Introduction
For the Conceptual Project, Juniors develop their abstract thinking and communication skills to answer the question – “How can I use conventional forms to express myself?”
This project is about exploring new creative mediums and using professional applications and technology, all with the goal of being able to express our ideas and creative styles in the best way possible.
The thing I value most about being a Freestyle/English/Digital Media Student during the Conceptual Unit is the lack of boundaries and parameters with all of the projects. Even on an assignment where we just need to show we can use the camera correct, or do the basics in photoshop, there are creative aspects that make every students submission different. Because of this, theres no pressure on me to make something that aligns with whatever’s normal, since there really is no normal. In these classes I feel like what I’m submitting is truly my own work, and exactly how I would do it if it wasn’t an assignment, but rather a passion project or something like that.
Haiku
The Haiku Project was our first big assignment in Freestyle Academy. The first step was presented in our English class, where we were shown different example haikus, and then tasked to make our own based off of a unique conceptual statement which we were assigned. My conceptual statement was: “I am exploring the feeling of understanding through fighting with a friend.” From that, I created a 3 line Haiku, and paired it with a photo I took during a trip to Moab, Utah. We then took the 3 line haiku we made in English, and transformed it into a animated video for Digital Media, including the use of keyframes, syncing audio, and animating text and photos. The final video, made with Adobe Premiere Pro, is linked below.
I valued the Conceptual Haiku Project because I learned how to use Premiere pro while creating my video. I also really enjoyed the amount of creative freedom we had with the project, being able to control both the writing and film-making elements of the video. It was really nice to practice combining the movement of the photo, the textual effects, as well as both the audios of my voice and the background music. I think learning how to do all these basic skills will be really helpful for the future within and outside of freestyle.
“Why Art?” Essay
In English class, we analyzed the play/book Red, and also went to the SFMOMA to get inspiration and consume some art. We also read articles about art and its purpose/importance, and then chose a specific artist to focus on for our opinion essay to answer the question: “Why does art matter?”.
You can read my Why Art essay by clicking the image to the left, or listen to the audio recording below.
“Why Art?” Presentation
We also created and presented a slideshow to showcase what we had learned and analyze the specific pieces of art from our artist which we wrote the essay about. The goal of the presentation was to use out Artist and their work to show our answer to the question: Why Art?
Photoshop Blend Mode Editing
For the photoshop blending mode assignment we learned how to use the Photoshop application to edit photos, specifically blending them with color and even other photos to make them more stylistic. We followed a tutorial assignment with a specific set of photos for the first part of this assignment, and then we got to use the strategies we learned to be creative and edit our own photos taken with our cameras.
1. The thing I value most about learning and using Creative Blend modes is how it made me familiar with photoshop and also the basics of how images, pixels, RGB and all of that works with online images.
2. I imagine I’ll use blending strategies to make my photos pop more, and also whenever I need that sort of photo for a slideshow or assignment, or just when I think it would be fun to include. I also assume I’ll be using these strategies later on in DM as well.
Film
My elective class is film. I value the collaborative aspect of film, because your film can always be exponentially better if you work with others, and I think collaboration is fun and also a good skill to have. The conceptual unit in film has been mostly just getting to know how to use the cameras, editing software, and how to be creative with what we learned. We’ve had a few big assignments to practice film, but the biggest one was our Experimental Film.
The process to get to the final production was pretty complicated. The first step was to think of an idea that was not really a story, but just a concept for a film that would convey the emotions of our conceptual statement. We had to present that to the class, and receive feedback on what to change about the base idea. Once we had that decided, we wrote a synopsis to submit to Mr. Taylor for approval of the idea. Then we had to film at least 2 rounds of dailies, which are just raw clips. We showed the class our first round, and got feedback on how to take our shots better and what kind of shots we should and shouldn’t use. Finally, once all of that was done, we could edit our film and submit a rough cut, without any effects or audio. That was shown to the class, and once we got approval on that then we could make our final edits and submit our final cut. It took up a large portion of the first semester. This is what working in Premiere Pro for editing looks like:
