MAN: Actuality (Final Documentation)

Abstract: 

Actuality is a visual narrative that follows a girl who realises that reality is not what it what she think it is. Drawing inspiration from Particle Duality and the Double Slit experiment, these discoveries showcases how light particles can behave in a completely unexpected mannerisms. To the artist, this opens up more questions about the tangibility of our world, of how there are secrets are yet to be unlocked and utilized in our current time. Another theory that shapes the piece is the Simulation Theory. The theory proposes that all of reality, including the Earth and the universe, is in fact an artificial simulation, most likely a computer simulation. This resulted in the protagonist in the video meet a monster that represents a Matrioshka brain, which is a megastructure that is hypothesised to have of immense computational capacity. Hence having the ability to create a simulation in the protagonist’s world.

Reflection:

It was a great experience doing things in After Effects for such a long video. My only experiences so far with the software is creating very short GIFs and effects, hence executing a 2min video was a challenge to my current skillsets. It was a learning curve for me and there was a lot of googling that needs to be done in order to get the effect I want. A lot of time was also need to settle on the illustrations and I kept on making improvements onto it till the very end of the deadline.

Some of the improvements I want to make is adding even more details into each frame. For example, making the protagonist facial features move and the likes. After the last test that was shown on the Media Art wall last week, I realised that it looks quite plain and Daryl suggested injecting more movements into in each frame to make the viewers eye move, hence making it more interesting. As such, I had to compromise by cutting out a few frames to add a little more details and transitions to meet the deadline. Despite this, I am contented with the final output and will keep working on it over the holidays to get it to the standard which I envisioned it to be.

View my final work here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YkZUWlMelRerFmPtfXJN1dzqeEggaCyT/view?usp=sharing

Documentation: