Studio Practice Tom Varney Graphic Design EGRD2009
Shooting Stars
A one minute film on how the Government, the Media and corporate businesses of western societies do not tell us the whole truth. Shot on location, in London and edited to reveal only the colours of the three leading governmental parties. The film contains an extract of an interview with a representative of the Brian Haw Peace Campaign who has just spent a month in prison as an attempt, by the government, to be silenced. The Visual elements depicts how in society we consume media and how we can often take what we are told as the truth .Through media coverage and publicity we take in what we are told, and can ultimately lead to the popularisation of governmental plans, even in the time of war. In terms of the journey made thoughout the process leading up to the final video, inspiration came from “The Jonny Cash Project” and the unique film “Waltz on Kashmir”, in which both were created using the technique of rotoscoping.. I found myself being really interested in this technique and and become exploring the various ways in which this could be achieved. However, I knew from the out set that time was going to be a issue and independantly drawing each fram any moving image piece was going to take to long. Considering that fact that I was determined to film every shot used in the piece myself, I began thinking of ways in which I could use computer power to help munipulate hundreds of still frames independantly and remerge them all back into one moving image again. The ‘light bulb’ moment occurred after a day in the photo studio where I had been photographing a model. Having taken the photographs into ‘Photoshop’ to edit, I researched and learnt a method of colour
selection and isolation. As you can see from the photograph on the right, I wanted to leave only the red of her lips as colour, and the rest in grayscale. The process of doing so was looking at the idea of communication and the connotations of particular visual signs. By only leaving the read of the lips it allows them to stand out from the rest of the visual imagery. The lips become prononced and thus the main focus of the piece due it being the only coloured element. This idea of allowing certain features to stand out from the rest and directing the viewers eyes to particularly elements seemed to fit in nicely with the ‘Shooting Stars’ brief. Due to nature of the piece being no longer than one minute, one has to communicate the message effectively within this time. I believed the idea of using colour to help direct the viewers eyes to the more important elements would work quite well and add effective juxtapostion to my piece. Having learnt this process in photoshop, my next question was, “right, how can I automate this process? Is there a way I can freely munipulate a single frame, much like the one on the right, and apply the same magical formula to rest in a particular sequence. The answer was in the use of ‘Actions” in photoshop. I discovered a technique of exporting a moving image file into its independant frames, editing the first frame of the collection whilst recording the actions made on Photoshop, applying these actions to the rest of the frames and recollecting back into a moving image file. Throughout this brief I felt like I had discovered and learnt several different techniques in post-production editing, as well as filming
PaperCo Live Brief
Direct Mail The direct mail has been designed for the client to experience the flat pack nature of PaperCo’s packaging, as this is how it will be recieved by the customer. Due to the fact that is known predominantly for specialising in paper, the direct mail contains no paper at all to reinforce the fact that the company is a lot more than just paper. The entire peice will be made from card and the design shall be printed directly onto this material. When the piece is in a flat pack state there is no evident branding and therefore encourages the viewer to open up and engage with the piece. Once opened, the inside fully illustrates the packaging range and contains “PaperCo’ and ‘PaperCo Everday: packaging range’ branding along with a call-to-action via the PaperCo website. Also contained inside is some brief background information on the company and it’s new packaging range. To integrate this peice with the electronic sting there are two hands holding a whole range of packaging products and also a pop-up card that appears to come up out of the box reinforcing the call-to-action, which is the visit ‘paperco.co.uk’. Instructions to build the box can be seen on the two side panels to help the audience to engage and interact with the piece. The last diagram suggests to reuse the box for storage or to send on to a friend. Not only does the piece have potentail to stay in the office, home or studio, it has potentail to be passed on and thus, the original 5,000 copies could be seen by 10,000
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Electronic Sting Throughout the one minute electronic sting there are three main target audiences: business, design and print studios and the public. The concept was to appeal to a larger audience audience by providing something that people can relate to. Therefore, each secne will show a variety of settings that contain a whole range of people of all ages and professions. From beginning to end, to entire packaging range will be shown off and in context. From large right down to small, a variet of packaging of all shapes and sizes will help portray the PaperCo supply packaging for everyone and for every need. The main focus wll contain the box packaging, which in each scene will be unwrapped and another smaller package inside, will be taken out and passed on to the next scene, seemlessly flowing from one situation to the next. As the packaging is unwrapped and passed off shot, it will follow to reveal yet another scene and also provide other dtemonstrations of how the rest of the range can be used. For example, as one packaging is unwrapped it will show-off the tapes, the bubblewrap, shrinkwrap, envolopes etc. If we were to take this campaign further, and if we had a larger budget, it could be moved on to take each item in the packaging range as the main focus. So in theory a electronic sting could be created for each item, using the same system of it being passed on from one setting to the next, by one profession to the next.
a Biography
The concept behind my process of researching came about when I was looking through various image search engines, provided by a whole range of websites. My main problem was that when I searched for ‘Rosa Parks’ I only saw one person. The same face keep on appearing everytime. Some would say, ‘the real Rosa Parks’, yeah that’s “Rosa Parks’, “there you go, there she is, that’s her” and I couldn’t help but think that we make such assumptions when provided with the obvious answer. I was presented with a name, “Rosa Parks”. I was told to research this person in as many different ways. Ways in which were not the norm. Try thinking of alternative techniques and approaches to the brief. AND of course the first thing I do, I quickly check up Rosa Parks, in a way in which we all do, no denying, reaching for the internet to type a quick search and the most apparent character under that name instantly becomes the person I am researching. How is this? What governs me to decided that this is the real Rosa Parks? On what assumption am I now satisfied that I am researching the right Rosa Parks other than the fact that she appears to be he most obvious solution, and some might say the most well known. BUT she isn’t the only Rosa Parks in the world. Just because of status, her presense, her
past and her ultimate being on the internet under Rosa Parks. She is merely the most searched for Rosa Parks. I was only presented with a name, no extra information. SO I decided to challenge this, think differently, research in an alternative way. I create a knew email address “rosaparks3@hotmail. co.uk”, (add me if you want). and I began by emailing 162 variations of email addresses, for example ‘rosaparks3@yahoo.com” or “rosa_parks25@ gmail.com” and asked who they were and what they did and enjoyed in life. I waited for response. Secondly, I create a new account in Facebook under the name Rosa Parks and began adding as many Rosa Parks as I could,. I then began messaging as many Rosa Parks as I could, again asked who they were and what they did. What made them happy in life? Again I waited for replies. I saved various images of various Rosa Parks. I tried talking to various Rosa Parks, some replied, some asked why, one replied and said she was married and has children, didn’t feel comfortable saying anymore. I always created an account on match.com to see if I could find anymore, but decided to abandon that after recieving a lot of spam.... more and some videos can be found on my blog
Serial Thriller
The idea behind this audio file was to create an environment where “chinese whispers” and stories and jokes are mostly commonly told, and misled. At a party. A place that is loud. Full of uncertain half truths and in todays world ‘banta’. A place where people are dancing, singing, drinking, smoking and letting themselves go is always a place where people open up. A place where people say things that perhaps they shouldn’t or perhaps say things that don’t even make sense. Some suffer from random out bursts of energy. Some become hyper emotional. It’s the perfect breeding ground for misconseption.. The audio here was recorded to recreate a scenario like what I a describing. A place where a lot of things are said, things that have happened in the week, things that have happened on the news, and things that don’t even make sense over the top of all the rest of rumbling party-goers. Listen and try and work out what is going. If you think you know, leave a message on the blog.
Throughout this semester I believe we’ve had a real mix of briefs. We had PaperCo, A brief that was very client specific. It had particular needs, branding requirements and ‘special’ deadlines too. And then there were some really great open briefs which allowed us to go mad. These briefs allowed us to think. To be spontaneoulsy Creative and most importantly to be mad. Despite feeling under uneven time restraints, at first not much was happening and then all of a sudden so much work came round that it often at times seem really hard to keep on top of it all. But I guess thats the point. To learn to experience this workload. To learn to improve time management and juggle many briefs at once.
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