Introduction

In Freestyle, we are using poetry, music, animations and web productions to create the project. It gives us creative space to make our own productions using a variety of tools and applications. We are learning skills from all of the tools we should use that Freestyle provide, and challenge ourself through the risk of complicated production process. In Freestyle, I learned how to make videos using applications like Premiere and Adobe Effect; I learned how to make boring pictures to look fancy using Photoshop; I learned how to create my own website; I learned how to draw animations using different ways and skills; and I learned English in a creative way. Every project we create may took us many days to build and to finish it, and we enjoy the process.

Photo Haiku

Intro

The first thing we learn in Freestyle English is haiku, which is a type of poem that has 3 short lines. 5 words in first line, 7 words in second line, and 5 words in last line. After we finish the poem, we started to make it as a video in Digital Media class.

Photo Haiku Premiere Pro Screenshot

Things I Valued From Photo Haiku and Video Production

Photo Haiku is a very interesting project. It looks easy but it’s not. Everyone have a conceptual statement that create limits for our topic. We picked our topics randomly, so we may pick some unnecessary concept statement, but we still need to think about it. My concept statement is explore the feeling of disbelief  through the experience of traveling to a new place. I was so confused at first and thought that I will never think of a poem about this topic. I went to ask Mr. G and after he helped me through my poem, I feel that it is not so hard. And so I create my first haiku poem. The video production is also hard at first, even though we have direction videos created by Mr. Flo, I was confused at first at some point. But after some tries, I figure it out and found that it is not that hard, but needs to take time. This is my first video production so it maybe not perfect, but I’ll like to improve in the future.

Poems

Intro

In the poem unit, we didn’t only create haiku. We also wrote other kinds of poem, ekphrastic poem and free verse poem. We went to SF MOMA and saw many interesting art in it, and everyone chose one artwork to write a poem of it, that is called ekphrastic poem. We also write poem as a free way, which is called free verse poem. We made our own concept statement and wrote it.

Ekphrastic Poem

About Ekphrastic Poem

When I first saw this artwork in SF MOMA, I thought it was strange because what I saw was bunch of black and red colors on the canvas with no pattern, and I thought that if this is art, then everyone could be an artist. After I read through the introduction of this piece of art, I changed my mine. Actually, this art has a meaning. This drawing looks like that the black is swallowing the red, but if you change a perspective, actually it’s red swallowing the black. I think it is so interesting and creative, so I chose that artwork as my ekphrastic poem.

Free Verse Poem

I had a dream,

To have a pair of wings,

Flying through the sky,

Like a bird in your eye.

 

Through the mountain,

The forest,

The river,

The sea,

Looking for you, my lover.

 

I have a pair of wings,

But it was broken.

I can’t fly anymore,

Never in the future.

 

I slipped down the mountain,

Lost in the forest,

Struggles in the river,

And died in the sea.

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Poetry Intention Statement

Exquisite Corpse Poem Video

Exquisite Corpse After Effects Screenshot

About Exquisite Corpse Poem

This poem was not made by myself, but with my group members in English class. We take turns to write down one line of poem each person, and each person only could look at the last line. It is mainly like a blind writing, sometimes you don’t even know what the poem actually is about. It is a very interesting activity and it is very fun.

Photoshop Blending Modes Images

Blending modes pictures are pictures that we product in photoshop adding different blend modes to make the pictures more creative and fancy than the original picture. We learned about 4 to 5 different blend modes that people use most in photoshop and we have assignments to produce it and show the difference between the original picture and processed picture.

Blending Multiply Photos Together

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Creative Blend Mode

                            

Multiply Blend Mode

                           

Screen Blend Mode

                         

Overlay and Brush Blending Modes

                         

Photoshop Blend Mode Screenshot

Reflections

Sometimes, original pictures we took maybe a little bit boring because there is not contrast in it. We learned DSLR manual camera techniques to use shutter speed and other tools we didn’t know before to make pictures we took more creative. We also learned how to make the pictures more creative by using different blend modes in photoshop, and it did make the pictures more fancy than before.

Animation Projects

I am taking Animation classes in Freestyle. We did a lot of project since this semester. We did flip books, phenakistoscope wheel, animated poem, direct techniques, and exquisite corpse animation. These projects are all hard works that take at least a week to finish each one.

Flip Book

Phenakistoscope Wheel

Direct Techniques

Exquisite Corpse

Screenshot

I put the productions together by Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, and Dragon Frame.

Reflection

I enjoyed all the process creating the projects, it is very fun. Sometimes there will be many problems during the production, but I always fix it by asking teacher. These projects help me to know how to create animations and gif by photoshop and premiere. I am very proud of my works.