final artist statement

Before the project I was thinking of how I could execute it the way I envisioned it. At first I thought it would be something that was kind of comical, but as you can see it turned out to be something more serious. I started out looking for pictures and they were harder to find than you would think. A lot of them had copyright protection so they were unusable.

While working on the project and putting the photos in order, I began to realize that the story was kind of sad. It was sad that I was telling a story of something that died so fast. Then I realized how it is all a cycle and I wanted it to end happy. So I showed a new bud in the fallen leaf's place. When I searched for the music, I ended up picking the first song I searched. I think it added to the seriousness of the video. 

After the project I felt like the narrative really mirrored all life. How everything is subjective and our live's seem so short to us. Hopefully in the end of our lives we will realize that it all had a purpose. It was really cheesy but I liked the idea and the music really helped create the atmosphere. I hope you enjoy!

The Life of a Leaf

My narrative is about a leaf's short life. I got the idea from my roommate and I took it in a more serious direction. In some ways it parallels human life. Our life seems so short and death is inevitable but necessary for life to go on. They leaf starts out as a bud  and grows bigger and older until it falls to the ground. As the seasons change and it gets colder the music builds. It builds up to the spring when a new bud arrives in his place. I linked it with an instrumental version of the song called Sort Of by Ingrid Michaelson. I like the upbeat tune of the song for the beginning because it shows how happy life is. In the end it gets more slow which changes the tone to be a bit more serious. I think the music invokes emotions that the video wouldn't alone.

Failure blog

On the first video assignment, shadow buddies, I recorded a straight 10 minute video on my camera. I thought it would be good to capture everything and I could edit out things that I didn't like. But because the video was so large I was unable to upload it. I had a lot of good shots of the shadows on my camera that Lindsey didn't catch. Luckily Lindsey had enough footage to use but it would have been a better video if I would have taken a lot of short videos instead of one long one. In the future I know to take small videos. They are easier to upload.

I think my biggest success was when I made the abduction video. I just happened to stumble upon the filter that changed the baby voices into alien voices. Before that I had no idea what I was going to do with my audio. After that everything fell into place. I learned from this success that not everything is planned and sometimes things just come to you and it usually ends up better when they do.

If I could have redone one project it would probably be the abduction video. If I could go back I would have recorded more things before. It would have been nice to have more audio to work with. But in the end I was happy with the way it turned out. It could have been better if I spent more time with it but maybe it would have been worse.

Assignment 10

For my narrative assignment I have been thinking of doing some sort of video. I was thinking of taking a lot of still photos of a stick figure drawing and put them together on imovie and make it look like it is moving. It would kind of be like one of those flip books everyone makes when they are in grade school. I am not exactly sure what I want my story to be about. I was thinking I want it to be something that people wouldn't normally think of. I also want it to be a short story because it will take me a long time to take pictures together and make them look like they are moving. Maybe a young man acting nervous and then he meets an older man and asks him if he can marry his daughter. Its something that most men have to go through but not many people think about. I will add some music and certain audio sounds but for the most part I think there will be no audio dialog. I might put some voice bubbles so the audience can read what they say. I am still not quite sure where I will go with this but that is my idea so far.

MP 5

Sever and Hang

My words were sever and hang. I choose to use both of them. I severed the shirt by cutting the top off with scissors and then connected the edges with stitch witchery. Then the two ends are buttoned together to make it an infinity scarf. The finished product is hung around my neck. I used at t shirt because I wear t shirts almost everyday. I think its a cool idea to think that my scarf once served a completely different purpose. Since I am majoring in fashion and retail studies I thought it was appropriate for me. Also, I just enjoy making things out of thrift store items. 

Assignment 9

It irritated me how closed minded the man was. I liked that in the end it seemed like the blind man had opened his eyes. He understood that being blind had something special about it. It was like he could see the world in his own way. I think being blind for a day would be a very good learning experience. There are so many things that I tune out throughout the day. I always liked those games where someone will make a sound and you have to guess what made the sound. I almost never guess right. I also think it is so interesting that when one of your senses doesn't work, your other sense increase to fill the gap. The blind see more that me in certain ways. Because that man was blind, he needed to pay attention to the details he was given more. I take my sight for granted and don't often remember the way things look when trying to recall. The blind man has to learn things about something to be able to understand it, because of that they remember it better and sometimes understand it better.

MP 4

Abduction

Everyday I go to my sisters and help her watch her foster children for a couple of hours. TJ and Tori are one year olds and they don't know words yet but they make a lot of noise. I usually listen to music in the car on the way over. I hear my engine turn off and I hear my door shutting as I get out. Now that its fall I notice the leaves on the ground crunching under my feet as I walk to the door. While I am there I listen to the babies playing with all of their automated toys but mostly they talk to each other with goos and gaas. Almost everyday one of them cries because I come around their nap time. If I were to close my eyes I would know that I am at this place because of the baby voices. They each have their own individual, recognizable voices. 

I put a filter on they baby voices and it ended up sounding really creepy so I decided to make it into alien voices. I also thought it was sort of funny that I used the voice of a baby (someone completely helpless) and made it into a frightening noise.