Sunday, December 8, 2013

Final Project Progress - Dec 8

I guess it's done now.

I hate how laggy iMovie is on the school's computers. Maybe that's why we're supposed to put it on the Working Volume... oh hm...
Anyhoo.

I didn't get enough footage to fill up the entire two and a half minutes of the song I used, but I think that's okay. Quality over quantity, right? (Speaking of, please excuse the horrible quality of my cruddy little Kodak. And my mumbling.) I asked a few strangers off the street, but only two really gave an answer, and even those were not very sufficient.

My first conclusion from this project: Nobody likes to be surveyed. My second conclusion: Nobody likes to spill out their heart on camera. I didn't really expect somebody to just be like "Actually, I had a pretty rough day, let me tell you everything that's stressing me out and lean on your shoulder for a few moments." Nah. Those are pretty high expectations.

Maybe if I filmed in secret (is that illegal or...?) people might answer differently. If I had a hidden camera and just shot the question casually, giving them no time to actually think about it, I'd get some truer results. It would take less time, too, and I wouldn't be bothering people as much as I would be formally asking them to answer a question first. But those were not resources I had at hand. I ended up acting like a surveyor.

Ask somebody how their day was. Listen to others. It'll help.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Final Project Progress - Dec 4

My idea had changed from encompassing nineteen rules somehow into just focusing on one of the rules and acting it out:

2. Ask every person you meet how their day is going. Genuinely ask with the soul intention of learning how their day is. Ask the coffee shop employee. Ask the person next to you in line at Walmart. Ask your distant friend. Ask everyone.
Again, I'm reminded of a YouTube video I once saw (I have seen a lot of YouTube videos and my memory is impeccable for those that had had an emotional impact on me):


 I might use their method rather than what I've been doing, which is prepping the other person and asking their permission first. I think they think I'm gonna ask them a really complicated question about the State of the Union or something like that. At the same time, I don't want them to panic about randomly being filmed. Would that happen? I guess I'll find out.

I'll definitely be asking more people in the next few days. I'll do my painting homework during the mornings and late nights, and go out sometime in the late afternoon to the evening and just gather footage. I can go to Family Dollar and ask the cashier, to the diner and ask the waitress.

I've seen strangers on the street and thought about including them, but I usually get intimidated by others. Not that random people are particularly intimidating, it's probably just a mild form of social anxiety or something. I don't really want to be a bother to people who are just trying to go about their day. Maybe willingly picking a project that requires me to put myself in kind of stressful situations wasn't my best idea, but I do need to get used to it. Can't be a shut-in forever.

I can do this. So far I've only gotten people that I know (and one rushed person). It may be time to branch out. Statistics say that not all of them will respond. But for the ones that do, I'll be eternally grateful.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Final Project Progress - Dec 2

Oh boy hm.

I seem to vaguely know what I want to do, but it's not quite there yet, it seems.
I don't know oh gosh. Maybe I should nix the .mov format and find a different way to express the nineteen pieces of advice.

Maybe I could just elaborate on one? Like the second rule, to really ask how people's days are going. I could record myself just doing that with multiple people right? like basically everyone. Even chatlogs with friends I haven't talked to in forever. (If they get too personal, I might have to censor at least the name.)
I could put that all together in Flash. I think. If not, then iMovie.

just record myself saying

"How's your day going?"

to random people. Clerks, passerbys, roommates, classmates, teachers. security, friends here, friends far away.
I could use videos, or I could use the audio of those posts and some kind of visual. Use the text chatlogs as visuals? Or just a dark screen. Or the person's face. hm. I'd ask them if I can use the conversation and/or their face in a school project. Get people's permission and stuuuff.

For some reason I just thought of this video:
It's not quite the same, but the concept is - let other people know that they matter to you.

So how about that final project eh

I was thinking that maybe I would read a quote and kind of put it together in the same format as the narrative. something like…

Nineteen things I’ve learned before I turned nineteen.
1. Always carry $5 and a lighter with you (even if you don’t smoke). 
2. Ask every person you meet how their day is going. Genuinely ask with the soul intention of learning how their day is. Ask the coffee shop employee. Ask the person next to you in line at Walmart. Ask your distant friend. Ask everyone.
3. Take many photos of yourself. Take photos of yourself when you’re happy. Take photos of yourself when you’re sad. Take photos of yourself because there are millions of trees in the world, and we all look at the same sky, but there is only one of you.
4. Stay in contact with your parents. Try not to hate them. They are the reason you have the ability to feel anything at all. Try not to hate your parents.
5. Opening your skin will not set your demons free. Open your heart. Open your mind. Open your hands.
6. Nobody knows anybody completely. That’s okay.
7. Be gentle, but be aggressive. Take a stand. Nobody hears your voice if you stay silent. 
8. Respect everybody. We are all humans trying to survive. We all deserve respect. 
9. Wearing black will ALWAYS make you feel better about yourself. 
10. Always give tips, whether it be a couple extra dollars or a piece of mind. You never know how much you could be helping someone. 
11. Change is the only thing consistent in life. Do not allow that bother you. Embrace chance and move with life, whichever direction it chooses to take you.
12. Smile often. Smile at strangers. Smile at your friends. Smile when nobody is looking and you’re alone in your bedroom. Smile when somebody is rambling to you. 
13. Body image means nothing. Your body is merely just a seatbelt in the car. Your body is here to protect you. You choose the direction you go, and your body will not hold you back. Only you can hold yourself back. 
14. Don’t hold grudges. Don’t allow yourself to hate anybody. Forgive them. Learn to love them for the person you never got to see them to be. Believe that a beautiful human exists in that person. Wish them well.
15. Drink orange juice. Lot’s of it.
16. Don’t allow the opinions of others to choose your destiny. We are all simply trying to live our own life.
17. Sing all the time. Sing off key. Sing in a silly voice. Sing like you’re on stage. Sing no matter who is around. Singing is breathing for the soul. Sing.
18. Take time to think. Write your feelings down. Write letters to the people you love. Texting is overrated and not as heartfelt as a nice handwritten letter.
19. Live for yourself. Breathe for yourself. Do everything in your life for nobody but you. This is your life. This is it."


-Katey Chrest

It was just something I happened upon that kind of inspired me, so… I think I want to do something with this. Like a typography

Monday, November 18, 2013

Project Status as of now

Alright so... I shot a good number of pictures before realizing that I'm gonna need to re-shoot them at the train station. I can see if my two roommates are available tonight and have the narrative take place during the night, but I'm worried that the lighting and such would be less than desirable. Other than that, I'd have to wait until the weekend arrives again because class schedules don't comply.

Train times: 6:21, 7:00, 7:27, 8:20, 9:28, 11:11.

I wonder how other people at the train station will affect the shots. Hm.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Visual Nararararararative: More





Alright, here's the high-quality images of what my storyboard looks like. There's basically two characters, which I may get two of my roommates to play. The crowd can be just a bunch of my housemates. I'm sure one can pose as a guy.

Maybe I can get my other housemate in photography to actually shoot the pictures, since I doubt she'd let me borrow her camera. Or I can use my cheap little Kodak.  This could all take a couple days to shoot, especially if I want to get the right lighting for each scene. And I'll have to actually wait for the train to pass for that one short scene, with only that section of time available.

I'm probably making this far more complicated than necessary. Go big or go home, I suppose.

I decided to largely draw inspiration from one of my favorite videos on this very planet:
I may or may not use the song featured in this as well. Shhhhh.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Visual Narararararative

Visual Narrative:

visual narrative is a story told primarily through the use of visual media. The story may be told using still photographyillustration, or video, and can be enhanced with graphics, music, voice and other audio.

Thank you Wikipedia.

So would this be classified as a visual narrative?
Or even it's epic sequel?

I'm sorry you had to see that.

Would it be bad if I drew inspiration from this for my visual narrative assignment?
I think yes.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Artist Research pt 2 - the third artist, Amy Casher

Since she isn't actually a world-renowned jeweler, Amy Casher doesn't seem to have her own page on Wikipedia. Dang.

But what I did manage to discover is that her studio is based in the South End of Boston.

She's been to the Boston Arts Festival.

She had attended the book launch of "Size Matters: Hard Facts About Male Sexuality" (I haven't stopped giggling like a 12-year-old). This was back in 2008, and she was 34 then, so she should've been born around 1974.

She was at a thing called CRAFTOPIA in April, 2011.

She does have a Facebook page for her shop, which gives updates of where she'll be selling jewelry.

Her Bio on her website states the following:
I created Amy Casher Designs after making jewelry as a hobby for over 15 years. It all started one year at an arts-focused summer camp (Buck's Rock), where I wielded my first saw, hammer, and jeweler's torch and officially - in my mind, anyway - became a silversmith. I can still remember feeling so proud to be able to wear and gift my handmade treasures.
I've since taken jewelry classes and workshops in just about every town I've lived in, while pursuing academic degrees, living and traveling on several continents, and working at different organizations in the corporate and non-profit worlds. With all the twists and turns in my life, there has always been one constant: making jewelry.
Much of the information I can find about her is vague and fleeting. If need be, I could send her an email and be all super-professional art student-interviewer-like and ask her a whole bunch of questions. I suppose that depends on how deep we're supposed to go with this assignment.

As far as I can tell, she's just a regular person who loves to make jewelry, and decided that she could make half of a living off of it. (The other half is being a management consultant.) She's a very current artist, going to different craft fairs and open markets in Boston to sell her work.

But seriously. Her work is gorgeous.

https://useaboston.com/amy-casher/
http://amycasher.com
http://oopstuffblog.typepad.com/festivalfete/science/

https://www.facebook.com/AmyCasherDesigns
http://fireopalgallery.wordpress.com/category/posts-about-jewelers/


Hats off to you, Amy Casher.

Artist Research pt 1 - actually doing the research

I started off with Pat Falco, that one artist from the beginning of the semester. I liked his work from the start and thought it was both interesting and amusing to look at.
like so.
I noticed that he had been in this one show with a plethora of other artists, called Winter Salad.


I plucked a name out of the list in that black box there, and that's how I found Percy Fortini Wright.

 There, too, I found another show that he had participated in with various artists.

I picked out a new name, Amy Casher, and found a great number of different jewelry pieces by her, as well as her website with a bit of information on her.


The artist I will be researching is Amy Casher, an artist that specializes in making jewelry.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY

I really don't know why we watched that video. I had completely managed to avoid watching it up until that moment, and now it's been stuck in my head for two days straight. I have been listening to Ylvis on repeat. Things are looking grave. The end is not in sight.

Oh, and this is what the fox says.

Data: Finale Ratings

Hannibal: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/bright-spots-amid-the-low-ratings-for-hannibal/ - 1.9 mil

Mad Men: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/mad-men-season-5-finale-ratings-335871 - 2.7 mil

Legend of Korra: http://dongbufeng.net/site1/content/view/1323/188/ - 3.7 mil

Game of Thrones: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-game-thrones-grows-562072 - 5.2 mil

Breaking Bad: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-breaking-bad-hits-634745 - 6.3 mil

CSI: http://www.csifiles.com/content/2013/05/csi-finale-dips-in-ratings/ - 9.6 mil

The Walking Dead: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/walking-dead-season-3-finale-ratings-431948 - 12.4 mil (oh my god)


hm


((M*A*S*H: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/feb/08/super-bowl-most-watched-show - 105.97 mil, Superbowl XLIV: 106.5 mil)) - outliers, may not count them

American Idol: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/american-idol-finale-ratings-plummet-article-1.1347150 - numbers dropping rapidly (no surprise there, really).

TV finales yaaaay!

Idioms and Ads

"Apple of my Eye" - After the last class where it was pointed out that the image could be made to imply stalker/prey or an abusive relation, I decided to go with it. Searching "angry man" and "scared woman" produced interesting results.

On a whim, I compared the results between "scared man" and "scared woman." A lot of the male results showed a stockphoto of a guy holding up his hands in a defensive position with a surprised look on his face. In contrast, many of the female results were of women holding their hands to their faces or in their hair in a helpless fashion and screaming. I also noticed quite a few that depicted a woman's terrified face with a man's hand clamped over her mouth.

I continued with my little experiment. "Angry man" resulted in a lot of men with steam photoshopped spouting out of their ears, and a lot of yelling faces. (Plus Twitter user Angryman_UK, who managed to get a lady to pose naked with his username written on a whiteboard in front of her.) Most of the "angry woman" results featured a woman who looked impatient, accusing, or nagging. Or any combination of the three.

My quick conclusion is that these results emphasize the power that men wield and the helplessness that women feel. Being Google search results, this depicts how many people view what each gender would seem like in these two opposing states of emotion.

Yes. Quite interesting results, indeed.

--

As far as spoof ads go, I really just wanted to do some anti-smoking thing. Then I found an appealing picture of a girl in a gas mask and a few cigarette and smoke stock images. I used the Marlboro typeface to write "Smoke Safely" which is just absolutely hilarious because the girl in the image is wearing a gas mask! Haha! How can she smoke if she has a gas mask on? Oh, that's right, she can't. So then how can she smoke safely if she ca- OOOH I GET IT, THE ONLY WAY TO SMOKE SAFELY IS NOT TO SMOKE! HAHAHAHA OH HOW IRONIC AND WITTY SUCH AN IMAGE IS OH JOLLY GOOD, CHAP.

It's like 2:30 AM. I should probably sleep.

Monday, September 23, 2013

It is late. I'm really glad I checked Canvas to see that I had to upload the file. Why didn't I think of that before?

I settled on the Apple of My Eye idiom. I was going to use some actor's and actress' eyes, but figured someone would recognize them. Somehow I didn't want that really? Don't know why. Ah well.

Then I searched "apple fruit" (since searching just "apple" gave you more of the logo than the food item) and did some photoshop things and bam. Yeahhh. I liked cutting the heart out of that apple in the middle.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Iiiiii am not very good at keeping up with this. I'm going to try harder.

Alright, so. Adages.
"10/90 Rule - Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it." That one could be fun to do. I could use some super quality stockphoto images of people's reactions, or perhaps a chemical reaction (like between sodium and water), but I'm not sure how I'd represent the 10% part.
"A sound mine dwells within a sound body." (Soul Eater reference oh man.)
"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."


"Against the clock." (Procrastinating college student vs. time)
"Apple of my eye."
"Come hell or high water." Hm. Nightwish has a song with this idiom as a line in their lyrics. I wonder if they have any other kinds of great idioms in their songs. Probably. I just looked through a couple off the top of my head and found "Paper is dead without words" "[All I am is] Smoke and mirrors"
"Dog days of summer (The dog days are over)." Now I have Florence and the Machine stuck in my head okay.

Hm.

I think I could do "Apple of my eye" but that seems just too simple.
"French kiss" - overlay the colors of the French flag over people kissing I guess?
"To lose your head"

Hm.
Maybe the eye for an eye one...

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Alright, so.

In regards to last week's assignment and class, all in all, it was pretty neat to see what everybody else came up with. Finding to right pictures was a bit nit-picky, but I ended up satisfied with my choices.

This assignment, the two complex image combinations, is a bit trickier. I have all these images but I'm unsure how to piece them together. I was home for the weekend and I wish I brought everything home with me so I could've worked on it more then, but I'll make do.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013