For this project my group wanted to take advantage of the fact that we could film over Thanksgiving break. We wanted to use our crowd in a way that we could get a little sneak peak of how different families celebrate Thanksgiving. There is such a tradition behind this holiday of certain things your supposed to eat, decorating the table in fall colors, etc but we wanted to see how much different families actually follow this tradition.
To get our crowd we resorted to facebook where we invited all together over 1,000 people and from that 96 people said they were attending and out of that only about 25 people ended up actually filming. Most of the people that did end up filming were our close friends that we had to text and nag to get them to do it. And out of those 25 people we were only able to use about 15 clips. We weren't able to use all of the clips because a lot of people shot in really dark lighting or at weird angles. If we were to do it again we would give the crowd a template to follow so they would all film it in the same way and it would flow together better.
To get all the clips together we asked our crowd to use http://www.2shared.com/ to upload their clips. Once we got all the clips together we begain the editing process. We started out by organizing the clips into categories based on the angle they shot or whether they filmed more of people or of food. We wanted to group the similar clips together so the video would flow together better. We started out with the clips of the food and then gradually progressed to the clips with more people in them. The clips of the food kind of gave an insite into how people don't necessarily follow typical Thankgiving traditions. Some people did have the traditional turkey and mashed potatoes but other people went a whole nother route and had pizza, waffles or spring rolls. As the video progressed to show more of the people it gave this aspect of family, and togetherness. We intended for this progression to show that although people may eat very different things on Thanksgiving, the point is to bring friends or family together. The cool thing about this crowd sourcing project is that we had no idea what we were going to get to edit. We couldn't plan to far in advance what we were going to portray exactly, but once we got our clips we figured out the direction we wanted to take the video in.
We kept the editing simple to get the raw type of feeling of being inside someone elses home. Everyone using their own camera filming in their own way made it seem almost like a home video, giving it more of a warm, family type feel. Overall I liked doing this project and working with material that other people film. There is something very powerful of getting a whole group involved to create one piece of artwork.
Last blog, very sad. I am going to miss this class and all the talented and inspiring people in it. I can say with convidence that I learned something new and was inspired by each person in this class.
Miss you guys!
Gina
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Temporal Shift
Hey guys,
So for the temporal shift project we needed to manipulate time in some way. One thing that really struck me when we were discussing this project in class was when we were discussing the movement of things in terms of time. I wanted to experiment in particular the movement of the body and how it alters our perception as it is sped up or slowed down. We are so used to things moving at a certain pace, so when that pace is altered, it captivates our attention.
A week or so before I started this project, I took a 20 second clip of a man and woman fire dancing. When filming this I didn't really intend to turn it in for a project but once the project was assigned I thought it would be a great way to experiment with the timing of body movements and an added plus, the movement of fire.
This clip was only 20 seconds so I needed to alter the time so it would make a 2 minute video. I started out by just slowing down the pace but I wanted to see more than that. I started playing with speeding some parts up, slowing down others, reversing some, and repeating the same choppy clip. It was hard for me to just edit the clips randomly and wanted to have more fluidity in the piece so I decided to add a soundtrack. I pick the song "Beauty Beats" by Beats Antique because they always have a belly dancer accompanying their music which reminded me of the movement of the fire dancers. Once I added the song, it gave me direction on how I should edit the clips.
My final product ended with taking a 20 second clip and making it into 2 minutes. I tried to make the video not look like it was only 20 seconds of footage. To do that I took one little segment of the clip and slow it down, speed it up and reverse it so that segment that I kept repeating still didn't look repetitive because I altered the time in so many different ways.
So for the temporal shift project we needed to manipulate time in some way. One thing that really struck me when we were discussing this project in class was when we were discussing the movement of things in terms of time. I wanted to experiment in particular the movement of the body and how it alters our perception as it is sped up or slowed down. We are so used to things moving at a certain pace, so when that pace is altered, it captivates our attention.
A week or so before I started this project, I took a 20 second clip of a man and woman fire dancing. When filming this I didn't really intend to turn it in for a project but once the project was assigned I thought it would be a great way to experiment with the timing of body movements and an added plus, the movement of fire.
This clip was only 20 seconds so I needed to alter the time so it would make a 2 minute video. I started out by just slowing down the pace but I wanted to see more than that. I started playing with speeding some parts up, slowing down others, reversing some, and repeating the same choppy clip. It was hard for me to just edit the clips randomly and wanted to have more fluidity in the piece so I decided to add a soundtrack. I pick the song "Beauty Beats" by Beats Antique because they always have a belly dancer accompanying their music which reminded me of the movement of the fire dancers. Once I added the song, it gave me direction on how I should edit the clips.
My final product ended with taking a 20 second clip and making it into 2 minutes. I tried to make the video not look like it was only 20 seconds of footage. To do that I took one little segment of the clip and slow it down, speed it up and reverse it so that segment that I kept repeating still didn't look repetitive because I altered the time in so many different ways.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Out of Place
So in brainstorming my out of place project I really was trying to think of situations where I myself felt disoriented or displaced. Usually I go through lots and lots of ideas before I decide on what to do for my project but for this one I went with the first thing I thought of. The first thing that came to mind for me was how disoriented I feel when spinning around in circles. Your dizzy, you can't see anything straight and even when you stop you still feel disoriented for a while after.
The goal for me was to break the forth wall and make the audience feel like they are spinning around and possibly even get them to be dizzy. I wanted the audience to feel as if they were actually spinning around, without them moving at all. To do this I made it so the camera lens was the audiences eyes. To capture that effect I started out with someone blindfolding the lens, to make it seem as if the audience member was being blindfolded.
After I blindfolded the camera, the spinning took place. I didn't want to spin the camera around in the same location because when you are spinning around you can't exactly tell where you are. So to increase this feeling of disorientation I spun around in random locations, some outside, some inside, some during the day and some at night.
While filming I got really nauseous myself spinning around in various locations throughout the shoot. But having me feel this dizziness and disorientation helped me portray that same feeling that I was trying to capture with the audience members. You can't no what makes other people feel disorientated without feeling disoriented yourself.
Once I was done with the shoot I began my editing process. I noticed that in all my clips I was spinning at different speeds so instead of having a bunch of random speeds of spinning I decided to slowly build up the spinning process. I had to order the clips based on how fast they were going and even after that I still had to change the speeds of a lot of the clips to make the transitions of speeds a little smoother.
I didn't know what to do for the sound because I wanted the sound to build up with the clips. I couldn't think of any songs that had this spinning build up type feel so I decided to make my own soundtrack. There was some music playing in the background when I was filming one of the clips so I took a little sound clip from that and altered the speed as my soundtrack. I wanted to make it a constant build up so every four beats I would increase the speed by 5%. Towards the end you could start hearing what the actual song sounded like because it was getting closer to the actual songs speed so I decided to put the song in reverse.
Once the sound and video edits were done I added a few color effects and the video was complete!
The goal for me was to break the forth wall and make the audience feel like they are spinning around and possibly even get them to be dizzy. I wanted the audience to feel as if they were actually spinning around, without them moving at all. To do this I made it so the camera lens was the audiences eyes. To capture that effect I started out with someone blindfolding the lens, to make it seem as if the audience member was being blindfolded.
After I blindfolded the camera, the spinning took place. I didn't want to spin the camera around in the same location because when you are spinning around you can't exactly tell where you are. So to increase this feeling of disorientation I spun around in random locations, some outside, some inside, some during the day and some at night.
While filming I got really nauseous myself spinning around in various locations throughout the shoot. But having me feel this dizziness and disorientation helped me portray that same feeling that I was trying to capture with the audience members. You can't no what makes other people feel disorientated without feeling disoriented yourself.
Once I was done with the shoot I began my editing process. I noticed that in all my clips I was spinning at different speeds so instead of having a bunch of random speeds of spinning I decided to slowly build up the spinning process. I had to order the clips based on how fast they were going and even after that I still had to change the speeds of a lot of the clips to make the transitions of speeds a little smoother.
I didn't know what to do for the sound because I wanted the sound to build up with the clips. I couldn't think of any songs that had this spinning build up type feel so I decided to make my own soundtrack. There was some music playing in the background when I was filming one of the clips so I took a little sound clip from that and altered the speed as my soundtrack. I wanted to make it a constant build up so every four beats I would increase the speed by 5%. Towards the end you could start hearing what the actual song sounded like because it was getting closer to the actual songs speed so I decided to put the song in reverse.
Once the sound and video edits were done I added a few color effects and the video was complete!
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Blog #5
Hello there,
WARNING--If you are in my group for the exquisite corpse project please do not read, I don't want to ruin the outcome of this project.
I have just started working on the exquisite corpse project and I can tell this is going to be a difficult one. I always used to play that game where you would draw the head and fold the paper over and the next person would draw the body and so on, so I was really excited to hear that our project was going to be based on that idea. With the subject strangeness being such a broad topic it was really hard to narrow down what I wanted to do. The ten second clip that a group member gave me was of a woman smiling in kind of a deranged way. This clip made me feel like she was the cause of some strangeness going on, so that is what I had to work with for my idea.
To start brainstorming I tried to think of somethings that happens normally and how it could be altered to be strange. One idea I had was that the woman from the last clip would take a picture of herself and put it on a 'Wanted: Missing Girl' sign and have her blatantly walk in front or near the sign and have no one notice that she was the one missing. I got really excited about this idea but because I didn't know the girl that my partner used for her clip, I needed to think of an idea that didn't actually have that girl in it. I brainstormed some more and came up with the idea of making nature have industrial-like sounds. I thought that would be a good way of taking something normal and making it strange. To transition from the girl to this nature-industry scene I will have the girls arm(this way I don't have to use the same person) put a plug into a tree. At that moment there is a zap of electricity from the plug to the tree. Once that happens I will have consecutive clips of nature making industrial like sounds. Not only will the nature be making these sounds but I also want to edit the clips to have effects on them to make them look less natural. I will try my best to make what looks and sounds natural and pure to look and sound industrial and synthesized.
To start out this process I started filming different things in nature, the bark of a tree, water rippling, some flowers, leafy plants. etc. Now I am in the process of uploading industrial sounds onto final cut and playing a matching game of images and sounds. I have done some slight editing and color alterations of the clips but I still have a lot to work on.
I will keep you guys posted on how I end up bringing everything together and I am still yet to receive my second ten second clip so I haven't started brainstorming on what I am going to do for that one yet either. Still have a lot to go but hopefully it will all come together.
Thanks for reading!
Gina Kirkish
WARNING--If you are in my group for the exquisite corpse project please do not read, I don't want to ruin the outcome of this project.
I have just started working on the exquisite corpse project and I can tell this is going to be a difficult one. I always used to play that game where you would draw the head and fold the paper over and the next person would draw the body and so on, so I was really excited to hear that our project was going to be based on that idea. With the subject strangeness being such a broad topic it was really hard to narrow down what I wanted to do. The ten second clip that a group member gave me was of a woman smiling in kind of a deranged way. This clip made me feel like she was the cause of some strangeness going on, so that is what I had to work with for my idea.
To start brainstorming I tried to think of somethings that happens normally and how it could be altered to be strange. One idea I had was that the woman from the last clip would take a picture of herself and put it on a 'Wanted: Missing Girl' sign and have her blatantly walk in front or near the sign and have no one notice that she was the one missing. I got really excited about this idea but because I didn't know the girl that my partner used for her clip, I needed to think of an idea that didn't actually have that girl in it. I brainstormed some more and came up with the idea of making nature have industrial-like sounds. I thought that would be a good way of taking something normal and making it strange. To transition from the girl to this nature-industry scene I will have the girls arm(this way I don't have to use the same person) put a plug into a tree. At that moment there is a zap of electricity from the plug to the tree. Once that happens I will have consecutive clips of nature making industrial like sounds. Not only will the nature be making these sounds but I also want to edit the clips to have effects on them to make them look less natural. I will try my best to make what looks and sounds natural and pure to look and sound industrial and synthesized.
To start out this process I started filming different things in nature, the bark of a tree, water rippling, some flowers, leafy plants. etc. Now I am in the process of uploading industrial sounds onto final cut and playing a matching game of images and sounds. I have done some slight editing and color alterations of the clips but I still have a lot to work on.
I will keep you guys posted on how I end up bringing everything together and I am still yet to receive my second ten second clip so I haven't started brainstorming on what I am going to do for that one yet either. Still have a lot to go but hopefully it will all come together.
Thanks for reading!
Gina Kirkish
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Blog #4: Remix Project
Hello friends,
So in my last blog I started talking about how I got started with the project but for this blog I am going to discuss the rest of my process.
I left off with Step #4 which was converting the youtube videos to final cut.
Step #5: Organize Video Clips
Since I was working with a lot of footage I decided I need to keep everything in an organized fashion. I made various bins that had different categories of footage. For example I had a bin labeled 'eye' in which I put all the footage of videos that had a clip of the all seeing eye and I also I had a bin also labeled 'baphomet' where I put clips that were related to the baphomet looking figure. I also had a bin labeled 'mind control' where I would put footage of robotic or absent looking pop stars. There were a few more bins but I wont explain them all.
Step #6: The Edit
Organizing the clips in bins made this whole process much easier. I started out by putting as many clips of the all seeing eye and the baphomet together because those were the most prominent symbols that I used. I didn't want my video to be only symbols but also show footage of pop stars that look like they've gone under mind control. To do this I did a little research of what exactly happens when a pop star goes under mind control. Vigilentcitizen.com does a good job of explaining this theory of this 'pop-star mind control'. They say,
"An outgrowth of that project is unofficially referred to as “Project Monarch”. It is a mind control technique which exposes the subject to a trauma so violent that his/her mind creates a dissociation. The victim’s brain becomes compartmentalized and a new personality, which is then molded and educated by the manipulators, emerges."
So, with that said I wanted to show trauma by using clips of pop stars under abuse and taking on a new personality. In many music videos that I've watched I've seen this alternate personality emerge. For example in one of Brittany Spears music videos that I used, she starts out in a white dress and gets wires connected to her and the white-dressed "innocent" Brittany then fights her alternate personality the black-leather "evil" Brittany. The innocent Brittany ends up loosing the fight and falls to the ground when the black-leather dressed Brittany takes over. This is just one example of this alternate personality of a pop star taking over.
So with that I wanted to make this video tell more of a story so I had a specific order for that,
1. First I started with an innocent girl and her teddy bear to show the young innocence as a child before the mind control takes over
2. Then I used a clip of Lady Gaga over a swirly background over-layed with occultist symbols to give it a trance like mind control feel
3. Then I used a lot of consecutive symbols of the all seeing eye to show how their mind control is now being projected onto us
4. Then for the middle of the story I used clips showing a pop stars going under trauma going into the alternate persona taking over and the innocent persona falling down
5. Then I showed consecutive clips of the baphomet symbol to remind people of this occultist symbolism
6. Towards the end I wanted to show clips of the new transformed persona. The evil persona that wants to control us
7. I ended it with Beyonce smashing the world into the background and going back to the swirly mind control background with occultist symbols over it, similar to the very beginning
8. The song ends and the video ends with a clip of Lady Gaga explicitly saying that she has gone under mind control so sum everything up
You can see that the order of everything was not random but had almost a story line to it. I also wanted to give the audience a feel like they were going under mind control as they were watching this video. By doing this I used a lot of short jumpy clips and would have random occultist symbols flash very quickly.
Step #7: Export to vimeo
I you want to learn more about this crazy conspiracy theory go to vigilantcitizen.com
Thank you and hope you enjoy watching my video!
So in my last blog I started talking about how I got started with the project but for this blog I am going to discuss the rest of my process.
I left off with Step #4 which was converting the youtube videos to final cut.
Step #5: Organize Video Clips
Since I was working with a lot of footage I decided I need to keep everything in an organized fashion. I made various bins that had different categories of footage. For example I had a bin labeled 'eye' in which I put all the footage of videos that had a clip of the all seeing eye and I also I had a bin also labeled 'baphomet' where I put clips that were related to the baphomet looking figure. I also had a bin labeled 'mind control' where I would put footage of robotic or absent looking pop stars. There were a few more bins but I wont explain them all.
Step #6: The Edit
Organizing the clips in bins made this whole process much easier. I started out by putting as many clips of the all seeing eye and the baphomet together because those were the most prominent symbols that I used. I didn't want my video to be only symbols but also show footage of pop stars that look like they've gone under mind control. To do this I did a little research of what exactly happens when a pop star goes under mind control. Vigilentcitizen.com does a good job of explaining this theory of this 'pop-star mind control'. They say,
"An outgrowth of that project is unofficially referred to as “Project Monarch”. It is a mind control technique which exposes the subject to a trauma so violent that his/her mind creates a dissociation. The victim’s brain becomes compartmentalized and a new personality, which is then molded and educated by the manipulators, emerges."
So, with that said I wanted to show trauma by using clips of pop stars under abuse and taking on a new personality. In many music videos that I've watched I've seen this alternate personality emerge. For example in one of Brittany Spears music videos that I used, she starts out in a white dress and gets wires connected to her and the white-dressed "innocent" Brittany then fights her alternate personality the black-leather "evil" Brittany. The innocent Brittany ends up loosing the fight and falls to the ground when the black-leather dressed Brittany takes over. This is just one example of this alternate personality of a pop star taking over.
So with that I wanted to make this video tell more of a story so I had a specific order for that,
1. First I started with an innocent girl and her teddy bear to show the young innocence as a child before the mind control takes over
2. Then I used a clip of Lady Gaga over a swirly background over-layed with occultist symbols to give it a trance like mind control feel
3. Then I used a lot of consecutive symbols of the all seeing eye to show how their mind control is now being projected onto us
4. Then for the middle of the story I used clips showing a pop stars going under trauma going into the alternate persona taking over and the innocent persona falling down
5. Then I showed consecutive clips of the baphomet symbol to remind people of this occultist symbolism
6. Towards the end I wanted to show clips of the new transformed persona. The evil persona that wants to control us
7. I ended it with Beyonce smashing the world into the background and going back to the swirly mind control background with occultist symbols over it, similar to the very beginning
8. The song ends and the video ends with a clip of Lady Gaga explicitly saying that she has gone under mind control so sum everything up
You can see that the order of everything was not random but had almost a story line to it. I also wanted to give the audience a feel like they were going under mind control as they were watching this video. By doing this I used a lot of short jumpy clips and would have random occultist symbols flash very quickly.
Step #7: Export to vimeo
I you want to learn more about this crazy conspiracy theory go to vigilantcitizen.com
Thank you and hope you enjoy watching my video!
Monday, October 17, 2011
Blog #3: Getting Started on the Project
Step 1: Brainstorming
So to start out my project I did a bit of brainstorming of really just writing out random ideas I had whenever they popped into my head. And I tend to not filter myself at all when doing this because you have to get through a lot of bad to come up with something good. So here are some things I wrote down...
happy disney song with evil things happening
one song or speech with many people saying it
love scene mashup
laughing after bad things happening
using clips from music videos with that comic that does parodies
use comedy act as audio and add video
disney to dub
nature planet earth to electronic
movies with soda ads or any obvious advertising
illuminati, lady gaga, mickey mouse symbols, ram symbols (ding ding ding! we have a winner!)
Step 2: Project Idea Expanded
Then I began writing out my idea in a way that I could present it to the class:
There are many theories out there that suggest that some major pop stars are under mind control and being controlled by the Illuminati. The Illuminati, if you don’t already know, is a conspiracy organization that is believed to control world affairs through the government or major corporations. We can see that there is some proof that pop stars today have been subject to mind control by the too huge amount of occultist symbols their music videos, in pictures or printed on their clothes.
I will focus on a few symbols in particular.
One of the symbols I will focus on which you might recognize from the dollar bill is called ‘the all seeing eye’.
The all seeing eye is probably the most well known occultist symbols, “The all seeing eye is the elite’s favorite symbol. It represents the eye of Lucifer, seeing all and usually atop a pyramid, the symbol for a top-down command and control system of compartmentalism” http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Illuminati/symbols_of_the_illuminati.htmAnother sadist, occultist symbol that I will show in my video is the symbol of the Baphomet. The Baphomet is a goat-headed figure with wings and I will use clips of famous pop videos that have this goat-like or winged image.
There are plenty more symbols involved with the Illuminati and some of these other symbols might appear in my video as well.
In order for me to show how prominent this symbol is today in pop culture I will remix clips with from famous artists such as Lady Gaga, Jay Z, Rhianna, Brittany spears and others. These symbols may seem subtle and unimportant when put briefly in a music video, however these symbols will become much more apparent when they are put next to each other in other music videos. Through out the video I will flash pictures of symbols in between clips and possibly even make it opaque and place it over a clip.
I will try to make the video itself have a kind of ‘mind control’ effect to it with the pacing and music. For the soundtrack I am planning on using the song ‘Take Over Control’ by afrojack, which when I was watching the music video had an all seeing eye symbol in the very beginning which I didn’t even plan!
One of the symbols I will focus on which you might recognize from the dollar bill is called ‘the all seeing eye’.
The all seeing eye is probably the most well known occultist symbols, “The all seeing eye is the elite’s favorite symbol. It represents the eye of Lucifer, seeing all and usually atop a pyramid, the symbol for a top-down command and control system of compartmentalism” http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Illuminati/symbols_of_the_illuminati.htmAnother sadist, occultist symbol that I will show in my video is the symbol of the Baphomet. The Baphomet is a goat-headed figure with wings and I will use clips of famous pop videos that have this goat-like or winged image.
There are plenty more symbols involved with the Illuminati and some of these other symbols might appear in my video as well.
In order for me to show how prominent this symbol is today in pop culture I will remix clips with from famous artists such as Lady Gaga, Jay Z, Rhianna, Brittany spears and others. These symbols may seem subtle and unimportant when put briefly in a music video, however these symbols will become much more apparent when they are put next to each other in other music videos. Through out the video I will flash pictures of symbols in between clips and possibly even make it opaque and place it over a clip.
I will try to make the video itself have a kind of ‘mind control’ effect to it with the pacing and music. For the soundtrack I am planning on using the song ‘Take Over Control’ by afrojack, which when I was watching the music video had an all seeing eye symbol in the very beginning which I didn’t even plan!
Step #3: Collect Clips from youtube
I went through lot and lots of youtube videos, and used vigilantcitizen.com to find even more videos. I would then copy and paste the link onto a word doc and put the time that the symbol appeared next to it.
take over control (first sec)
Kanye West Baphomet
Jay Z & Rihanna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM1RChZk1EU (jesus) (2:09 & 3:48 ram)
rihanna
prodigy “the life” look at end
lady gaga
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1FrqwZyKw&ob=av3e (begining) (33 ram) (1:22) (end)
Brittany spears
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Edv8Onsrgg 1:44 (3 eyes)
jesse j
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMxX-QOV9tI (1:44 puppet) (1:50 eye)
LCD soundsystem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYCV2zybQoI (3:10) (3:14)
Christina agulera
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIMoK1HiYuc (1:16 in chains) (1:50 eye)
black eyed peas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7HahVwYpwo&ob=av3e (3:43 triangle)
Step 4: Convert YouTube videos
I used keepvid.com to convert all the youtube videos and then imported them into final cut.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
VIS179:Blog 2
How I got started on my video log was I did a little research on contemporary art and found a few quotes that I liked...
Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be. (Donald Judd)
"We don't have a verb, 'to art,' but what are artists, dancers, poets doing? They're taking the ordinary and making it special. You create a bowl out of mud but you...make it special by engraving a pattern or figures on it. A poet takes ordinary words and makes them special. An artist places an activity or an artifact in a realm different from the everyday." (Author Ellen Dissanayake)
I wanted to use these quotes in my video log except I didn't end up having enough time because it already went a little past 2 minutes. I didn't realize how fast 2 minutes go when you are just talking straight to the camera!
Hope people enjoy my first(and possibly only) vlog!
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