Projected Visuals Evaluation

I’ll admit I wasn’t too keen on this project. The Idea of it being fully abstract is what I think put me off, as I enjoy being narrative in my work, and so I suppose it was just an adjustment that meant working outside of my comfort zone. The song I wanted to use was the second track on the album, Which I nicknamed “Don’t Go” however it originally didn't work as well as I'd hoped so I dabbled around with tracks 1, 5 and 8. In the end I realised that none were quite right, so I tried “Don’t Go” again, and I actually found that, with what I wanted to attempt, I’d made the right choice from the start.

            As I was so unfamiliar with this type of project I tried to gather research on what the audience themselves would expect and enjoy. To do this I attended underground Hip-hop shows in and around both Nottingham & certain parts of London, ranging from breakthrough acts around North-west London to bigger events in Elephant and Castle. Recurring motifs I found were the use of graffiti, riot footage and live footage of the audience in the back drops. All of these had various effects ranging between colour correction, image distortion and various mirroring effects to name but a few.

            Once I had collected this information I went in search of various local graffiti hotspots around Nottingham. I found Hyson Green was the best area for this, however, that was only one  of the three commonly found pieces of footage, and I wasn’t prepared to start a riot purely to gather footage of it. I decided instead to try me hand at some shutter-delay photography, which I’d seen used in the smaller events, such as ones in Nottingham. I hadn’t used this before though, so I made sure to take the camera out for a weekend to play about with the various different functions so that I would know what I was doing when I needed the photos taken.

            I decided to start with the shutter-delay work, as it was still getting dark around 5pm in February, so it would be less dangerous than walking around Nottingham with a £110 camera around my neck at 10pm in march. Once that was done I moved onto the graffiti portion of the project. The place I noticed with the most diverse collection of graffiti was the Skatepark in Hyson Green, so I began going there every few days to photograph the work there. I went every few days for a week and over that time a number of new pieces had gone up. The other place I gathered photos from was discovered on accident. I was on my way home from ASDA and stumbled across several different pieces of a different style behind the community centre. I luckily had a camera with me and took some shots of them.

            With that done all that was left was the editing process. I’d briefly done a run through of the editing tools in Premiere and decided to see what I could do with them. Before long I’d pieced them together in an order that I think best complemented the music, as well as images to fill the extra two minutes as requested by urban angels. Then I just added the effects to jazz the whole thing up. I started by using mirrors as they were what I had mainly practiced with, but soon found the colour correction tool and that quickly became my favourite.

            The only issues I had with the editing was that it was difficult to have each image unique, I didn’t like using the same combination of effects however it got to a point where I had no choice, all I wanted to do was keep the footage fresh. The main problem I encountered, however, was the repetitive clicking, dragging, and rearranging of images, edit tools and keyframes. I think that the final outcome is worth those few minor issues.

            The feedback I received was mostly positive too, which, given my first opinions of the project, was a pleasant surprise. One person said that it was “very professional” and a friend told me it “at some points perfectly connected to the music.” So at the end of this project I can happily say that I am pleased with the work I did, that it best reflects my ability when working on an abstract project such as this. It was a tough project at times, but by the end I enjoyed not only working on it, but the work that came out of it. I’d certainly do something like this again, however not for a while, I definitely want to get back to working on narrative projects as I believe that is where I am more talented in general.

More Depict Ideas

Treatment for 90 second Depict entry - “The Chase”

Plot- The film begins in black, with a voiceover [ ”How did I get into this”]. The shot is wide, in the centre is a man, running, towards the camera. When he reaches the position of the camera he jumps over it, and the camera follows him continuing to run. There are multiple shots of him running, none are more than 2 seconds. {A shot following him running up forest road filmed from a car would work well here}The shots take place in a vast variety of locations, from an urban city to a forest. Eventually he jumps over a wall, runs into a back door and sprints up stairs. He reaches the roof, the camera pans around him panicking with nowhere to go. He stops, walks towards the edge of the building. There is a POV shot of the ground below. Then a noise while the camera is extremely focused on his eyes growing wide. The next shot is of the roof door’s handle turning.

Need to work on voiceover so long weekend in store

Depict Ideas

Treatment for 90 second Depict entry - “The Cop”

Plot-      The film begins with an extreme close-up of a man’s face, half of his face is outside of the shot. The other half of the frame displays heavy rain. [VOICEOVER BEGINS]The man is smoking a cigarette and appears not to have slept in days. He throws the cigarette down and stomps it out. The camera is behind him on the floor as he does this, and follows him walking off. The shot changes to an establishing shot. We can see him from across a canal. The next shot is over the shoulder, then stops following him to observe a newspaper in the water, the headline reads “Teen Murder” or something similar. [Until now the voiceover has been focused on the corruption in the city. Now the man speaks of a young girl forced into prostitution and killed for disobeying her handler]. The camera focuses on the man’s pensive face, and then moves to a photo in his hand. The photo is of a young girl, there is a bloody finger print on it. The shot fades into a flashback. It is all one shot, filmed over the man’s shoulder, following him getting out of his car, walking into a crime scene, seeing the girl, falling to his knees and vomiting violently. [It is now clear that he is addressing someone in his narrative] The next shot is a silhouette of the back of a man’s head. The camera pans to show the full body of our protagonist. He is holding a gun In his right hand. There is a police badge in the other. The scene fades to black.

[“Which do I use?”]