Month: December 2014

This assignment was the biggest so far. We were instructed to create a one-take music video of Taylor Swift’s song, Shake It Off. Both sections of Image Methodology collaborated to make this happen. Each one of us came up with a conceit and created a frame by frame outline. From there, we narrowed it down to a few ideas and developed them further. Finally, we all settled on the themes of Party Rejects and Stress Shakeoff, which a good part happened to be from my first iteration. We settled out the details and assigned production roles. I functioned as the director and part of the cast.

Shooting was difficult because of logistical reasons. We couldn’t cut the video, but we had to get from the Fine Arts building to Trustee Hall while still rolling. This was eventually solved by handing the camera off into a car while I followed in a bike, lip-synching the whole way. A few more challenges arose such as filling in the time and having people in the right positions. The former was remedied by planning more gags. The latter was solved by very detailed instructions and queues from the directors. Whenever there was no feasible solution, we just had to let go of an idea and compromise with each other.

The idea of this project was to find the cosmos in a grain of sand. We were to scan various things in the highest, closest resolution. Next, we recorded found sound. We each picked a constellation and started working on our videos in After Affects. The micrscopic images served as backgrounds for our video as an illustration came on screen. The illustration was then supposed to morph into the constellation.

I picked Corona Borealis because I felt I could be creative with the idea of a crown. We scanned many things, but I ended up using glitter and a crystal as my backgrounds. he glitter has a golden sparkle, a perfect complement to my crown illustration. The crystal was another precious-looking thing that fit into the idea of a crown while being visually similar to the cosmos.

The assignment was to create a cognitive map. Personally, I have trouble focusing at home and even at school sometimes. I decided to use this assignment as a way to organize all the coffee shops I have visited so far.

This project took a good amount of planning. I had to map out how each of these shops were different from the other, then create a set of questions that would lead a person to the correct shop depending on their preferences. Next I had to figure out how to present the language. I chose to use symbols as the main language so the reader could make quick distinctions, but had the option of body copy if her prefered to read. I used large slashes between each symbol to eliminate putting “or” on each choice. I thought it would neaten up the composition. Keeping with the clean simplicity of the symbols, I chose a simple scheme of black, white, and gold. I originally wanted to use brown as an accent to match coffee, but the contrast was too low. Gold was the next natural choice, as it is very close to light brown.