Month: May 2023

Our task was to get used to using a camera and seeing what we can make from our environment. Tasked with finding things that interest us and trying to find a theme and keep to it.

I decided to only look at people’s feet, more specifically, their shoes and how they walk. I took videos from low angles trying to capture people moving across the shot.

I filmed people in our class and then people in the wild.

After collating the videos, I realised there was a really interesting difference in the sound of people’s feet. Sadly, the quality was not good because I only used the camera mic and not a directional mic or anything like that. I spent time trying to single out the foot sounds, but it wasn’t very successful.

So I attempted to make music out of it.

Kenneth introduced us to the concept of granular synthesis

Granular synthesis is a sound processing technique that involves chopping up a piece of audio into teeny-tiny particle fragments called “grains.” By micro-sampling these grains, which are typically 5 to 200 milliseconds (ms) long, you can synthesize new sounds and patterns.

output.com

This was made into video art by “GRANULAR SYNTHESIS ”

I really liked this; it was scary unexpected and very interesting. one of my personal favourite parts about music and a guiding force behind my own work is the concept of ‘ugly sounds, beautiful music’. Granular synthesis is a perfect example of this. Although you might say, this example is only ugly. I think it is a great first step to create work after it.

I made my own version of it. A much simpler version. I will also say that this is one of the first things I edited on premiere pro, and I was still figuring my way around it. I used this exercise to help orientate myself.

We were expanding our editing capabilities with this task and were focusing on the green screen/chroma key.

But first, we did some projectionist work. Our group brought bottles from home, and we used some tulle and started projecting onto it.

Experimentation included

• We were playing with the light refraction from the glass bottles, which would change when we spun them.
• Projecting onto the tulle gave us multiple layers of the projected image.
• We also moved the tule around to see what it would do.
• We changed the imagery being projected; aquariums, candles, sunsets, hypnotic imagery, and rave colours.
• putting people and hands between and behind the tulle to create shadows and light people up
• Switching in and out different coloured gels.

After this, we learnt how to chroma key. I decided I wanted to do that for my piece but still use some of the footage I made here.

What I did/how I did it

• Cut up all the interesting bits of the footage. Into small segments of about 2-4 seconds.
• Then put them in a cohesive order.
• I also realised that with the video with rave lights, I could chroma key to the individual flashing colours. So the video would turn to see-through at random intervals.
• I then put an interesting video behind that. With lots of fish from the aquarium. Because that’s a personal love of mine and will be made apparent later in this project.
• This ended up making a visual texture. But I wanted it to be a tad more chaotic
• So I overlayed the video from above and chroma-keyed all the red bits. To create even more layering.
• The texture was great, but I wanted to add more exciting components. I grabbed lots of ‘green screen fish’ from youtube and put them in over the top.
• I also got some footage from the Monterey Bay aquarium kelp cam and removed the background using Chromakey again.
• lots of things going on !

We also took some videos in the studio with a blue background, intending to make them into floating people. So I did some dancing. I actually had quite a bit of trouble correctly chroma-keying this because the lighting wasn’t flat when we filmed the shots. In the final clip, you will see some dark blotches around the back of my head.

I also so added some music, ‘Boom Boom Pow’ by the Black Eyed Peas. Because that song is lots of fun.

I also timed the dancing people to come in on the beat, to keep the flow of the music and sync the vibes.