About Me

Hi, I’m Mehr Raheja, a student at Mountain View High and Freestyle Academy. Most of the time you can find me painting or doing some type of project. When I’m not doing that I’m either binge watching sentimental shows or listening to music. Tame Impala and Fleetwood Mac is the way to my heart. I love to travel and explore new places with my family and friends. My favorite place in all of California is Point Lobos, there is just something about the cypress trees and turquoise water that is so beautiful. Outside of California my favorite place is London where I hope to someday live. 

If you were to ask me about my core values I would say they are independence, curiosity, and creativity. As an only child I was always taught to be independent and if I wanted something done I had to do it myself. I also really enjoy my alone time where I can just recharge. There is so much to the world and what’s in it that it is impossible for me not to be curious about it, and as said in my favorite show Ted Lasso “Be curious, not judgmental”. Of course also creativity. As an artistic person it’s hard not to be creative and see the beauty in everything around you. 

I’m passionate about painting, specifically oil painting. I love how long it takes to dry and the layers you can build up with it. Although I don’t do it much I like to cook and bake especially on a gloomy autumn day. I also like thrifting and finding cool and unique clothing. I think that everything in life from the house, to appliances, to clothing has all gotten duller in the years and I am deeply passionate about bringing color back into everyday life.  

I chose to become a Freestyle Academy student because I have always been a right brained person who loves to create and Freestyle seemed like the perfect opportunity for me. I chose my elective as design because it seemed like it covered a variety of different topics and media. I’m not entirely sure what I want to do in life but I know it will be something in the creative field so I’m hoping Freestyle will give me some knowledge of different creative fields and what I might expect in each field. 

My Core Values:

For this project we were tasked with creating an After Effects video about our core values. After Effects is a new platform which we’ve had no experience with, so it was a process of trying to learn and understand the software. This project challenged both our artistic and technical skills while making it. First we had to find 7 core values that truly spoke to us. It was hard to narrow it down for me because there are so many ones but eventually I picked creativity, curiosity, empathy, loyalty, awareness, humor, and friendship. Additional artistic choices related to the words including picking fonts and colors that go with the words. The hard part was the technicality of animating all of the text and making sure that everything lined up well. I picked music that contained beats in it so I was able to time the words coming into some of the beats. I think that I did a good job in timing the entrance of the words with the music to give it extra momentum. 

For the placement and animation presets of After Effects I played around with the different settings and experimented with what looked best. I took into account the word, how big it is, the color, placement I wanted it to be at, and how the music matched up to it. For example for aspects where the music was more flowy I used spinning rotation, whereas where the music was more beats and booms I used more rigid animations. This project was a good way for me to balance both the technical aspects of creating a video using After Effects but also being able to make lots of small artistic choices within it.