Alex’s Time Based Communication 2

This project is about my HAIR! An exciting project. I used green screen throughout the entire video to create the sillohette in the video. Playing with the flourishes that is supposed to be my hair, I was able to combine both video and vector graphics successfully. I did many many shots because I was using the green screen in a very unique way. Since some of my shots consist of me touching (or sleeping on top of) the green screen, a lot of lighting and editing was required.

1# My Room

My is my personal space. It is one of those things where I can truly say it’s mine. It’s a place for me to sleep, think, work, entertain, and procrastinate. I spend most of my time in my room and is rarely in other rooms of the house. Like many of the things I own, I designed it to personalize myself. My room has become a part of me over the years, and has been an object of pride and personal significance.

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2# My Chinese name (Stamp)

This is a stamp that was given to my by my employer and friend, who I came to learn a lot from and look up to almost like a sister. She got me this stamp of my Chinese name when she when to Beijing for a business trip. The sculpture is a tiger which is my chinese animal year.

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3# Visual Diary

This is a visual diary that I used to keep during my younger years. I have many of them in different sketch books that I used to carry around. It is a record of my life expressed visually and represents my perspective of the world around me in that period of time.

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4# Cloak

This cloak has been in the same place for as long as I can remember. It represents time and time for me is a really important matter. Everytime I see that cloak I know time is passing by, and I can’t waste it.

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5# Cast of my hand

This is a cast of my hand. The cast was even able to copy my finger prints as well. I feel like it really is part of myself, because it reminds me of a temporal body I posses that the cast represents a still in time of which it represents a part of me of which I can never be again.

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6# Glass horse

This is a glass horse that my Grandmother left behind when she had pasted away. It’s something that my cousin and I always treasured and thought of her whenever we see it.

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7# Necklace

This is a jewelery piece that I made. The concept of the design was the metaphor of the mask everyone wears. People aren’t being authentic to themselves and to others. The peice was a symbol and a reminder of that.

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8# Beijing Olympic Mascot

During the summer I volunteered and was wearing a huge version of the doll. After that me and my friend decided to buy bunch of them and sell them. It was a great experience.

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9# Tiger Doll

My best friend who had to transfer to a different school gave me this. We were both in the year of the tiger.

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10# Cast of my hand

I am part of a service bursary at York. So I work for the English Department in administrative work, and design work for different events. One event I will be participating in is the Award Ceremony in the Writing Department. I would like to take this opportunity to incorporate this project with the Award Ceremony into creating a Academy Leader for their Video which I will be taking, and editing. Although I will be editing the video, I will not be using any of the film for this project. Instead I be filming possibly the process of writing and emphasising the process of jotting down ideas for a peice of writing.

Audience – The audience will the the students and faculty of the writing department. Also potiential students who are interested in the writing department who want to learn more about them.

Key Message – Since it is an Academy Leader for an Awards Ceremony, I want to emphasize the idea that these award winners went through the same creative process as any other student in the program to create award winning pieces of work. I want to show everyone that anyone can win an award through hard work, and that it’s very possible to win an award. I want this to be an inspiration for everyone in the program.

Content Planning – I have a very simple idea. Since I want to capture the jotting down of ideas, I will choose one setting, and capture a hand jotting down the numbers from 10 – 3 maybe in different perspectives of the camera, and using different editing tools to create that transition.

Inspiration:

Overview of project: It has been a year since I renovated my room, and it has been 11 years since I moved into this room. During my previous renovation a year ago, my budget went out and I wasn’t able to do a couple things to my room. First I didn’t get a nice 32″ tv, second was that I didn’t get to replace my carpet with laminate flooring. However I did change my bed, paint the room replace all the furniture with new ones and added a fish tank along with new lights.

For this project, since I have been thinking for sometime to replace my carpet floor to a laminate floor, I am going to take the chance to incorporate it into this up coming project.

For the academy leader of a how-to home renovations television series, I wanted to portray a taste of renovation, more specifically, replacing the carpet with laminate flooring. Using one specific example I hope to represent the idea of renovation in general. This project also represents a great chance/excuse for me to replace my 25 year old carpet o_O”

Audience: There isn’t a large population out there that would take on special interest in renovations. The main audience would consist of home owners who just bought their property, ready to sell their property, or those like me who are sick of the property (which doesn’t require to be a homeowner).

Key Message: A taste of the raw and uncensored process of renovating the floor.

Content Planning:

Here is a basic storyboard that includes the content planning. Basically I’m using my room and the building materials such as paint, laminate floors, carpet, picture frames as my content.

Bibliography:

“Trafficmaster Urban Walnut.” Home Depot. 8 Oct. 2008 <http://www.homedepot.ca/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/catalogsearchresultview?d=976753&ntt=976753&catalogid=10051&langid=-15&storeid=10051&dx=mode+matchallpartial&ntx=mode+matchall&recn=112454&n=0&ntk=p_partnumber#reviews>.

The project’s concept was founded on the Modern movement. Alienation came into existence from the Modern movement and in this project I explored the idea by capturing the raw images of Alienation in society. The concept came to me from an Existentialism which originated from the idea of Alienation. The feelings of not belonging, meaninglessness, and loneliness are all characteristics of Alienation. All of these characteristics came into being when the industrial revolution was in motion. Small villages and communities started to move into and eventually consumed by big urban cities. Dominated by machines and technology, people began to function and be treated like machines through a process of objectification. People also began to conform to society, by behaving like the “norm”, buying things that are considered good, and doing things that they are expected to do. In this process, many begin to question their way of life. In questioning, they start to enter a state of lucidity in the conformity of society. This lucidity gives rise to feelings of not belonging, eventually leading to meaninglessness, and loneliness. This is the essence I tried to capture in society.

The project mainly consist of a white pair of shoes. Throughout the project the screen is cropped almost like the viewer is looking through something. I meant to make it so that it’s like looking through a specific perspective. It begins in a busy subway station during rush hour. Focusing at the shoes, there are also many many shoes who are worn by business people walking by. Firstly I chose a pair of empty shoes to represent Alienation because people are becoming more and more like objects, and the fact that it’s empty symbolizes that it’s meaninglessness. Secondly, I chose a white pair of shoes to contrast the “business shoes,” that were worn by business men because it symbolizes the lucidity of the alienated being. Thirdly, capturing rush hours was ideal since it captured the stark contrast of people rushing to work and the white pair of shoes simply staying in one place.

As the clip goes on, suddenly all the noise and sound stops. All that’s heard is a mild breathing, and flashes of the pair of shoes that is synchronized with the breathing. The intention here is to create a loneliness with a sort of anxiety as the breathing becomes louder. What I hoped to portray was a moment of reflection that leads to questions of, what is the meaning of life? and eventually concluding with the feeling of meaninglessness.

Right away the scene is flipped back into the subway scene. The sound focuses on some of the details of the surrounding like the cry of the baby, etc. The attention of the baby is ignored in the loud sounds of the overall soundscape from the environment just like the shoes that were ignored.

Again it flips back. This time the sound of breathing is louder along with the heartbeats. The pictures of shoes captured here is supposed to capture movement of the shoes, symbolizing the individual searching for answers.

Then the scene cuts into the subway. The subway was already in motion so the view does not know if it was coming or leaving. As the scenes goes on it’s obvious that the subway was leaving, which shows that the shoes wasn’t heading anywhere in contrast to the business people during rush hour.

In the final scene, although there is a bad quality filter added to it, there are some clear images that are immediately seen. The first is the white shoes again, and the reflection of it in the mirror. Then, consistent to the bad quality, I tried to capture movement again. The scene ends when the quality gets worst which eventually ends with a unrecognizable screen. The end symbolizes the meaninglessness as a conclusion.

In the process of putting this project together, I find it really interesting. Some parts like taking photos of my shoes in the station was like a performance art piece. People see the shoe a split second before stepping on it, some people looked a the shoe and then looked at me. I was smirking, but it’s really funny when I look back on it. The project was certainly an interesting one, however, I found it a bit disappointing that this project only consist of one week. If it was longer, there are certain areas I think I could make better of.

Acclivity. TottenhamCourtRoad. MP3. 2006.
Brotherprovisional. Copy Machine 2. 2007.
Dobroide. Casual Ambience. 2007.
Dobroide. Obras. MP3. 2005.
Donniebobb. Fly dying. MP3. 2006.
Dynamicell. Fire_Forest_Inferno. 2007.
Fogma. Bar Atmosphere Not So Busy. 2006.
FreqMan. Siren n Thunder. 2005.
Giddykipper. Brugse5. 2008.
Hazure. Smallrocksfootsteps. 2006.
HerbertBoland. HeartbeatEnhanced. 2007.
IFartInUrGeneralDirection. Xenia_tornado. MP3. 2008.
IFartInUrGeneralDirection. Xenia_tornado. MP3. 2008.
Inchadney. Owl 2. 2007.
James UK. Atc8. 2007.
Kupper. Klok 001. 2005.
Melack. Passos me. 2005.
Percy Duke. White Noise. MP3. 2007.
Pfly. Babycry06. 2006.
RHumphries. Rbh NYC subway pass. 2005.
Robinhood76. 00254 hospital walk 1. 2008.
Shades. Laugh-child. 2007.
Thanvannispen. Breath_in_and_out. 2005.
The_justin. Sigh. 2005.
Wim. Grandfather’s clock. MP3. 2006.

The sound project. Words used are nature, merge and decay. This soundscape works as a narrative where Nature by itself is constantly merging. Merging to what? Merging to human developement. Which eventually ends up in decay. So the soundscape itself starts off with a very calm music of nature. It later is combine with a abundance of symbolism that creates a whole environment of conflicting sounds with the very calm music of nature which we started with. As more sounds are added near the end of the soundscape, it suddenly stops with white noise and ends with a fly which gets cut off at the end. It gets confusing for some at the end where the fly appears. It is simply my personal statement of our cities and development destroying our natural environments. The fly symbolizeds evil.

Sounds found at the Free Sounds Project www.freesounds.org

Acclivity. TottenhamCourtRoad. MP3. 2006.
Brotherprovisional. Copy Machine 2. 2007.
Dobroide. Casual Ambience. 2007.
Dobroide. Obras. MP3. 2005.
Donniebobb. Fly dying. MP3. 2006.
Dynamicell. Fire_Forest_Inferno. 2007.
Fogma. Bar Atmosphere Not So Busy. 2006.
FreqMan. Siren n Thunder. 2005.
Giddykipper. Brugse5. 2008.
Hazure. Smallrocksfootsteps. 2006.
HerbertBoland. HeartbeatEnhanced. 2007.
IFartInUrGeneralDirection. Xenia_tornado. MP3. 2008.
IFartInUrGeneralDirection. Xenia_tornado. MP3. 2008.
Inchadney. Owl 2. 2007.
James UK. Atc8. 2007.
Kupper. Klok 001. 2005.
Melack. Passos me. 2005.
Percy Duke. White Noise. MP3. 2007.
Pfly. Babycry06. 2006.
RHumphries. Rbh NYC subway pass. 2005.
Robinhood76. 00254 hospital walk 1. 2008.
Shades. Laugh-child. 2007.
Thanvannispen. Breath_in_and_out. 2005.
The_justin. Sigh. 2005.
Wim. Grandfather’s clock. MP3. 2006.

In this excercise we took approx. 90 photos of circular forms in an hours time. Then using some of these photos, we experimented on the transitions on Final Cut to produce a 30 second movie. The concept behind this exercise is that we start from a small number of circles and start with the biggest size, then it begins to get smaller and the number of circles increase. Me, Sarah, and Jen have created three versions of this concept. For mine I wanted to experiment with mainly motion. I looked through a bit of tutorials to crop the images in these specific forms and placed them in these square boundaries. It is really experimental as it looks like I broken up the images manipulated it. I focused on experimenting with motion for this exercise. It was fun and at the end, I think I learned a lot from this exersize.

When me and my partner, Sarah, first approach this exercise we didn’t really know what we were looking for, and there wasn’t really a lot of time either. We walked to Seneca @ york and found some pretty nice windows with some light going through them, but we knew since it was kinda cloudy that we won’t be able to capture much of a change in light, or any change at all for that matter. We walked a bit and as soon as we saw the bridge that separated the tel building and the Seneca @ York building we knew it was the spot. It had perspective, it had lots and lots of shadows that made the composition very interesting. The composition was so good I doubted that we had to crop it later. During the exercise we didn’t really think much or observe much because we were busy checking the timer and getting to know each other a bit. However, we did notice that since it was cloudy, the lighting had a dramatic change. From a high contrast composition with highly defined shadows and bright light, to a less contrast composition with dim and fading light and shadows.

Once back in the studio, the change in light was apparent to our observations. We also noticed the light moving more and more towards the camera. This is interesting, because although it was only 60 mins, we captured the movement of the sun that creates the effects that light is moving due to the positioning of the sun behind the windows. But what was almost immediately noticed once we put together the frames are the capture of motion. Not the motion in light, but the motion and the possibility of a narrative of certain people who were in the frames. This certainly added a more dramatic effect to the change in each frame. We also noticed that it is not so much of complete change in each frame that made it interesting, instead, it is the relationship from one from to another. The narrative seems to be the main point of interest. If the shots were taken at maybe 30 secs per shot, it would have created an even more obvious relation between the frames that would help the narrative even more.