For our conceptual unit, we were tasked with furthering our abstract thinking and communication abilities in order to answer the question “How can I use unconventional forms to express myself”.
This first unit had a strong emphasis on our creative risk-taking through various mediums such as poetry and experimental film. This challenged us to create our personal styles with which we could express ourselves. The start of these skills came from our opportunity to use different professional equipment and applications such as DSLR Cameras, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Avid Pro Tools, and Tascam Audio Recorders.
Conceptual Free Verse Poem
In our English class we have been experimenting with free verse poetry in order to convey certain themes and ideas. This section is dedicated to my Free verse poem, which tackles the themes of ‘Depression’ and ‘Managing responsibilities’. It also incorporates visual and audio elements that I worked on in my Digital Media classes.
I really valued the creative challenge in trying to represent my ideas in pictures and sounds. I already knew what I was thinking when I wrote the poem but by making a picture and a voice-over I had to convey what I was thinking in new and different ways. I was also pretty happy with the results considering that I had never done anything like this before.
Photo Haiku and Video
Before we moved into free verse poetry we experimented with Haikus. this section displays my photo haiku from my English class which follows the same themes of ‘Depression’ and ‘Managing responsibilities’. It also includes my video adaptation from Digital Media class.
This Haiku Video Project taught me ways to animate text to make my projects in English more visually interesting. Since it was also one of my first times using Premier Pro, it also helped me learn how to KeyFrame different parts of the video. This meant that I could have different pictures/videos/texts move and change over the course of the video to better engage an audience and convey my ideas. I also look back on this project and realize that the audio needs major improvements, which is something I have been trying to think about in my projects which followed this one.
Elements and Principles of Art
In Digital Media class we learned about the essential elements and principles that go into making art. We then made slideshow presentations demonstrating various examples of the elements and principles of art. My slideshow is featured below.
Experimental Film
My film class explored the strange and wonderful world of experimental film for this first unit. We learned the basics of using green screens and duplicating actors as well as just camera and editing basics. We also watched a variety of intriguing experimental films for inspiration. We were then tasked with creating our own experimental theme which tackles a specific topic. A kept the same topic I had been given in English which was the emotion of depression through the experience of managing responsibilities.
When making my film I used a low exposure in a lot of my shots to make everything appear darker. I experimented a lot with lighting. There were different shots of fire and burning objects which I had to retake because the lighting didn’t look right. I also tried my hand at composing music for this film. I have never recorded music before so what I created isn’t particularly impressive or complex. The background music consists of me playing simple riffs on a bass guitar.
I had a lot of fun making my first real film. I enjoyed the abstract thinking and putting the effort in to make cool shots. I also learned a lot of different skills for editing and using the DSLR camera. I learned which lenses were best for different shots and the importance of lighting for different shots. Like I said before, I also did the ‘music’ for my film. I applied the audio editing techniques I was learning in digital media and the amazing instruments of the freestyle studio to create the sounds you hear in the background. I tried to give my film a dark atmosphere to fit the theme of depression. I had a lot of ideas about what could make good representations of depression. Some were simple like blowing out a candle, others were more challenging like tight-rope walking at night. I had to cut that last idea, but I did end up jumping into a pool at night. My film also wouldn’t have been possible without help from my film class and film teacher. That help ranged from people holding the camera while I fell into the pool, to giving ideas and feedback, to running through the park.