Introduction
With our Conceptual Project, we were tasked with answering the question “How can I use unconventional forms to express myself?” While doing so, we were challenged to express our opinions through a distinct personal aesthetic. With access to professional equipment such as DSLR cameras, Pro Tools, Tascam audio recorders, and the Adobe applications such as Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and more, we were able to begin development of our technical communication skills.
Being an English and Digital Media student at Freestyle has been a very enjoyable experience so far. From my time here, I have learned so many new things, especially how to use certain equipment and applications. I value these newfound skills as what I have learned here will hopefully help me later in life. I also value how English and Digital Media are sometimes intertwined with one another. I think that this can give a good representation of the real world, where subject matters and tasks will often overlap with each other.
Haiku
At the beginning of the school year, everyone was assigned a random concept statement. These included the experience of a motion through an action. For example, mine was “I am experiencing anguish through watching children play”. We were then tasked to create a traditional Haiku poem which followed our given concept statements. The second part of this assignment was to take a photograph which had a metaphorical relationship with our poem, rather than a literal one. We would then take the Haiku and photo into our Digital Media class and produce a video that put the two together.
From this project, I valued learned the basics of Premiere Pro and how to add simple effects to my video. As can be seen from the embedded video above, some of these effects included fading text in and out, changing the volume of the background music, as well as animating the text to move across the screen.
Poetry
Our Poetry project started in English, where we created a free verse poem as well as an intention statement which gave insight into our thoughts and purposes. Then, we took our finish product into Digital Media. Here, we put the text of our poem onto an image that related to the topic of what we wrote about. We then recorded everything with our voice recorders at home and imported it into ProTools, where we added music and sound effects.
The free verse poem “Clones” is a third person journey of the events experienced by a single cookie among its many lookalikes in a glass jar. In this poem, the speaker is an object on the kitchen counter, observing somebody slowly approaching the cookie jar as they then eat the contents inside. In the second stanza, I enjambed the line “They all wait”, as it provides a sense of mystery and suspense. Upon reading this line, the reader will be wondering what “they” are waiting for. But as they continue to read, they will see that this detail is revealed in the next line.
I decided to use personification in the third stanza by mentioning how the cookies had “dreams” which were “soon to be crushed”. By doing this, the cookies are humanized ever so slightly, making it seem as if they have dreams and aspirations in life. In turn, the reader will be able to sympathize with them when they see that these are dreams which will unfortunately never come true due to their situation. At this same point in the poem, there is a tone shift. In the first part, the tone was mainly optimistic and hopeful. But after the big realization of what is about to happen, the tone takes a dramatic turn in the opposite direction, becoming one of sadness and disappointment. Also in the third stanza is a strong use of alliteration, in “false sense of fabled freedom.” The inclusion of this technique helps the poem to flow a lot better off of the tongue, as well as produce a sound pleasing to the ears. During our feedback workshop, one piece of feedback I received was to make the subject of the poem a little bit clearer. After reading the poem over again, I saw where they were coming from, and understood that it was a little bit vague. I revised my poem by making it a bit clearer that the subject of the poem was in a glass container, a jar to be specific. Some other feedback I got was to add some space between the last two lines, “Then” and “Silence”. I chose to incorporate this change as I thought that it contained some really good sound qualities; rather the absence of sound. This large break between lines forces silence upon the reader as they go over the blanks with their eyes. In turn, this creates a large amount of suspense, as the reader will constantly be guessing and wanting to know what comes next. Overall, I think that the peer feedback was very useful as a second perspective and a fresh pair of eyes can bring about a totally new perspective.
This project exposed me to the basics of audio editing within ProTools, which I really valued. This included cutting and combining different clips, panning the audio from left to right, adding various effects, and much more.
Photoshop Blend Modes
For this assignment, we had to use the blend modes available within Photoshop in order to combine two or more images together to create an interesting composition. Blend modes can be used to lighten or darken an image, as well as blending two images together as the name suggests.
I think that Photoshop Blend Modes have the potential to be very powerful, although they can have their limitations. I valued learning what each blend mode did, and when the appropriate times to use each were.
DESIGN
So far, we have learned the principles of design (balance, pattern, unity, etc.), color theory, applications such as Photoshop and Illustrator, and more. Being a design student, I greatly value the access to professional resources and applications that we have. This allows us to express our artistic side to our fullest extent.
ALpha Name PHoto
In this project, we had to go out into the world and find objects represented each letter in our name. We took many photos to have a large selection, then narrowed them down to one photo per letter in our name. Then, we went into Photoshop and edited each photo to be black and white, on top of cropping and rearranging them.
Conceptual Photo
Similarly to the Haiku from English and Digital Media, our conceptual photo revolved around our assigned concept statement. As mentioned earlier, mine was “Experiencing the feeling of anguish through watching children play”. For Design, we took this concept statement and photographed two objects together which would represent this statement , without being too literal.
Negative/Positive Space
Utilizing the properties of positive and negative space, as well as two different colored pieces of paper, I created this piece below. In the Halloween spirit, I decided to create a haunted house with some decorations in front of it. This unique look seen all over the project, with the orange and black paper, was accomplished by cutting out pieces of the black paper, then flipping them across the middle of the orange paper.
Pastel Color Theory
In general, color theory is used to combine different colors to create powerful color combinations. There are a wide variety of these combinations, and there are almost limitless possibilities. For this project, we had to use our knowledge of color theory in order to fill the different cells of the originally black paper with pastels.
