cgreaneyatc

[cgreaneyatc]

Side note about group setup

I think the way the groups were set up in this class was done more effectively than in other classes I’ve personally had. Having one sound student and one visual student gives each person an equal amount of work to do and their own technical specialities to attend to. In many of my visual classes, we’d have 3-4 in a group who are all visual students working on the same project. However, it’d be hard to keep to the brief with different interpretations of the common concept and instead we’d end up with 3-4 mini-works that had to somehow all be connected which would inevitably make up a disjointed larger work. But having only one person taking care of one specialty (visuals) and another on a different specialty (sound) made for much more cohesive workflows and resulting products this semester. Perhaps I’m somewhat biased because Ben and I worked so well together, but I give a thumbs-up for setting up group work/classes like this in the future.

[cgreaneyatc]

Week 13 - Final week!

Being the final week, this week was about making our final touches and implementing any last feedback we received.

On Wednesday we had critique sessions where we were eager to show our work. For Indoctrination, it was said that it was 98% complete but the purpose of the flower presence seemed too unclear. Additionally, it was suggested the blank moments of black screen between each sequence should be filled in to build up tension. This summoned the opportunity to strengthen the flower theme by making reference to it in these moments between sequences. The function behind the flowers losing colour is a measurement of how in touch Baby Kid is with his reality and reflects his view of the world becoming disfigured. The distortion of his perspective is conveyed through his natural surroundings being distorted, specifically the flowers. So, I filled in the blank moments with a distorted outline of flowers flickering in and out which portrays his world slowly becoming more and more corrupted and foreshadows the collapse of everything at the end. I created this effect mostly the same way I edited the last two shots in which I masked out the flowers, softened the mask edge, added VR Digital Glitch, applied a Displacement Map to create the outline and colour graded it. I also added a slightly more obvious outline to the very last flower shot which has lengthier distortion. This buildup helps to strengthen the flower motif and clarify its conceptual purpose. Ben distorted the end of the soundtrack tenfold to match the visuals making the melodies pretty much inaudible, but we agreed we should make the music just mildly audible so that it has a proper conclusion instead of JUST a soundscape seizure at the end (which is still present but with a melodic underlayer).

Besides this, I made some final touches with tightening the motion tracking of the phone, colour correcting it and my hand so now it better matches the colour balance of the rest of the scenes.

‘Indoctrination’ Final: https://youtu.be/eqNXk4yKEEE

In regards to The Way Back, there were just a couple things to fix up. In Act 3 when the vaccinations appear, the word ‘INFLUENZA’ appears and apparently killed the mood a bit given this work is referencing Covid. ‘DISEASE’ appears afterwards so I replaced INFLUENZA with it, so now it’s dancing on-screen for slightly longer now to keep that textual theme going. Another issue was the amount of effects applied to clips at the end of Act 1. It seemed like too much too soon, so to make it less cheesy, I stripped it back to give it a more gradual buildup so that it has better paced tension. For Ben, it was just a matter of removing a few of the sound effects.

‘The Way Back’ Final: https://youtu.be/MMgx1FmxLQs

Her

I just so happened to watch ‘Her’, a movie by Spike Jonze yesterday (Saturday, 24/10). I won’t spoil anything beyond the synopsis, but it takes place in the near-ish future while still in a contemporary setting, just with advanced technology. Much of the protagonist’s entertainment and social life is lived through this technology, even to the point that he falls in love with his Artificial Intelligence system since the technology is competent enough to have its own personality. I just found the protagonist’s dependency on technology similar to the themes in our Indoctrination work, where both him and Baby Kid become disinterested in the physical reality around them and favour engaging in more virtual things (which gives very relatable points of reference for whoever will see Indoctrination). But I think Indoctrination somewhat nods to the same things explored in Her where there’ll be a highly likely future where technology will be of massive importance to us, especially in the form of AI, causing us to have a heavy reliance on it.

The Collaboration

Indoctrination and The Way Back were the two projects that came to fruition with Ben, and both were ideas from pretty early on in the semester. I’m very happy with how they’ve turned out and how well Ben and I worked together as a group. It was very a graceful experience with little to no friction. I think the success of group work comes down to three things:

1) Communication - Ben and I pretty much spoke everyday, even if it was just to chat about life, but this created an open dialogue between us where we were consistently on the same page about our projects.

2) Organisation -  We used Google Drive to share files with each other. We’d message one another whenever we uploaded something new and explain what was different from the last version. We’re also the type of people who prefer getting work done earlier rather than later which was a big help!

3) Creative Compatibility - We were open-minded to hearing each other’s ideas and recommendations, and would adjust anything accordingly as long as it could be conceptually justified. This gave us room to experiment with our projects and narrow down our work over time.

So, fulfilling all of this unofficial criteria (effortlessly) made for a great duo who seem to make pretty decent work together. Definitely one of the best groups I’ve worked in!

[cgreaneyatc]

Week 12

Didn’t focus much at all with The Way Back this week as Indoctrination was demanding attention.

TWB: https://youtu.be/geYKZ5xfB8g

On Monday, we received feedback on our works from Nick who works at ACMI. Something I found particularly interesting was Nick’s criticism of my peers adding additional noise and grain to already aged footage as it seems counterintuitive. I understood and agreed with his point. Now we added something similar to Indoctrination, our digital glitches. When Nick got to our work, he said they had a place in our work as they helped convey the narrative and motifs, especially with the effect not encompassing Baby Kid and rather just the surrounding environment as this symbolises his distortion of reality. I appreciated him noticing that. I adjusted the appearance and length of these glitch effects to make them just that bit more prominent and so that each one is slightly different from the last.

Last week, Ben and I discussed baby sound effects. Fortunately enough, I have a Swedish-Australian baby nephew (who lives in Sweden 🇸🇪) who I could source sound effects from. I asked my brother if he was okay with that and he gave me the “Jajamän!” (Which means ‘sure thing!’). So Ben was able to play around with that this week.

One of the more important tasks this week for me was sorting out a 3D model so that we could have a phone appearing in our footage. My initial plan was to make a phone model in Blender. However, I have very little experience with Blender and I failed miserably to even re-shape the cube. So, still confident, I decided it would be wiser to go on TurboSquid and download a 3D model from there. I downloaded a free model to use as a test before I opened up After Effects. I planned on using Element 3D to import the 3D model file into AE. However, this ALSO failed. To properly install E3D, you need to make an account on their website which only seems possible through buying one of their products… which cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. So. That was a no go.

So I googled how to include 3D objects in AE to see if there was another way and found out that it has a dynamic link feature with Maxon Cinema 4D. “Huzzah!” I thought… except that failed miserably as well. The 3D models I downloaded (in different file formats) didn’t appear in C4D when I tried opening them.

Without Element 3D or C4D working, our 3D ambitions came to a close and I had to re-evaluate our approach. After some pondering, I decided to try out compositing a picture of my phone using a green screen into the environment of our footage.

My neighbour kindly lended me a green file folder of his which served as the green screen. I pretty much placed my phone on top of my makeshift ‘green screen’ and positioned my phone in relation to the environment in the respective clips and imitated the camera angle with my DSLR.

The green screen didn’t quite work properly. When I applied the Keying effect, it would key out parts of my phone, making it transparent and some noise from the image still appeared. So I masked out around the phone and colour corrected it to make it more neutral. After positioning it in the scene, I made some shadows by playing with gaussian blurs and opacity and parented it to the phone.

Now, these were static images which were relatively easy to work with. But for the start of the video when Baby Kid first sees the phone, I planned on taking a video of me holding my phone. Conveniently enough, there’s a green wall in my accomodation which is where I filmed this. For the most part, it worked decently. Again, noise appeared after keying, but I was able to mask most of it out and soften the edges around my arm/phone so they’re barely noticeable. And of course did some quick colour correcting to better match the original footage.

Indoctrination: https://youtu.be/qWt19YMwko0

What a week.

[cgreaneyatc]

Week 11 - Finalising clip selections, adding glitch effects and further refinement

iPod Indoctrination

Earlier last week, I cleaned up the rotoscoping by making more specific adjustments frame by frame and then applying the Refine Edge tool over the rotoscope outlines. This tool worked splendidly in stabilising the rotoscope selections and smoothing out the hard edges which allows for some transparency on the outlines (e.g. this method brings good results when roto’ing hair as it detects in the difference in the colour balance between subjects). Apart from a couple glitches that need polishing up, the rotoscoping is 95% done.

I had an idea that after rotoscoping was complete, I could try adding a few glitch effects to our video. I shared the idea with Ben and he gave the A-OK, saying it would give him reason to play around with sound textures.

After playing around with effects in Premiere Pro, I was initially dissatisfied with the results as Premiere felt like it lacked the resources to create my own specialised style for this effect. Ben liked the direction I was going in but said the effect looked too stock-like, as in dragging and dropping one of the default effects. So to After Effects I went. I ended up combining the VR Digital Glitch, Wave Warp and Displacement Map effects. I found I could break up the footage more specifically and warp it as opposed to ‘separating’ it which came up with a more unique look that Ben and I were happy with.

By taking this approach wit the glitch effect, it shows we don’t necessarily need to restrict ourselves to the iPod visuals and can open up to using more general digital aesthetics. The idea behind this effect further symbolises Baby Kid’s demise to technology with the iPod acting as a gateway to that. The last shot of Baby Kid portrays him disintegrating and shows an outline of him, very similar to the iPod silhouette aesthetic. It’s to say he has become merely a former husk of himself, no longer having any recognisable features or personality.

iPod Indoctrination progress: https://youtu.be/68CjG_nluVM

The Way Back

Last weekend, Ben sent an updated soundtrack in which he added more textured sound effects. I decided to either improve the current visuals by intensifying the effects or added in visuals to better ‘dance’ with the soundtrack.

The three aspects of engagement, while applicable to any work, seem to be strongly tied to this specific work. While Acts 1 and 2 had been taken care of, I knew Act 3 was needing more work. The collection of clips didn’t necessarily make conceptual sense which I knew was interrupting the structure, and with the structure being such a core part of the aspects of engagement, I knew this was having detrimental effects in other areas.

So I sifted through some of the Prelinger footage and decided to edit a mini-story at the start of Act 3. It shows a kid happily waking up, having breakfast and going off to school. This carefree behaviour suggests its the era after Covid where people have a more relaxed attitude. A clip of a child fallen ill after this part acts as a reminder that coronavirus is still out there, but the following footage of vaccinations implies that the world has a reasonable grasp of it to stop it spreading.

After feedback from Darrin in the middle of the week, Ben informed me that Act 2 needs to have a better paced buildup instead of diving straight into the rupture editing. We felt that the buildup from 0:50 was suitable but the parts afterward needed to be reworked as the editing was too quick and jarring. Now it currently has bursts of rupture editing with little moments to breathe in-between to not overwhelm viewers as much. It may need to be stripped back a bit more, but it’s in the right direction.

So it seems the structure was the main culprit for TWB’s shortcomings this week. To me, it feels as if the emotional and cognitive aspects heavily rely on the structure of the work. Ben and I can gain at least a mild sense of these two aspects through the mood created by the soundtrack and certain clips, otherwise it just doesn’t come through coherently without the right lineup of footage e.g. Act 3. But they’re in a better place where they all work in a more cohesive equilibrium than what they were previously.

The Way Back progress: https://youtu.be/9aVEGz2JJW4

[cgreaneyatc]

Week 10

On Monday, I called my VFX friend, Johnson, to get some advice on the colour grading of Indoctrination. I felt the colours needed to be balanced out more sensibly (especially the silhouettes) and I wanted someone with fresh and experienced eyes to look at it. Instead of using a yellow solid, Johnson suggested adding an adjustment layer and applying the ‘colorise’ feature in the Hue/Saturation effect which came out with something much more realistic and natural-looking while still holding that bold colour presence.

During the process, I disabled the silhouette effect which brought out a much more coherent visual image. I decided to be rid of the silhouettes as it brings the colour balance and general composition out of whack. Initially, the silhouettes were there to symbolise Baby Kid not recognising his family anymore and to better adhere to the iPod commercial style. However, even without the silhouette it still portrays an all-encompassing iPod nether world without losing any value from the message nor the audiovisual connection.

I updated Ben on the progress, asking for his opinion and he was happy with everything so long as it could be justified. Johnson (VFX friend) did say that Baby Kid was looking odd which I relayed to Ben. Ben explained the dramatic visual difference was the essence of the old iPod commercials, to have that strong contrast between the figure and surrounding environment and thus, we could get by with our visual choices unless we find reason to make changes.

A couple weeks ago, Shaun suggested cutting twenty seconds off both of our works (and sent me the Oasis MV to give me the idea of using track mattes) so we could better meet our A3 deadline. But ditching the silhouettes will cut down on half of the rotoscoping time which I believe solves the workflow issue that Shaun was concerned about. Regarding our workflow for The Way Back, our edit is very much established and Ben and I believe our remaining work can be done in a timely manner without needing to cut time from it.

I have mostly been spending time rotoscoping Indoctrination, putting The Way Back on the back burner. Although Ben developed the soundscape for TWB this week, adding in more sound effects at certain parts. This has given me ideas to have some of the visuals ‘dancing’ in time with these sound effects and in turn, given me more motivation to edit it (the last couple of weeks have felt quite slow and sluggish in regards to energy levels I think because of the lockdown).

Theory explored in class

This week we went over Malcolm Gladwell’s 10 Rules of Success. It’s a framework on how to approach work and the forces of the environment you’re within. However, I couldn’t help but feel that many of the rules were vague enough to be applied to anything but lacked substance when applied to our work.

That being said, one of his points did resonate with me which was #4: Constantly revise your conclusions. When creatively working, I find I like to experiment with the concept and its form and representation which has often dictated the end result of my creations. However, with these Collection projects, Ben and I have had a mostly clear end result in our heads, particularly in our concepts. This has been useful in clearly directing us to our goals rather than guessing along the way.

In essence, our approach has followed doing the experimentation earlier on, creating a solid foundation of our work and building onto that.

[cgreaneyatc]

Week 9

Due to being occupied with other presentations and editing this week, Ben and I really just touched base on where we’re at currently. We took in the feedback from our presentations this week which mainly advised us to tighten our edits and reconsider some shot choices in The Way Back (apart from that, we seem to be heading in the right direction).

The Way Back

The score for TWB is in good shape, however it was recommended that a couple visual choices be re-evaluated. A couple of the shots should be swapped out to better emphasise the themes of Act 1 which is a pretty feel-good and carefree sequence. Instead of the more mundane everyday tasks (like washing dishes), I’m thinking to pick something more obviously upbeat and energetic. Something from Duck and Cover would also tie the Acts together in terms of the source material used.

However, we need to keep on top of the themes and how they correlate with the cognitive engagement. While the structure and emotional aspects seem to have a strong foundation, the cognitive aspect can make or break this work. We have to be careful to not make this work too ‘nuclear’ and ensure it addresses something more ‘virus’ with obvious visual ideas being shown through the choice of clips. Juggling these aspects of engagement is proving to be a bit of a balancing act.

iPod Indoctrination

Shaun sent me the link to this Oasis MV during the week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9fI4Xeqv30&ab_channel=Oasis. He said it could give me ideas on alternative ways to rotoscoping the source footage. From my understanding, if I used a track matte/masked out subjects in our work, they’d either 1) have to be static images for an accurate mask or 2) if a moving clip, have a very obvious masked shape around the subject like in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PTDv_szmL0&ab_channel=AtlanticRecords. I can’t say I’m a fan of those ideas as the first option is too time-consuming and tedious and the latter option not suiting our envisioned visual style. In the coming days, I will more accurately rotoscope our footage and try out the Refine Edge tool in AE to see if it provides more polished results.

[cgreaneyatc]

Week 8

With Assessment 2 looming in the near distance, this week was spent preparing for A2 submission. Our edits have been locked in and now we’re in a position where we can focus on refinement.

iPod Indoctrination

During the week, Shaun was able to give us feedback on our works. He recommended cutting down each of our works from three minutes to two minutes each to accommodate for a more manageable workflow given the time we have left. He suggested removing the intro of Indoctrination which would still maintain the essence of the story. The intro showed a couple getting married followed by introducing the baby. As a result, this could make for a more succinct work that brings more focus to the baby. However, showing the couple could have humanised the baby more and made the loss of the baby’s identity that much more distressing. There is still a chance we could re-attach this intro at a later date if time allows for it.

The Way Back

This work was also shortened down to roughly two minutes by trimming Acts 1 and 3. No part of the story is lost like in Indoctrination, rather we get to the ���action’ in Act 2 sooner. Another recommendation Shaun made was to build on the textual presence in the work which is only present in Act 2. I feel this could serve as a sort of omnipresent narrator, expressing the thoughts of the general public. Act 2 features “STOP” and “VIRUS”, revealing the worry and concern of society. I recall a clip with “IMMUNIZATION” and I’m thinking it would fit in Act 3, still voicing a worried concern but now offering a solution.

Ben was the one to come up with the title of this work. After pondering it, I realised it could serve as a triple entendre; 1) Part of the phrase as in “way back when…” 2) the way back to normal life pre-Covid 3) and the Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive website, which is coincidentally where we collected our source material. What’s even more ironic is that this work initially seems to hinge on certain time periods and address particular hot topics within certain eras (such as the Duck and Cover production in the 1950s). Conversely, as I mentioned last week, there seems to be a timelessness from this work given the fact that we’re applying the nature of the source material to address a different context.

[cgreaneyatc]

Week 7

In my last blog post, I mentioned that our concept had gained more clarity and we had clear ideas. Over the last two weeks, they’ve become somewhat more clear cut, which is likely due to finalising the structure of our videos by definitively arranging the footage in Premiere Pro. To recap, Ben and I are working on two works together now.

iPod Indoctrination

Footage: KenRa Films presents Our Wedding c.1947.

This follows the first few years of a baby’s life, highlighting the mundane moments of playing around the house and the more pivotal moments such as learning to walk. In the baby’s first year, someone puts an earphone from an iPod into Baby’s ear and he instantly loves it, grinning from ear to ear. As time goes on however, Baby’s obsession with the iPod causes his reality to fade away. The world will be replaced by bright colours and his family members would be mere silhouettes, as if Baby is stuck in an iPod commercial nether world.

While I’m feeling quite confident in the editing and VFX of our works, we will very likely need to use a 3D model in this particular work for the infamous Apple earphones. I’m less experienced with 3D modelling, but even so, I have faith that we can make it work. For starters, we could use Blender which is a free 3D model, so accessibility is no issue. I’m sure there are models we could download, however, I prefer making things from scratch so that there’s more authenticity. Fortunately, there’s few tutorials on how to model AirPods such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgbDrP0PSyQ&ab_channel=pinkpocketTV. Given all of this, I think making our earphones should be manageable.

Virus

Footage: Various clips from the Prelinger Archives, most notably ‘Duck and Cover’.

Virus visualises the resulting chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic and its implications for the future. This work has the three act structure, portraying life pre-Covid (happy audio/visuals), the turbulent onset (scary, distorted audio/visuals) and life afterwards (mix of happy and sad audio/visuals).

This work is quite emotionally driven and ultimately aims to make an audience feel the certain aforementioned emotions. While its footage is obviously vintage (coming from the mid 1900s, locked in black and white) and ultimately addressing a different context, the themes of dismay and panic are just as potent in our current day and age which is currently being wracked by coronavirus. Despite the different context and audience, this footage can evidently relate to many catastrophes in time regardless of era, proving it has a timeless aspect to it, particularly in emotional regards.

Merging iPod concepts

We were planning to have two iPod works, but we decided to combine their concepts into Indoctrination.

The other iPod work was going to be titled iPod Utopia and follow the childhood of two siblings and employ the diegetic/non-diegetic functions from the ‘Music Videos without Music’ by College Humour (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rpjlA-z080&ab_channel=CollegeHumor). While listening to music, they’d happily be engaged in the iPod world whereas, if we cut to a different angle, it would show their real surroundings and ultimately their disconnect from reality.

While discussing details with Ben, he suggested combining the two to make a single but stronger work. I agreed with this because I felt the two works had very similar concepts, the story in Indoctrination was stronger and more emotionally captivating and it would give us both more time. That being said, if we have the time later on, we could still pursue iPod Utopia.

[cgreaneyatc]

Week 6 - Editing Inspiration

Being in the middle of organising and cutting down our footage, the time to edit the iPod filter is creeping up. A couple weeks ago, Shaun referred me to this music video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcHKOC64KnE. This is a great point of reference as it still has that iPod style but with more detail. I believe including more features of the person and their surrounding environment will create a more visually-pleasing appearance and make things easier to identify. This also brings the chance to make an association with how much someone has lost themselves (e.g. to consumerism) by stripping them of their features.

[cgreaneyatc]

Activate the Collection - Week 6

This week, Ben and I properly figured out what ideas we will pursue. I knew we had a solid foundation but we were unsure of how to build on from that a couple weeks ago, but now it feels like we are truly solidifying our concept.

I personally did consider using Design Thinking as it is an effective framework (and because Shaun has hammered that into me for the last two and a half years), although we’re not necessarily being given a problem to solve. Ben and I are naturally coming up with ideas and experimenting, so by coincidence Art Thinking seemed to match our workflow quite well since it follows an ideas —> making —> ideas approach.

Although, Art Thinking seems to only define our process in vague regards. Grounding Theory however seems suitable in addressing the more specific parts of our project. Both are similar in that you’re building something from nothing without starting with a problem to solve. I find the method it outlines quite useful in tying our concepts and visuals together, basically supporting the foundation of our work.

Ben and I have agreed to go beyond dancing clips for our iPod work. While looking through more of the ACMI footage, I happened upon some wedding clips followed by clips of a baby playing (specifically KenRa Films presents Our Wedding c.1947). This brings the perfect opportunity to deliver a statement about young people growing up in an hyper-consumer culture/a technology-dominated world and their resulting obsession/dependence.

Ben came up with another idea for our iPod endeavours. It would be in the same vein as those College Humour videos where they cut the music from music videos to reveal the diegetic sound, such as this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rpjlA-z080. In this idea, our video could show the hyped up scene from the ads with a colourful background and the dancing silhouette while they’re wearing earphones. But from a different angle, it would reveal their true surroundings with diegetic sound. This would point out their lack of connection with reality and instead choosing to engage in their self-absorbed iPod Utopia.

Ben sent me the Premiere Pro project files for our Virus work which is a draft of the second act in this Virus work. The first act is the calm before the storm, the second is when panic and chaos erupt, and the third will be a mix of clips from Act 1 and 2 to convey the uncertainty of the future. I’ll need to find suitable footage (either from ACMI or Prelinger) for Act 1 and possibly Act 3 to make a rough cut of the work.

[cgreaneyatc]

Activate the Collection - Week 5

Given that A1 was due this week, our week was spent justifying the decisions behind our work. It inspired some thought on how our message could be delivered and what makes our particular work engaging. Ben and I are using the three aspects of audience engagement (structural, emotional and cognitive) to guide our audio and visual choices to create a consistent and logical relationship between the two…

Emotional: Our iPod idea features bright, dancing visuals to upbeat and poppy music which creates a sense of cheerful and lively fun. Our Covid idea is dark and ominous, showing people in fear and panic with tense ambience and a distorted trap-genre soundtrack.

Structural: The structure of our iPod idea is similar to the original iPod adverts in that we’re portraying the Greek home movie into a music video commercial of sorts. The fast-paced, choppy editing of our Covid idea with numerous clips of fearful people and sick children really hammers the point across.

Cognitive: The cognitive relationships between the source material and our current versions of them both seem to have similar intentions despite the different contexts and time periods. Apple wanted a danceable and upbeat energy surrounding the iPod campaign and our current draft was made with that in mind and imitates the fun atmosphere. Cognitive similarities are especially evident in the Duck and Cover footage and our version of it. Originally serving as a PSA, this footage likely induced concern and uncertainty. Our Covid rendition will follow suit to bring attention to our current pandemic and we will exaggerate on these feelings.

Regarding our progress this week, I have been pondering the context of our iPod video. It was a few weeks ago that Ben initially suggested we don’t have to use dancing clips and instead could use footage of people doing everyday things. This could bring about the opportunity to relate it to our hyper-consumer culture of today. I have had the idea of addressing consumerism for a couple weeks but I wasn’t exactly sure of how to connect it to the work we’d done so far. But opening ourselves up to other footage beyond the dancing clips opens up a wider range of possibilities we could pursue in this hyper-consumer context. On top of a visual concept, this will be more effective in terms of having a message behind our work (honestly might be easier to rotoscope too!). I believe this will make our video that much more engaging too.

We’ve confirmed the Covid video will have a three act structure and thus should have a three act soundscape and soundtrack. It will build up tension throughout, reaching its crescendo in the final act while keeping a consistent flow. While elements of it will be exaggerated, I think we need to be careful from making it too gimmicky so as not to disrupt the atmosphere and engagement.

[cgreaneyatc]

Activate the Collection - Week 4

This week, my collaborator Ben (sound) and I (video) made some good progress in our pre-production phase, mainly refining our ideas while keeping ourselves open to the visual and conceptual possibilities we could pursue.

Our first idea that I came up with is to make a homage to the 2000s iPod advertising campaign. I would find clips of people dancing, rotoscope their figures and place their silhouettes on top of a solid colour background to imitate the visual style in the original commercials. I’m thinking the Greek Dance 1961 and Fundraiser BBQ and dance in Tony Agapitos Home Videos would be best to use as the footage appears clearer compared to other videos, making rotoscoping much easier.

(Screenshot of initial rotoscoping with their figures against a solid colour background. It’s a messy job done at this point, but I will clean it up over the next couple of weeks. We envisioned having their silhouettes blacked out, but I’ve left it as is for this blog post so they’re more recognisable.)

Upon further inspection, each video only has about thirty seconds or less of actual dancing footage that’s usable. Ben and I were initially thinking to make a single two to three minute video (a sort of music video commercial), but decided multiple thirty second videos would be more feasible. For the music, Ben said he could make a traditional Greek-style instrumental and modernise it, making reference to the past and the present. Furthermore, he suggested we could stray away from the dancing clips and use everyday clips, such as someone walking on the street for example as this would open up more options for us. We are still wondering how we could flesh out the concept behind this iPod idea though. I feel we have a strong visual concept but we are lacking the statement behind it. It simply serving as a homage to both the original footage and the iPod campaign could be enough in itself if need be. Perhaps the answer for a statement will come to us through our creative process over time.

Our other idea, thought up by Ben, focuses on Covid-19 and uses the ‘Duck and Cover’ footage from the Prelinger Archives to depict the timeline of the Covid-19 pandemic so far and the implications it has for our near future.

Beginning rather pleasantly, the footage shows a montage of mundane everyday life where society is functioning normally, representing the pre-Covid era. But as the video goes on, people begin looking concerned and before long are panicking. Here, the editing will become more choppy and erratic with distorted and glitchy visuals. This will portray the overall unpredictable and turbulent nature of the Covid-19 situation, making a stark contrast in tone from the beginning of the video and the beginning of our year in real life. What’s even more is the uncertainty we face for the next couple years. The end of our video will highlight that uncertainty and hopelessness, ending on an unsettling note to get viewers thinking about this worldwide fiasco.

Ben seems to like the idea of distorted visuals which would have similar distorted sound effects. However, I’ve been thinking a looming, green cloud of coronavirus could creep around buildings and people in the footage, threatening to infect them. Although I do wonder if this would disrupt the mood and tone already set by the distorted visual style. If we’re going for a psychedelic feeling, it might find its place as we refine our visual recipe in the coming weeks.

[cgreaneyatc]

Activate the Collection - Week 3

After scanning through all the playlists of ACMI footage, it played in the back of my head for a couple days. During Monday’s class, an idea I had for another assignment from two years where we had to remix media popped into my head. It was based on Apple’s iPod campaign from the 2000s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dSgBsCVpqo

While it didn’t become of anything in my previous class, it could be perfect for recontextualising some of these ACMI clips. I believe some of Tony Agapitos video would be a great fit, particularly the clips of people dancing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKgmJOTILAE&list=PLa5U9c0-kvK4xv3lmaIetsxjCEbfZhlm4&index=2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUh5Zr2StSQ&list=PLa5U9c0-kvK4xv3lmaIetsxjCEbfZhlm4&index=8

This is my favourite idea so far as it has an iconic style and a strong visual concept. Although I’m unsure of what the statement behind it is. I’m sure that will be fleshed out over time.

Other ideas are centred around 1) how interwoven our lives are with technology given our digital era 2) hyper-consumer culture and 3) invasion of our data and privacy. These are all issues of today and if applied to footage from decades ago where these problems were of little to no relevance, it could bring about interesting comparisons and points.

[cgreaneyatc]

Activate the Collection - Week 2

Something that piqued my interest in this week’s lecture is the practice of Art Thinking. By having Shaun as a tutor for many of my past classes, I’ve constantly be subjected to Design Thinking. However, I think I identify more with the former. The Art Thinking process does seem to be a more natural approach to take this semester since we’re not necessarily being given a problem to solve as a starting point (like in previous classes such as Digital Video and Designing Paradox), but rather being given media to manipulate and then apply a concept to it.

I want to work with the ACMI collection as it’s a great opportunity and they have a variety of footage with lots of remix potential.

I think it’s important to wrap my head around the Key Terms presented in week two as they are essentially the blueprint to our projects this semester. To better understand their meanings, I will write the definitions of them here that I can refer back to.

Relativism: There’s no definite objective fact or absolute truth. Facts presented are only relative to the viewpoint of an observer.

(Wikipedia, n.d., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativism).

The Absolute: “‘The Absolute’ stands for that (supposed) unconditioned reality which is either the spiritual ground of all being or the whole of things considered as a spiritual unity.”

(Sprigge, n.d. https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/absolute-the/v-1).

Oscillation: “Amongst Verwindung's other lexical meanings Vattimo points out "twisting" and "distortion."  We experience Being in postmodernity not as an emancipated presence, but as an ironic twist or distortion.  Being is only approachable in its estrangement from our nostalgic grasp--as a constant oscillation between revelation and concealment.”

(http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.993/review-3.993).

Multiplicity: “The multiple as predicate generates a set of philosophical problems under the rubric of “the one and the many” (a thing is one or multiple, one and multiple, and so on). With multiplicity, or the multiple as substantive, the question of the relation between the predicates one/multiple is replaced by the question of distinguishing types of multiplicities.”

(https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/)

“A multiplicity is an entity that originates from a folding or twisting of simple elements. Like a sand dune, a multiplicity is in constant flux, though it attains some consistency for a short or long duration.”

(https://faculty.fordham.edu/tampio/Tampio%20-%20Multiplicity.pdf).

Subjectivity: “Historically, the subjective was understood in classical philosophy (beginning with Descartes) as a special inner world of consciousness, unquestionable and self-reliant, to which the subject has direct access. In this capacity, the subjective was opposed to the objective world of physical things and events (including the body of the subject) as existing outside the subjective and as not authentic.”

(https://simplyphilosophy.org/study/subjectivity-definition/)