Introduction
The purpose of the Senior Zenith Project is to ignite students’ passion and elevate their skills and experiences to create their ultimate and most successful Freestyle project. It is the final project in production classes at Freestyle Academy. Students independently decide what to create and map out their plan to complete it over 2 months. At the end of the project, Seniors present their final product to the juniors, seniors, and all Freestyle teachers.
It is called the Zenith Project because it is meant to be the apex of your creation during your time at Freestyle. After everything you’ve learned in the past two years, you now have the chance to apply all of those skills to a single project and demonstrate your capability and growth.
My Zenith Project is inspired by the 1936 experimental film Rainbow Dance, by New Zealand filmmaker Len Lye. It is a 4-minute montage of vibrantly colored dancing silhouettes that leave faded imprints behind as they move (ghosting effect), and shapes that float and bounce around the screen, set to cheerful, lively music. The coloring was done using the Gasparcolor process. The reason I was passionate about this project was that Rainbow Dance left such an impression on me when I first saw it. I wanted to make a film that would make people feel the same way that film made me feel. I wanted to create a film using similar effects Len Lye used while also making it my own.
My film incorporated silhouetted tap dancing (by dancer Karen Chien, other movement by Katie Leung); colorful animations of fish, polka dots, bouncing circles, circles growing and shrinking in scale, triangles, raindrops, and rainbows; and background shots of landscapes, flowers, and ocean waves, color-graded to contrast the silhouettes. All of this was set to the song “Freight Train” by Chet Atkins, covered by Sophie Melchiorri. Even though I was very much inspired by Rainbow Dance, my final film turned out very different and individual because I used my own animations, dancing, backgrounds, and music.
This project felt very risky for me. There were several moments in the process where I doubted whether it would all come together. But I also felt incredibly free to create what I wanted to make, to make it feel like me, and to experiment with new effects and techniques in both After Effects and Premiere Pro. I thoroughly enjoyed this project and feel satisfied with the final result. I can’t think of a better way to end my time at Freestyle than with this fun, upbeat little film.
This project involved a lot of After Effects Editing because of the green screening for the silhouettes and the animated shapes. I used a lot of the skills I had previously learned in Digital Media to this project, and I also had to learn new skills that allowed me to make the project the way it is now.
Process
Here are some photos to show my process in creating this film.
Completed Project
Zenith Film
This is my final completed film! After Zenith Presentations, I redid all of my green screening and matched up the tap audio better with the music before the showing at Freestyle Exhibition.
Zenith Celebrations
This is a video of my Zenith presentation, which I gave to the AM class (juniors and seniors) and the teachers.
Reflection
Waiting on upload to youtube.