborate further in awhile, but take a look at my process!
I was inspired my The Sam Willows’ take heart, with a dark setting and neon paint on their faces.
However, executing it physically and digitally is really different and I felt like my neon looking fonts looks really amateur.
So I changed my concept to shadowy, ghostly fonts, and this it why:
As a dancer, especially this period of time with a lot of competition, I don’t get to sleep much. Dance rehearsals are usually 7pm to 4am, choreographers will then stay back to continue editing music, videos, deciding on costumes, reviewing rehearsals and planning for the following days’ agenda. I’d usually end and get ready to sleep when sun is about to rise, and if there are classes the next day, I’d usually not sleep, go for class, and try my best to survive, then when it ends, I’ll rush back to hall for a good nap. So yes, I am nocturnal. Legit. Hahah. I am totally enjoying this whole process as I am pushing and learning, but I am not so sure if I’d live this nocturnal lifestyle for long, this is really taxing and bad for my body and health, thus, you can see from my final work, it overall feels I tried to portray is dark, gloomy and slightly ghostly. Here’s the original picture i took. and then i cropped it to just focus on the eye, shift the position to the rules of third so that the composition would be slightly more interesting, edited it, make my eyes more bloodshot, and the surroundings to be darker. I used the same colour of my eye bags to droop my name down to show that I am the cause of my own eye bags. But i didn’t really like the contrasting edges at the right side of my name. I adjusted the opacity, but now I think it doesn’t look blended enough. I tried transforming and wrapping the font and it felt a little more ghostly! So I edited the shape, the thinness and thickness of it, and created a shadow of of it. The idea of shadow also portray that it has got to do with lights or night time, and here it is!
A Musician
I learnt piano till I was grade 4 and then gave up when I was young… But that being said, I was groomed and am more musically inclined! Also, to dance and to choreograph dance pieces, I must be very sensitive with the different layers of songs and be strong in my musicality. Thus, I am a musician!
I tried various finger positions to form the letter “Z”, but I wasn’t exactly convinced by it initially, so how would my audience be convinced? I wanted to go for the easy way out, place my fingers at a position that the “Z” is obvious, but that would mean that the finger position and techniques of a pianist is wrong! So I abandoned that idea and continued trying different positions.
And then I thought, why don’t I play some thing in slow motion, and ask my friend to help me snap a tons of picture and then I select from the entire batch? And so, I narrowed down to the picture below and started editing.
I managed to spot a Z from my thumb to thumb and index finger, so I based my edit on this. I didn’t like that the keyboard has a lot of details, so I cloned it away to make it full black.
I wanted to blur out the sides of the image and only macro focus the Z, however, it didn’t work out as expected. Then I experimented on lighter and darker shades. Upon reaching this stage, I thought why not expand on the idea of a single spotlight?
I added rays of the same intensity to show the effect of a follow-spot (light) on stage. So again it’s me, Z, under a single spotlight! Through this project, you can see that I am obviously a night person, I love the limelight (on stage) and I love anything linked to music!
As I’ve mentioned during presentation, my whole project revolves around the night setting – dance choreographer, as mentioned above. Narcissist – there’s always a prime time to post photos on instagram and that is at night! Nocturnal – it’s self-explanatory. Musician – theatre shows, performances, recitals are usually held at night. Therefore, I am definitely a night person!
I hope you guys enjoyed my presentation as well as my concepts! Do let me know if you guys have any suggestions for me to improve on my work, thank ya all!!!!! 🙂
Hi all! I’m Ziyu and below are my research on some ideas to execute typography. I focused mainly on key words and approach instead of specific artist, hence, designs and pictures are mostly from google images or pinterest:
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Hello card:
Typography –
I love places with vintage décor and objects, thus, I picked a vintage font to represent myself. I wanted to play with the positive and negative space, however, after trying out with a full solid black background, I felt like it didn’t quite show who I am because I’m usually quite an outgoing and loud person, so I used bright colours with dancing silhouettes to depict my positive personality!
Abstract Solution –
As a dancer, my footwear is really important to me and I wanted find out from the perspective of my shoes and its effect from my foot-work during my routine. The above short-video documents on my usual rehearsal – I attached the card under my heels and danced for awhile with it. The after-effect looks scratched and marred with dust, which also depicts the life of a commercial dancer; it may seem like its a glamorous job and we’d have a lot of fun and enjoyment through dancing but we may also get hurt from falling, trying stunts, having long duration of rehearsals etc, which may not be the healthiest lifestyle you could live.
Conceptual –
Many people identify me with my smile, thus I compiled and cut smiles from magazines and did a collage of it on the card. I placed “On Air” within the artwork because I secretly want to be in the media industry, hosting, acting or anything alike (don’t think it’s a secret anymore ^.^”). Not only that, I feel like whatever people say is really impactful whether it’s some thing good or bad, positive or negative, and it’s all up to oneself. Therefore, the mouth is a pretty important representation of me!
Then, I used the Horizontal Type Mask tool on photoshop to form my name and separated out the name and the background. Then I adjusted the background to greyscale, and my name to remain as colourful and vibrant to portray me!
