Introduction

The goal of the conceptual project was to encourage us to find an unconventional means to express ourselves. There was a variety of ways we did this, through Haikus, different types of photography and film. We were made to push ourselves, testing out new equipment and learning from our mistakes, while still creating something personal.

For me, the experience as a student in digital media and English was completely new, I had never done something like this before. I was using new ways of thinking and learning to use new types of technology. There was also value in the fact that what we were woking on was personal, and not something separate from us.

Haiku

The haiku project was a combined project between English, in which we wrote the haiku, digital media, in which we made the video, and it inspired our film projects, following the same theme as we did when creating our haiku. My statement, to inspire what I wrote was “I am exploring the feeling of remorse through falling”.

Working on this project was harder then I thought it was going to be when I first heard it. Not only was the process of creating the Haiku difficult, but learning how to use all the new technology was just as difficult. I had to overcome a lot of challenges working on this assignment, but I know now I am better for it, and will always appreciate the lessons I learned from it.

Why Art

This assignment was to get us thinking about the value of art in our society, and why it really matters. An appropriate topic considering what we spend time doing here. I was inspired by “Art is How We Justify Our Existence” by David Zwirner. He comments on how covid effected art, how in a time of such division, both physical and mental, art was vital for establishing community. He claims that it helps promote understanding and conversation in a way that the sciences never could. This inspired my claim, because I completely agree with him, something about art allows us to recognize pieces of ourselves in others, all across the world. Tis recognition promotes empathy and a desire to learn and understand those we share the world with. And a world with complete understanding of each other is one significantly more peaceful than one with division.

Right click picture to read essay.

Or listen to the Essay here.

Here is the presentation.

The goal of this essay was for us to discover what our art means to us, as we start at freestyle. I think that it was to show us why this program matters, not just to us but to others. It forced us to look at art not only in an aesthetic light, but also its effect on a global scale. It was a means to inspire us as we start here at freestyle.

Photoshop Blend Modes

The blend mode assignments were there to get us used to using photoshop and to help us understand the programs functions in order to use it more efficiently in the future.

It was really difficult learning how to use this program, especially because they were so nuanced, and I don’t have access to the same technology at home as I do at school, so because I did not finish the assignments in class they became even more difficult.

I think that the value of this assignment is getting us used to the program, so in the future, for more serious projects we know what we are doing.

Abstract Film

Using the prompt we were given for our Haikus we had to make a film that abstractly brought across the idea presented in those statements. We used abstract film to do this, this includes making a film without a linear storyline, and one that may not be sensical, it was meant to embody a feeling more than a message. I think that there was significant value in this assignment, we got to open up the year with an assignment with less weight, and we got to learn how to use the cameras, color grading and editing on a media with less rules than standard film has.

Here is my film synopsis. This was the original idea that my film would follow created by my class and I, and acted as a blueprint for what I filmed.

To create this film I recorded for roughly four hours and had an hour and a half of footage that I cut down. The first day I filmed, creating what were called my first dailies, I did not really like the results I was getting. Because of this I started messing around wiht other less formed ideas, to try and find something that I liked. When I showed my footage to the class I ended up with an idea to overlay the water footage with the footage of the bouquet to make something that got my message across.

In editing this film I overlayed a lot of my footage to create the effect of water over the flowers.

Film Practice

We also did a series of practice films to develop our skills and to learn to edit. This includes the Scavenger Hunt video which allowed us to practice using different angles, the duality project which allowed us to practice an edited technique and the green screen practice which helped us practice using the freestyle green screen.