Sneak Peak

Alright, my video is almost done, but I am really anxious about it. I can't show it yet, but here are some more things from it.

The First shot is an actual frame from the movie. The Second one is a screen shot of part of the film strip for my movie.

As you can see in the second shot, I settled on the song Candy Perfume Girl by Madonna, and I think it works perfectly.

Work in Progress

Over the weekend, I continued shooting for my Stop Motion video project. Here a few stills I got.

"Danielle"

Okay, this one is not from the video, but my sister was my model for the day. It was good to see her, I missed her while I was away at college.

"Ascent"

"Descent"

"Bathtub"

"The Dip"

"Waiting"

My video is almost finished. It is 1:36 minutes long, and will be 1:59 minutes in the end. I have a little more shooting and editing left to do, but it's coming together and I am excited about it.

Random Photos

"Ray Of Light"

I'm starting to use my Camera a lot more so I'll probably be posting a lot of random photos more often that don't necessarily have to do with a school project.

"A Scary Place"

"Jesse"

"Holly"

Time Sequence

The assignment is to print 3 photos showing a time sequence of events with a chosen theme. I have chosen to show feet throughout a typical day.

The first shot is feet in the morning. Limbs are still feeling asleep, while the world around you is starting to awaken. I felt showing feet in a shower conveyed this idea because I always feel dead in the shower, but the water is constantly moving. Plus, a shower always wakes me up.

By mid-day, feet are moving and the world is moving. I knew right from the start I wanted this to be shot at the crosswalk because there is so much activity here. The cars, the subject, the other walkers, etc. This is the peak of activity during the day.

At night, the world is going to sleep, but the body is still restless. (This is at least the case with me) My first idea didn't work out so well and this was a last minute shot. It is my least favorite of the three, but it shows me at work at my desk at night.

My video is coming along smoothly and I hope to be finished before the weekend is over. I probably won't post it until Tuesday night or Wednesday though, because I don't like showing it until I show it at our critique in class first.

Snow Day

Okay so I HATE the snow and anything cold, but Alyssa and I could not resist the Opportunity to go on a Photoshoot.

Steven Klein+Madonna=Art

Here is a video example of what Steven Klein can do with stop motion animation. I like the way he makes things disappear and reappear, play forward, rewind, repeat, etc. It is really bizarre. The last 60 seconds of this video shows it really well, although the technique is used for the whole video.

It is a videoscreen backdrop used during the Opening of one of Madonna's Concerts. It is made from a photoshoot that Klein did with her which he then made into a video set to her song "The Beast Within" which contains passages from the Book of Revelations. I find the whole thing to be very bizarre and artistic.

This is the style I would like to explore for my stop motion animation project because I find the repetition and disconnected feel to be much more interesting than a typical time sequence

Steven Klein

Steven Klein is a well known American fashion photographer.  He is known for his collaborations with Brad Pitt, Tom Ford, and Madonna.  He has also worked with other celebrities such as Britney Spears, Edward Norton, Beth Ditto, Christiano Ronaldo, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johaansen, and many others.  He is a frequent contributer to Vogue and W Magazine.

In Addition to his advertising and editorial work, he has done a lot of work in the field of moving images/stop motion.  He does this by taking many photos of a moving subject.  But rather than rather than just showing them quickly in order like a regular stop motion film, he repeats strange, usually awkward movements several times to create a very repetitive, bizarre effect.

His website has many examples of his photography and several videos showing the unique take on stop motion animation he takes.  This is the type of style I would like to try with for my next digital project.

Say AHA!!!

So this is the final image that I submitted for our lyrics project. I also had to print 3 11" x 17" posters. I like having a physical copy of something like that, it's better than just looking at something on a screen, which doesn't feel as real. That is also the reason I buy actual CDs rather than downloading them, because I like having the tangible object in front of me. I do own the CD "Santogold" by Santogold which features the song I chose: Say Aha.

The specific lyrics I chose were

"Say Aha...louder than they allow"

Say Aha was written with a flashlight in the dark by taking 2 second exposures of me writing each letter with the flashlight. I think this method captured the mood/tone of the song. The second part of the lyrics, "louder than they allow", is implied by the use of color in a colorless/quiet/restricting environment (the church).

I received mostly positive feedback during the critique, but there were a few criticisms (which I always appreciate). I was told the overlapping of the topmost girl's leg onto the bottom one's face is distracting and that I should erase it. Also, the 3rd "!" was thought to be a phallic symbol by the teacher. This was not my intention, and I am not really bothered by it, but since it is confusing, I can fix it. When I get time, (and I have no idea when that will be) I will fix these details.

Here is an early draft of the project. I was going for a triptych with the two stained glass windows and the church/girl in the middle. I still didn't have very good light patterns to fill the girl with and the composition just didn't really work as a triptych, so I developed the idea that turned into my final project. This is how all of my projects have turned out so far...I come up with an idea, play with it on the computer, decide it doesn't look great, but I still like the idea and just change it up a bit.

Here is a fan made music video for the song I chose. Sorry, it's the only way I could figure out how to add a song to my post.

Letterforms

Here is the final set of 26 letters I turned in for Design class.

For the definitive solution, I chose my L. The criteria was that it should easily stand out as the letter, it should be a good photograph, and be a creative solution. The shadow cast by the part of the building in the foreground created emphasis on the part of the building in the middle ground, and created a cool L. Also, if you squint your eyes, the first thing you probably see is the L, so that's good.

City of Lights

For my fourth project (the one using lyrics), I wanted to exploit the use of color as noise in a colorless and quiet environment (a church which will be black and white). I wanted to use the vibrant colors provided by the neon signs on Main Street, Newark. To do this, I set my shutter speed to about 1.3", and just swirled, shook, and moved my camera as violently or gracefully as I could to capture different patterns.

These are some of the raw images (no pun intended, they're actually Jpegs) that I took for this project.

To create my final image for the project, I increased the vibrancy of the colors and tinted some of them as well. So I don't really recognize which of these photos I ended up using. I took over 100 pictures this night.