PROJECTS

Portrait of a Place

This task asked for a portrait of Fitzroy Gardens, this piece is inspired by an artwork displayed there. Its about the intersection of place and humans, starting with a girl talking about how in her country death is a slow journey back to where we came from. I breakdown components of a tree through different AI and hand painted interpretations to an origin (blank screen). There can be two interpretations viewers can look at the tree being insignificant as this journey leads to a blank. I am however trying to convey a journey leading to everything as it all dissolves together. To show this one random tree in Fitzroy gardens is connected to humans. I am hinting at the idea of being buried when we die referencing her belief of returning to somewhere in this case to the earth through death. She goes on to say through the eyes of the people we love this is very literally shown in the video zooming into her eyes to start this journey. However, she is not someone I love, the addition of clips including different people would be more fitting. It ends of with “we are briefly eternal” which relates back to the tree due to them having been around since the start of time. This idea of eternity and humans being a part of it is showing the true portrait of the place being everything as everything is connected.

Not Now, Bernard

This task gave us a vinyl and VHS tape, giving an opportunity to explore its contents in any chosen way. For the concept of this piece I kept consistent with the storyline of Not Now, Bernard, the VHS tape I got. The cartoon follows a young Bernard who is consistently ignored by his parents until he gets eaten by a monster. The monster replaces Bernard and also gets ignored, hinting at Benard being the monster. My rendition furthers this concept by creating overlays using ultra key and roto brush to replicate Bernards dissociative techniques. The video starts with clips from the original story cut up to be shorter then escalates into a loop formed by clips from other stories sourced from the same VHS. The clips contains imagery of elephants and people crying as a parallel to this dissociative state in him becoming all these other figures, the elephants a subtle reference to being the elephant in the room and the crying people a reference to his internal feelings. The vinyl I got given was symphony of young lovers which I cut up and added through the end to further build intensity.
WIL Form

Mapping Project

This task called for a mapping of our journey to university. My initial reaction of this piece was to do something around my tram and my morning routine of doing my makeup, having a coffee, having breakfast, doing work and mindlessly scrolling through my phone whilst on it. I explored using a Go-pro following my journey and making a timelapse this was unsuccessful. I found a video showing a driver's perspective of the tram route which became the starting point for my video. On top i added clips of a stop motion i made of the contents of my bag keying out the background making it more transparent. This process isolated the writing from the paper from my notes. I then screen recorded me scrolling through my Instagram and TikTok then did the same thing keying out the background to layer it on top of the video. If i were to do this again i would play around with more stop motion as it was the most effective part of the video.

Colour Project

This colour project gave us a colour to explore. My colour was mermaid tail a teal, the colour did not spark much inspiration however during this time I was learning animation and wanted to bring in this element to my work. The project was introduced around easter because of that bunnies were on my mind, ending up being the subject of the video. The snippet of music I got didn't have a real build up or change, the first part though had lower notes and the second part had higher. I made the decision for the first section to be different to the second, the animation was made to go with the lower more serious music following a bunny listening to music, spinning and jumping. The second half contains clips of real bunnies dancing and hopping around with a mermaid tail filter over it, a little more fun to go with the higher pitch. If were to remake this without a time limit I would make the whole thing an animation it.  

Open Project - “have a seat”

The open project gave us freedom to create whatever we felt, inspired by the semester. For this I brainstormed different ideas and choose to do a video installation as I was intrigued by the ones I had seen in galleries. The looming effect a larger installation in particular was highly effective. They were able to pull viewers into its world and capture attention. My initial idea was around exploring various parts of myself represented in clothes each asking a question they would like to ask. I wanted the setting to be dark placing focus on these characters and for them to be displayed on life size screens in a semicircle. A seat to be placed in the middle of the semicircle to make an intimidating environment. The words the characters said to be a rhythmic performance similar to a chant. To film this I used the video studio, setting up 3-point lighting to create the least number of shadows possible as I wanted the characters to be flat. I used a 4k video camera to ensure quality of the video would not be lost in post-production when the clips were cropped. A stick mic was used to get the best sound quality possible this however was not effective as it was not strong enough to pick up the subject's voices at the distance it was set up. There was also a lot of background noise, to supress this I used a de hummer, in the future I would use a zoom mic instead. The filming process taught me a lot about taking as many takes as needed until the whole recording is perfect as trying to edit together different takes in post ended with harsh cuts. To fix this I added glitches to make it look more intentional, but it took away from the aim of the keeping it as monotone as possible. It also showed me less brightness when filming is better, as some of my clips were overexposed, losing thier definition, when I could have easily edited it to be brighter in post. The final product was a projection as having multiple channels was too hard, the use of fabric was also explored but it dulled the colours of the projection making it less effective. I chose to display it on the wall from a low angle to stretch the image vertically and resemble my original intention of godlike figures looking down on you. The editing of it being in a semicircle created an illusion of it being 3D and having the viewer being surrounded. The chair changed to being a small pink stool to further the infantilisation of the viewer. After putting the video together the narrative had transformed it became a piece about women empowerment in being able to ask these questions to people who had wronged them. The clothing chosen was what they felt confident in and the videos showed them standing in what they wanted to wear without fear of judgement. Feedback of the girls dressed up received thoughts of them being dolls or game characters which was not my intention but hopefully the size of the end result having them towering over viewers can change this perception. Overall this piece was visually appealing but had technical issues.