Introduction

“How can you find, explore, and/or expand your passion?”

This is the question that we had to ask ourselves during the Explorations unit at Freestyle. For the Explorations Project, all of the Junior students at Freestyle had the opportunity to explore their own passions as well as develop their dexterity addressing 21st Century skills.

For my explorations project, I chose to develop my 21st Century skills of Visual Literacy, Creativity, Self-Direction, and Risk Taking. In order to do this, I wanted to explore mise en scene, everything that goes into a shot that helps in telling a story. I chose to do mise en scene because I have always loved films and have always been interested in Cinematography. My primary goal for this project was to be able to tell a story through the photograph, so that I would be able to translate that into other art that I create, and overall become a better storyteller.

Process

In order to complete this Explorations Project, I had to understand what I needed to do, break down the things that needed to get done, and finally, execute my plan in order to complete the project.

Research

I started my Explorations project with researching what mise en scene was, as well as looking for scenes that had successful mise en scene. After research, I discovered that there were 4 main elements to mise en scene: Lighting and Color, Setting and Props, Costuming and Make-up, and Figure Movement and Expression. I also discovered that the style of cinematography that I liked were shots that seemed very strange and out of place, but the colors and the image was well thought out and looked crisp. So, that is what I set out to do.

Theme, Color Palettes, Scene Sketches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For my second step, I wanted to be able to showcase a certain feeling through an image.

Pretty quickly I landed upon the story of someone who feels as though their life is extremely mundane, so they feel like they have to do something over the top in order to escape the feeling of mundanity.

Next, I had to decide what I wanted my color palettes to be, so that the photo could look better and have colors that would match a theme and cause certain moods and tones to surface

Finally, I thought of three scenes that I could create in

order to exhibit my idea, as well as matched them to the color palettes that I chose. I created very rough sketches in order to determine which concept I liked the best. The first scene shows a

person sitting in a kiddie pool lighting matches, while other people look on confused. The second shows a person sitting at a huge feast, dressed super fancy with nobody there, looking bored. The final scene showed someone sitting on the roof of a house, while someone below them asks what they are doing up on the roof.

Set and Costume Design

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My final step for preparing for the photoshoot was to fully design the set and costumes so I would know what I needed within the shot. For my photo, I chose to do the first scene, which meant that I needed a kiddie pool and a lot of matches. This ended up in me buying a kiddie pool at Target at 9:30 at night, but I digress. The costuming design wasn’t really strict, I just knew that I wanted whoever was going to end up in the kiddie pool to be wearing a long-sleeve button-up shirt.

The Photos

After a fairly successful photoshoot, I had over 300 photos to choose from, and I ended up factoring them out by how well they told the story, rather than how good they were as photos themselves. I used Photoshop to edit the photograph, increasing brightness and contrast, as well as fixing the background so that there were no lines coming out of the subject’s head.

Final Production

This is my final production, and the title of it is “Mundane”, contradicting what the seems to be happening in the photo, but reflecting the purpose and the story behind it. The subject of the photo is my brother Lucas, who I would like to give a special thank you to for agreeing to be the subject and getting into a cold pool.

Infographic

Reflection

What  I valued most from the Explorations Project was learning how to create a project in a short amount of time, and how to manage my time in order to create something that I am proud of. I am very proud of my product, and although there were a few problems because of the short timeline, I think that the image turned out pretty well. How I benefitted as a digital artist from this project was I was able to practice my skills with Photoshop, as well as learn how to better tell a story through all of my art.

Experimental Music Production

With Experimental Music production, Freestyle Students were challenged to use Reason or Pro Tools to create a song after learning how to use those applications.

For this project, I worked with my friend, Elen Parry (www.freestyleacademy.rocks/~ElenP/) and our inspiration for the song was 70’s and 80’s electronic music, specifically the band Joy Division which then became New Order. My goals in making this song were to make a good beat, as well as achieve the feeling like you are in a dream, which is what I think it feels like to listen to a song by New Order. We used Reason to create this song.