Introduction

The most intriguing project to me this year was the Explorations project. Unlike the others throughout the year, this one was essentially an empty slate with just about zero guidelines. The only thing we had to do was learn something related to our elective class (Film for me) that we could teach to others, expanding upon certain “21st Century Skills”. It was weird to me because this is something I’ve always wanted, but in having to make it relate to film, I drew a blank on what to do. However, within a day or two, it became painfully evident to me that my calling here was film analysis. The skills this topic brought to the table were mostly a mix of visual and technological literacy, as I looked into appreciating film language on a deeper level.

Before I even decided upon doing film analysis, it was already clear which films I would be analyzing: the famous “Cornetto Trilogy”, written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg and directed by Wright, featuring Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End. Each one was visually creative in countless ways, and perfect for in-depth analysis.

Admittedly messy, to the left is a picture of the folder I filled with images taken from online, film logos, and about 80 different stills from watching all three movies and pulling out certain frames that could potentially be used for deeper analysis.

A couple of them have been edited, like these three photos below, to highlight certain characters or items that are important in the frame. Look at them for a bit and focus on color palettes, lighting, framing and composition, symbolism, and costumes. See if you can find any meaning within any of the intricacies of those aspects. Assuredly, there is more than one of each aspect visible in each picture. In fact, each one has at least three, if you search for them.

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The final production I’d worked on for a couple of weeks was a long essay with supporting visuals that dove into four different aspects of film analysis: color palettes, lighting, framing and composition, and symbolism.

Infographic

In Digital Media, we were assigned to create an infographic, similar to the flyer in the documentary unit, explaining what we researched and showing what we had learned. Mine took a fairly long time to make and perfect. To the left, you can see the Adobe Illustrator work space I used to create it. Because of an intricate pattern I had at the bottom of the page behind the film titles, the file would tend to take longer to open than usual.

I spent a long time making the actual backgrounds for the text as well as simply designing the layout of the infographic in general. It’s not your standard infographic, given that it doesn’t look quite as corporate, bland, or safe as a normal one. That being said, I would say those three words are all pretty depressing ones, and I think the vibrant feel to this infographic makes it stand out. I’m very proud of it.

It focuses more on the “info” part than the “graphic” part of the word, as an enormous amount of information is dumped within a very small amount of space. I’m proud of that as well.

The final product is shown below in all its glory.

Presentation

At the end of the year, we presented our Explorations projects to the class in a semi-formal setting. Here’s a video of me presenting it to the class on Wednesday, June 5th, 2019. ]

I think I did pretty well, personally. To prepare, I memorized a script loosely at Starbucks the days before and produced a Google Presentations for it. Here’s the Explorations slides I used in the video above.

And here, as an added bonus, here’s the script I memorized!

Experimental Music

Finally, we had the opportunity to make experimental music in this class, which is honestly one of my favorite kinds of music. I’m so completely lost when it comes to music theory, and I can’t play a single instrument. I can, however, create some great and catchy drum beats out of MIDI blocks, which I focused on for the most part in this experimental music. Mine has a really catchy and goofy synth line I’m proud of coming up with, as well as some keyboard stuff going on in the background, but mostly it’s focused on just layers and layers of different drum kits creating a weird and mesmerizing sound. It’s cool.

Below is a picture of the Reason work space I used to create the file. You can see many of the drum tracks stacked up there, as well as a really cool break in the music near the end.