Artists Inspiring Artists

In September I also attended the Shepherd University Art Department Faculty Show. This was a great experience simply because looking at other people's art is what helps you become a better artist. Since I have a minor in Photography, it was great to see what some of the faculty in the art department was producing since a lot of them have been instructors of mine. This event was held partially in the library and another part was displayed in the new art building. Not only did I see some great pieces in the gallery, but some of them were incredibly inspiring. Some of my favorite pieces were done by Mike Mendez, who made photo-grams using different objects. The textures and compositions of his pieces were very intricate and interesting to look at. I was lucky to attend the gallery on the one day that it was open. Even the free food was great!

Hypnosis!

In the beginning of this semester Shepherd hosted an event that was really awesome. They brought in a hypnotist by the name of Kevin Hurley. I was immediately interested once I saw the posters going up for this event. In the beginning of the show he brought up a couple different students from the audience and sat them down next to each other in rows. As the show went on his was slowly hypnotizing them without them even knowing it. I will definitely say that the show was not what I expected at all. This guy really knew what he was doing and had mastered the art that is hypnotism. He even taught us a little bit about hypnosis as the show went on. The best part by far was seeing some of our fellow students fall asleep on each other and just acting goofy overall. He even has videos online where you can hypnotize yourself just by listening to them and following his instructions. Pretty neat stuff though!

Eat. Sleep. Edit. Repeat.

Continuing on with my capstone video has been going smoothly! Last night I recorded almost sixteen minutes worth of audio using the MicroKorg. With the help of some friends I was able to get a few tracks laid down that I feel will work very well with my video. My video was partially edited when we started recording the song, so for the first part we were able to actually edit to the video as it was playing. Other then that I gathered a little bit more footage that I thought I could incorporate well into the video. I still have one part to film and after that I will have all the footage I need. One other thing I did this week was develop some time lapses using a GoPro. Since time is one of the underlying themes in my video, I feel that time lapses are one of the most unique ways to capture time passing by. The GoPro makes it very easy to make these as well. With most of my footage already filmed the editing process has begun and soon that will be what I am focusing most of my time on. Here is a video of some great time lapses just to show how awesome they are!

Music Music Music

This week a lot of progress was made on my project. I gathered lots of footage in preparation to begin the editing process. Since we are now down to only three weeks until we need to present, I want to give myself plenty of time to edit and make sure everything comes together the way that I want it to. However, figuring out my audio track is one aspect of my project that needs to be completed before editing begins. I had some trouble finding some royalty free music that I enjoyed for this specific project. I wanted the audio to be very ambient, but also have the happy or sad feeling that I'm looking for in a song. After struggling to figure out my audio track, I came up with another idea. This week I will be working with some friends to create my own music for my video using a MicroKorg synth. I am extremely excited to be doing this because I have never created my own music for any of the videos I have made. Even though it will take some extra time out of my schedule I feel that this is going to be all the more worth it in the end. Not only that, but the sounds that you can create with this machine are exactly what I had in mind. Basically I will have an endless library of sounds to work with. Once I get a track done using this I can hop straight into editing the first part of my video. I still have a little bit of additional footage to gather for the second part of my video, but that will all be getting filmed this week as well. I have been carrying my camera around very frequently usually where ever I go to make sure that I can capture moments that may not be expected. I am very excited to start editing this project once this audio track gets done!

Adventures in the Filmmaking Process

Continuing on with my capstone video has only gotten more intense. I have been shooting a lot of footage lately with the help of some friends. Since I want the moments in this video to look as natural as possible I have tried to avoid getting my friends to act for me. There is a lot more raw emotion when you capture a natural reaction from somebody, which is exactly what I am looking for. I have also been utilizing a tripod much more lately. I like to have a good balance of tripod shots and handheld shots in all of my videos. The reason for this is that I also believe that a healthy balance of these two kinds of shots can really enhance a video. I like for some of the shots in my videos to have a "home-movie" type feel to them because it helps the audience feel as if they are experiencing that moment in real time. However, tripod shots are also really effective when trying to really get the audience to focus on one thing. Besides shooting, I have also began to really think about what I want to do when editing my video. I have a good bit of ideas for this video and I am extremely excited to do my best to make these ideas come alive. I have also downloaded some new plug-ins for my editing program and have been playing around with some of them. Just from my first glance I really think that they are going to really help some of my edits and really give the video a unique visual style which is exactly what I want. There is still plenty of footage for me to shoot so I am excited to keep filming and hop into editing very soon! HERE is one of the plug-ins that I downloaded.

The Art of an Experimental Film Script

So far my senior capstone project has been running very smoothly! Along with all the other work for the class that I have been doing, I have been actively shooting footage since before we even returned for the fall semester. This past weekend I went out of town and shot some more footage during my travels, which was very successful. I have been started thinking more and more about how I want to edit my video to make it the best it can be. After meeting with my director this week, he was able to provide me with a lot of articles about montage. These have proved to be extremely helpful and have given me some options of which direction I want to go with this. I still have a lot of footage that still needs to be shot, but will be getting a lot of that done this upcoming week. Other than that, I was unsure of how to write a script for my video since there will be no dialogue in my project. My director also helped me with this by showing me an AV Script, which I am going to begin working on during the editing process. The reason for this is because in an AV Script you simply show what is being played in the video on one side, and than explain the representation on the other side. By taking screenshots of my clips this process will be much easier and more effective. So after a few more shooting days, the editing process will begin!