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PREFACE Here’s our story : The story of two novice youngsters set out to explore the city of LA to find what mesmerizes them. We have been mesmerized by the city’s ambiguity. It is the best of both worlds, embracing the millennial culture, yet deep rooted in its primitives. Its starts from the very primitive explorations of the cities wonders, big and small and then extends to falling for the city and envisioning a future for it, a future like no other, stepping into fiction, but stranger than fiction. This book is our journey to visualize the two dimensional art fabric of the city in a newfound, dynamic three dimensional way. It sits at the intersection of the present and future, trying to define the line between the real and unreal. This approach immerses the user into the urban fabric, the very original art which has always been an identity of the streets. This way we become a part of the city’s art , and the art becomes a part of us -Neha Oswal & Akshada Muley Entertainment Studio 2019
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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LOS ANGELES LOVE AFFAIR WITH ITS MURALS Page no. 07
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TODAY AND TOMORROW OF MURALS
Page no. 22
03
CAPTURING THE PERFECT PICTURE
Page no. 34
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STREETS 2D-3D
Page no. 40
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ROLLING AND ACTION
Page no.46
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IN A FRAME
Page no. 80
07
REACHING OUT
Page no. 86
REFERENCES Page no. 90
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Excerpts from the city, in search of the most compelling stories woven around the people, culture and vibe.
The Made in LA wall : This is locally inspired art which has been a popular backdrop for photographs since it appread in 2013. Where to find it ? CISCO home, 8025 Melrose Ave, Beverly Grove
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ORIGI-NET Exactly 50 years ago. on October 29 1969, the first electronic message was sent between two computers, from UCLA
STREET ART-IFIED Los Angeles’ story with its street art and murals. The birth, struggle, glory and present.
NORMAL IS WEIRD, WEIRD IS NORMAL From nerdy burlesque to the shady characters on the metro, this city embraces the delightfully strange.
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So they say we can’t paint our own walls... but they never said we couldnt hit the sky... #Art is not a crime... End the unconstitutional moratorium on public murals in Los Angeles now...
#ARTISNOTACRIME Sign the petition on change.org and #EndMuralMoratorium Video on youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eD2YphmN0w
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01 LOS ANGELES’
LOVE AFFAIR WITH ITS
MURALS
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It’s an essential truth to social media addicts: no urban adventure is complete until it has been documented for Instagram, preferably in front of a colorful wall for local flavor. Los Angeles is home to many such backdrops—the city’s design landscape is dotted with historic street art and buildings painted in vibrant hues. So here are L.A.’s most oft-photographed or most instagrammable walls
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Back in Time- LA was proclaimed as the Mural Capital of the world owing to its rich street art, sprawling everywhere.
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T I M E L I N E
We went for a mural tour which is organised on every thursday, saturday and sunday at 11:30am in the Arts District Los Angeles. The guide, Gaulo was a real artist and longtime member of the Arts District Community. The tour included over 100 individual works of art, from building sized murals to amazing hidden treasures that we would never find without a knowledgeable expert leading the way. The tour started with information about urban art history and technique, as we view works from local masters and globally recognized talents. Halfway through the tour we went to The Container Yard, the modern focus of the graffiti and mural scene in LA. Here we got to see the huge assortment of tools of the trade at the Montana Shop and grab a quick cup of coffee or cold beverage. Back on the road, we visited other iconic spots such as ArtShare, The American Hotel, Joel Bloom’s Spot, the former site of Al’s Bar and Crazy Gideon’s (now the Arts District Brewery.) Each of these locations filled with amazing art and history. The tour ended back where it started, where we got a chance to browse the Arts District Co-Op.It was very informative and let us explore the Art’s District with a different perspective. 14
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What do these Murals symbolise? The Murals have a strong history and have been designed to show a strong background.
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Murals have been a part of the streetscape for over a century now, We tried to analyse the importance of murals in various context.
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02 TODAY AND
TOMORROW OF
MURALS
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The street art , after enduring so much, is a very intergral part of the city. These art pieces, which are much more than what they just appear to be , have a hidden meaning, and always look out to portray something. As we take a turn towards the future, its time to rethink the flat identity of these murals. In the tomorrow to come, they can be envisioned as spaces in themselves, which will make the user a part of them. Thus as we shift from today to tomorrow, our narrative takes an immersive approach to intergrate the real and unreal while also involving the user to gain a one of a kind experience in the same setting of the urban landscape of the streetart in Los Angeles. The chapter shows how the story outline evolved over a duration of 5 weeks and how some of the experiences as we walked along the streets of Art District inspired us to create this movie.
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STORY BOARD 01
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STORY BOARD 02
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“BLOOM” Artist : Allison Torneros, who works under the name Hueman Where: The Neptune Building, overlooking Joel Bloom Square, 701 E. Third St., L.A. The spray-painted work “Bloom” depicts the artist’s hand clutching a bouquet of flowers entwined with the mural title and set against a simple pale-blue background. This photograph we clicked intriguied us to think of visual screens that have become the way of looking at the murals and what the role of these visual screens in today’s world?
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STORY BOARD 03
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STORY BOARD 04
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03 CAPTURING THE
PERFECT PICTURE
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Pictures can manifest emotions that words cannot. In person, your charm and use of language can camouflage your faults, but in the online world your first impression is made with your social media profiles. The picture you choose to display defines you as a person and your reputation, it builds the notion of having a perfect “social life”. Social media is a crowded space, and using images is a great way to grab attention. We built our narrative around the notion to capture the “PERFECT PICTURE. “ The augmented app which typically replaces the need of a photographer’s intelligence. It guides the person in every step to either achieve 100% originality, saleability of the image or maximum number of likes on various socialmedia platforms.This intelligent hyper real interface thus gives you a choice to achieve what you want. It is a journey of a person walking down the streets of Arts District to capture the perfect picture with the city’s very own Murals.
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(PIC.)PERFECT Is “a picture worth 1,000 words?” Yes — if you have the right pictures. The scene from movie exploring the joy of clicking a perfect picture using this Augmented App which guides you through clicking some of the best picture at the most desired location. The app features some exclusive features like predictibility scales, Removal of distracting elements, getting the perfect captions and perfect hashtags etc.
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04 Streets
2D TO
3D
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“Augmented reality’s on the horizon.” Augmented reality is already a reality. It allows us to explore the spatial character of these flat 2-D Murals. Scientists have hypothesized that our brains may distinguish between reality and fiction because real things tend to have a higher degree of personal relevance than fictional things do. In this case we try to built a relevance with the everyday streetscape elements which make it easier for a person to relate to the fictional world of mural. In order to shift from the two dimensional world into those three dimensional, we started looking at references that reflect hyper realities in todays world. References in the contemporary context have helped us get a better insight into the kind of work we want to produce ! This posed us with various challenges because we wanted the context of the murals to be within the streetscape itself but offer the viewer a sense of space inside of a mural which breaks the convention of way we have always interacted with a mural. 41
HYPER- REALITY -Keiichi Matsuda In the movie the physical and virtual realities have merged, and the city is saturated in media. Technologies such as VR, augmented reality, wearables, and the internet of things are pointing to a world where technology will envelop every aspect of our lives. It will be the glue between every interaction and experience, offering amazing possibilities, while also controlling the way we understand the world. This inspired us to design a realtime virtual app which actually takes you to different spaces to get the perfect picture clicked.
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GAMES OF DELETION -Runze Zhang & Alessio Grancini Games of Deletion is a mixed reality game that requires multiple players gathered together in front of an urban mural space. Murals are already a form of augmentation of space. They take you out of where you are by interfacing through a vertical image that disrupts the horizontality of the urban-environment. It is an interface designed as an actual app using architectural moves removing volumes and information from the contents to bring multiple users together in the urban blank space. This helped us concieve the idea of turning the Mural from 2-D spcae to 3-D space.
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From where we stand today it would be fascinating to step into a unique world which is formed by these flat murals that bridge the gap between real and unreal worlds. The scene from movie showing a mural turn into a 3-D space.
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05
Rolling AND
ACTION
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This story is a harmonic blend of both real and fictional worlds. To represent the story to our audience, our approach has also been multi-faceted. We have stepped out on the streets, in the heart of the city, to capture these moments real time, to experience what anyone out there would expreience today. We also have been building a new world altogether, which looks and feels like the present on the outside, but has its own spatial character as we go closer. We live in world that’s increasingly becoming digital where the term ‘real’ in itself does not have much explanatory power, as it means only that something objectively exists.” The latest tech has helped us develop this story in a comprehensive yet exploratory way trying to bridge the gap between real and unreal fictional worlds.
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Capture of how the video was shot using Iphone 11 Pro using two tripods. The same arrangement was used to capture the timelapse. This image inspired us to use this idea for creating the image for our movie.
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Some of the stills from different trial videos that we faced during the live action Shooting. First of all was the alignment of the handstabilizer with camera movement angle where a part of the hand stabiliser was visible when the focal length of the iphone was adjusted. Other than that many murals were adjoining the parking and we had to wait till the cars left to proceed ahead with filming.
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Various Factors which govern taking the “Perfect� Picture which became the deciding factors to create the App interface
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TRIAL 01: VISUALISATION OF MURAL AS A 3-D SPACE
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TRIAL 02: VISUALISATION OF MURAL AS A 3-D SPACE
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TRIAL RENDERS OF VISUALISATION OF MURAL IN 3-D SPACE
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TRIAL 01: PROJECTION MAPPING OF THE MURAL IN CINEMA 4-D 57
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TRIAL 02: PROJECTION MAPPING OF THE MURAL IN CINEMA 4-D 59
Test runs to check the visual look and fucntion of various effects like scanning, target identification, and guiding arrows. The tests help to develop a good understanding of the impact a particular style creates on the user. The intrefaces of Cortana, google, siri and typical video game engines have been used as references to concieve thse styles . 60
Tests also run to check the most appropriate app interface for the hyper-real photography assistance. Various parameters like steps for taking a picture, various stances to be taken by the photographer, rating scales and sharing options have been considered.
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How it looks and how it feels is equally important.
Visual language determines user interests.
Some references for graphics for the App interface 63
The still from movie showing the scanning of the background and camera tracking in the app.
The still from movie showing the adjustment of the frame for taking the picture.
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The still from movie showing the adjustement of best light during the day.
The still from movie prompting the subject to go and locate themselves for clicking the best picture
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The still from movie showing the alignment for location of the subject.
The still from movie showing removal of garbage and any distractions on site to get the perfect picture.
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The still from movie showing the app guiding the movement to capture the best pose.
The still from movie showing the app adjusting the filters that will give the best additional effect to the picture. 67
The still from movie showing app prompting the best caption and most trending hashtags for the picture.
The still from movie showing futuristic predictions by the app for various aspects.
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The still from movie showing the number of likes on all the social media platforms.
The still from movie showing that the perfect picture has been captured.
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The still from movie showing the flashing lights on the Los Angeles Art District board.
The still from movie showing the different pop ups on the various elements on the street.
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The still from movie showing the hyper graphics on the sidewalks, building side facades and elements on the street.
The still from movie showing the pop ups on cars which show who the car belongs to, when that person has arrived and when the person is going to depart. This was created with an intention for a person to understand tentative waiting time to click a picture with the mural. 71
The still from movie showing the sign that picture cannot be clicked since the parking lot is full.
The still from movie showing the different pop ups on the various elements on the street.
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The still from movie showing the different pop ups on the various elements on the street.
The still from movie showing the different pop ups on the various elements on the street.
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The still from movie showing the different pop ups on the various elements on the street.
The still from movie showing the app prompting that a lot of similar pictures have been clicked with the mural already and no picture can be clicked here because 0% originality 74
The still from movie showing the different pop ups on the various elements on the street.
The still from movie showing the different pop ups on the various elements on the street.
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TRIAL 03: PROJECTION MAPPING OF THE MURAL IN CINEMA 4-D 77
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TRIAL 03: PROJECTION MAPPING OF THE MURAL IN CINEMA 4-D 79
06 IN A
FRAME
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The image is a comprehensive representation of our intent an effort to bring together the flatness of the city; its present; and the potential future, of bridging the gap between the real and unreal worlds. It symbolises the power of the camera, and the borderline obsession that we all have with it, and it also gives an identity to this world of wonder, which calls us as we step closer to the future. Having said that, it sits in the very heart of the city, just like any other mural, but yet, has infinite possibilities to explore. The image shows the same intent, the urge of every person today, to capture the perfect picture, and the future that calls upon us, the murals turining to 3d space. This image is inteded to be a mileu of all aspects of the narrative in a comprehensive manner !
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The idea was to create 2D - 3D mural and have many tripods with phones trying to capture various angles of the image. Using the cloner and randomize tools in cinema 4D we tried to build the correct environment for this.
The next step involved blending the other mural into this one in the parts where there is no texture. This adds to the exaggeration and thrill. The mural is split into two parts one half is put on the left hand side whereas the other half is put on the left hand side. 82
The image was generated after rendering a single frame in Cinema4D
The last part of the image making involved changing the background sky and making the mural onto every screen to show how every phone is capturing the perfect picture in a certain way. It also involved a few colour corrections which were needed . 83
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The image created to symbolise the power of visualisation and the opportunities that a mural which has always been a part of the streetscape and the obsession we all have with the camera and how every individual looks at different aspect of the picture.
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07
REACHING OUT
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Our audience is the youth, the travellers and practically every person who is hooked on to social media in the present realm. Today, people have an attention span of fewer than nine seconds, or less than a goldfish. As a result, images are more important than ever, especially on social media. The human brain can recognize a familiar object in only 100 milliseconds, making images the perfect way to communicate in today’sshort-attention world. Our movie not only gives in insight into the importance of a perfect picture but also emphasizes on the importance of social media as a whole in our lives today. The shift from 2D to 3D worlds is an invitation for every person who is looking for “something new� in these everyday mundane routes of life. We extend this story to every person out there, who wants to be social, and who wants to have a unique identity. 87
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REFERENCES: 1. LA DTLA Graffiti and Mural Tour: http://laarttours.com/graffititour/ 2. Los Angeles Mural and Street Art archive https://findmasa.com/city/los-angeles 3. A guide to the mural capital of the world https://www.ocregister.com/2014/09/08/a-guide-to-the-mural-capital-of-the-world/ 4. Mural capital of the world : A paradise lost? Or can LA bring it back ? https://www.muralconservancy.org/press/mural-capital-world-paradise-lost-or-can-la-bringit-back 5. Murals should be an Art , not ads : LA Times https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-oct-24-la-me-1025-mural-crime-20111025story.html 6. 20 best murals in LA https://www.laweekly.com/20-of-l-a-s-most-iconic-murals/ 7. Discovering Murals in DTLA and Venice https://yrofthemonkey.com/discovering-la-murals/ 8. Latino Heritage Murals https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/things-to-do/latino-heritage-in-los-angeles-murals 9. Most Instagrammable Walls: http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/where-to-find-l-a-s-most-instagrammed-walls-irl/ 10. Murals and their categories and meanings https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/things-to-do/latino-heritage-in-los-angeles-murals 11. Art tour https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/visit/a-visual-walking-tour-of-the-arts-district-indowntown-la 12. Ban Articles https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-mural-ban-20130625-story.html 13.HYPER REALITY http://hyper-reality.co/ 14.GAMES OF DELETION https://www.koozarch.com/interviews/games-of-deletion/ https://archinect.com/features/article/150094658/a-conversation-with-runze-zhang-alessiograncini-on-their-thesis-project-games-of-deletion 90