My Time Art Project

Ok so this is the idea I will be pursuing:

"Picture 3 screens. The 2 outside screens are filled with stars from outer space, and in the middle you can see the world as a planet. Using after effects, I will spin the world, slowly, making it look kind of real. You will see stars slowly come in and out of frame, entering the next screen either on the left or the right. The globe starts to spin faster, more vigorously, again to make it look realistic I will move stars and other objects in sync with the world's spin to show the gravitational pull. Again the world gets faster and faster and eventually the world will unravel, like a carpet would, and at the start the countries will be how they were when the world first started, and then they slowly move apart, slowly spreading onto the other screens until they are in their correct geographical locations they are set in today. I was thinking of maybe including some video clips of evolution, as the world is spinning to show how fast the world is evolving. The clips would be semi-transparent, slowly gliding through each screen, as the world and stars are spinning."

I will also like to add to this idea.
To go with the clips of the history of the world, I decided to find older maps of the world, before the countries were in fact countries, so I can add maximum emphasis and to show my audience how much the world has changed over this period of time. I will have the most important historical events in my project, including when electricity was invented. To add emphasis to this, I have found a map of the world when the lights are on, that can be seen from space. I think the audience will understand better rather than pictures floating around everywhere. I will add text when it is relevant, on the key events that changed our world.

I've been watching many tutorials on how to make a globe and make it spin in After Effects, and I am confident that I can execute this idea. Here's one that I made earlier:

I will create more than one globe: One Old, One slightly more developed, One with the lights and two more that are more modern, with colour. All the worlds will have an atmosphere level to them, to add the realistic effect to it all.

To end it, I will attempt to zoom into the world, all the way into a street or a place, where the audience will see a person holding up an object. I want to incorporate the infinity sign somewhere to show that the world is still evolving and for the next part that I will explain. The camera will then zoom into the object, which will then bring you back to the first world, where the video will start again. The infinity logo will compliment the transaction.

I changed my mind last minute, instead of historic people included in the video I decided to go with revolutionaries instead, I gathered it would make the video more powerful. I researched about revolutionaries, and I found 40, 20 of them will be seen on one screen, the other 20 on the other whilst the world is in the middle. As the world spins you can see the different revolutionaries. At the end of the clip the words "The revolution will be televised" appears across the globe, and then I added an effect to end my clip that fits the saying quite nicely. I added some screenshots of the tutorials I used and where I got my research from.

My 5 images

I've chosen to go down the nostalgic route regarding the style of photographs I want to take. I want to do a sort of "then and now" project, showing how places/buildings have changed or developed or even been destroyed, to show how far the world has come, how it has evolved, how nature takes its toll on untouched architecture, how pollution almost poisons the buildings; showing the contrast in colour and quality and even how these iconic locations have been (if they have been) modified in any sort of way. I will execute this project by taking photographs of iconic places, from the same angle to give it more of a nostalgic feel. I will then compare the two photos (before and after) and place them in the same frame. I will extract some pieces of the photo so there will only be one subject but from different times, to show the audience how it has changed, if it has. I will be taking a picture of Big Ben (London), Moor Park (Farnham), Farnham Railway (Farnham), Farnham Castle (Farnham) and Stonehenge (Wiltshire).

Sounds

The image I was given is titled "My Bed" and it's a piece by Tracey Emin. This piece of Artwork straight away gave me the impression of laziness, tiredness, perhaps no sense of hygiene and oddly relaxation. The rubbish scattered on the floor around the bed shows us incompetence, lack of organisation, even lack of skill. But if we look into the artwork deeper it gave me the impression of stress-free, a sense of happiness, just casual chill time. It really depends on your perception on it. My perception of the artwork will be shown in my sound project. I'll talk you through it.
Firstly it will start off with a person snoring, continuously to show the audience that the person is in a deep sleep. All of a sudden an alarm goes off, the alarm is very "alarming" almost instantly waking up the person from the deep sleep. The person, annoyed that they have been woken up by such a dreadful noise, can be heard trying to turn the alarm off, eventually the frustrated sleepy head accomplishes this. There is a short silence, followed by a short sigh. The person will now feel relaxed. I want to interpret the song by Bruno Mars called "The Lazy Song" and I want to somehow incorporate that song into my piece. So I figured I could have the person subtly sing one of the famous lines of lyric from the song; "Today I don't feel like doing anything" followed by a faint whistle (as the song also contains whistling) "I just want to lay in my bed".
This will be followed by a slightly longer silence. Then I will have the person sneeze, cough, eat something that has a noisy wrapper, drink something from a glass bottle, then blow into the glass bottle to give us that whistle-like sound. With these simple sounds I will attempt to recreate "The Lazy Song" with the subtle lyrics sung (not very well) by the person who is still in the bed. This will carry on until the audience can hear a phone start to ring. All the noises stop and the person answers the phone. On the other end of the phone call is his mum, asking how uni was, and the person will lie through his teeth and then continue to have a normal conversation with her. They will continue the conversation and then it will slowly fade away.
I tried to recreate the famous song but once I put it all together it didn't sound right personally, so I scrapped that part of the idea and decided to add a bit of humour into it instead.
I also inputted a lady presenting the weather forecast, which will give the audience an idea of what the weather is like outside, you can also hear the ran hit on the window to emphasise what she is saying. I fall in and out of sleep and get woken up by various things, at the end I receive a phone call from my Mum, and I explain how I was at uni, and everything is going well. The sounds slowly fade out in the end.

OK, This idea is for real.

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This idea will concentrate on how isolation empathises a break-up, and how it can effect a person negatively, showing different memories that occur, triggered by different objects (such as photo's, clothing etc) and different senses (touch, smell, sight etc).
Picture a young man in his room, watching the world pass through his window, no motivation, no expression, no care left. Until he gets up out of bed, and walks around his room a little, looking outside his window, and interacting with the various objects scattered around his room. Each object will trigger a different memory, either good or bad, it will still remind him of his ex. Some camera shots will show a half-bottle of whisky on the side, with an ashtray full of cigarette butts, showing the audience that he did try to forget about it all at one point. He glances down at the floor and notices a picture. The audience cannot see what the picture consists of. The scene cuts to the young man holding the picture. (POV shot). The audience can see what the picture is now; its a picture of him and his ex-girlfriend smiling in a public place, and they look like they're enjoying themselves a lot. He then moves the picture down to show the audience the reality of the situation; the same place where the picture was taken but there is no happy couple, and the scene looks really dark and glum.
The young man continues to walk, on the way we as the audience can see he is rather depressed, head down, eyes on the pavement, still no care in the world, looking depressed. He passes a fish and chip shop, and then walks back to in front of it. The fish and chip shop triggers a memory. This memory shows the couple having a great time, this could possibly be their favourite place to get food from, as the audience can see that they are enjoying themselves a lot.
He continues walking anonymously, with no regard where he might end up, as finds himself at the train station. Depressed, he approaches the platform, eyes still locked onto the ground (POV shot of his feet, approaching the edge of the platform). For some reason, he slowly glances upwards, so he is looking ahead of himself. He sees his ex girlfriend, and she faintly smiles. The young man's eyes widened with joy, and breaks a smile, and then tries to walk towards her, completely forgetting that there is a platform in front of him. He soon finds out about the platform as a train rushes past him in high velocity, giving the young man a shock, and almost a panic look on his face, as he is desperate to get to the other side. He impatiently waits for the train to pass so he can see the other side of the platform, only to find nobody on the other side. Perhaps it was his imagination, a mirage if you will. He lets his head drop and the same depressed look on his face occurs. Losing all hope, he glances to his side, and two people are out of focus. As he looks directly at them the camera focuses on the two subjects. He sees his ex-girlfriend with another man, holding hands, laughing and walking off into the distance.
The young man's face, after seeing this, changes from depressed and hopeless, to betrayed and annoyed, and from this facial expression the camera cuts the scene.
The next scene is of the young man, in his room, this time looking for active than before, more in control of his actions, he isn't flowing or going along with anything, he is making almost assertive actions now, showing the contrast of character from the first scene. The audience can see him on his bed, with photographs and a lighter, with a bin on the floor. The only lighting in this scene will be from the lighter the young man is holding. This will show the audience the importance of the lighter, and how effective this instrument will be as the scene progresses. The audience can also see the change of emotion on the young man's face; before his mind was all over the place but in this scene he looks calm and collected, he knows exactly what he's doing. He begins to burn the photographs; which are of him and his ex. As he is burning them, memories will be triggered; the lighter when it is sparked will trigger one, when the burnt photograph hits the bottom of the bin will trigger one, a close-up of his expressions will trigger one, basically all aspects of this final scene will trigger a memory. As the scene gets deeper, the memories start to be triggered more vigorously, more sharper, more unsettling until all the tension is finally broken when he burns the last photo and lets out a big sigh. The young man then walks towards his window, and opens it. This will symbolise purity, letting in fresh air could mean a fresh start, a new beginning, and the scene ends with the young man looking off into the distance.

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The location of the room will be at Thurbans Road, where we live, it will be one of our own rooms so we don't need to ask for permission. The other various shots will take place around Farnham high street, which we would only be required to fill out hazard assessment forms. I will however need permission to film in the fish and chip shop. Again, we will enquire about filming in the train station, find out if we need permission etc. Shooting all the footage will take roughly two days, which will leave us with editing the film for the remanding days. The actor and actress will be a friend of ours so we will not need to hire/pay for talent.

Just another Idea

The idea is one that will concentrate on the memories we reflect on, when we reminisce and think back to the "good old days". We will basically have a set of old photographs; of ourselves, in places that we had the most fun. We will remake the exact scene of where the photo was taken, and show you the contrast of time and what effect it has on us as it goes on.  Camera transition is crucial in our project. We will have a POV-like shot of a person holding the photo of the memory. They will then slowly move the photo down, revealing the real life reenactment. There will be some bad memories included, maybe someone died or something unfortunate happened, but as the video progresses you will be able to see that people can pull through and carry on, kind of motivational/inspirational material.
The video starts off with our main character; we have chosen a man. The main focal point will be on him and his memories. We start off in Farnham, and the audience can tell that he is homesick. Looking out the window, holding old photos, looks like he is reminiscing. He picks up his phone and texts his mum "I'm coming home". There will be a jump-cut/montage of him getting ready, grabbing his keys and shutting the door behind him.
[shot idea] put the camera in the front of the car so we can make a time-lapse of the journey from Farnham to London, at the end of the time lapse there will be a shot of a sign that says 'London' so the audience knows that he has come back home.
When he gets to London, he steps out of his car and the audience can immediately see that he is happier than he was before in Farnham, breathing in deep breaths, looking around, kind of smiling, looking and acknowledging everything that he encounters.
He goes home, his mum opens the door, he gives her a big hug and a kiss, and they go inside, the door shuts. The camera cuts to a shot of the man sitting at the table looking at some photos. His mum comes in and gives him a cup of tea, gently touches him on the top of the head and walks out of the shot. The camera then slowly moves closer and spins slightly so the audience can now see what he is looking at as the camera is above the mans shoulder.
The camera then gets even closer, so the whole photo is in shot. Then the transaction of memory to reality will take place. The photo will then leave the shot, and leave us in a different location, the same location as the one in the photo.
The photo literally comes to life and whatever memory that photo consists of, that will take place in the shot, natural movement, the man is smiling and laughing, then walks in his desired direction. The camera then pans with the man, but stops when he is out of frame and then the camera will follow somebody else, and will show the audience their memory, of course using the same procedure as the man with the photos. This process will continue throughout the whole film, showing how different people reflect on different situations, and how weird it is that they all connect in some way, whether it is within the photo or regarding their emotions.

The Re-enactment project

We decided to go with the historic moment of when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. There is a lot of controversy surrounding the whole situation. Some people say that they didn't land on the moon, and that it was fake etc. We've decided to use this to our advantage and add humour into the project. The famous quote "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" will be used, not necessarily in traditional fashion.
I'll take you through it all. This is my vision.
The video starts off with a rocket getting ready for lift off, and eventually it takes off. Our Astro-nots are excited in the rocket, flying all over the place back to front, upside down, kind of like little children when they can see the disneyland sign from the motorway.
They look out of their window and they can see the moon, in this case the moon is their disneyland. The rocket hovers over the moon, and the astro-nots stumble out of the rocket, leaving a bum print instead of a footprint. One of the astro-nots takes out a camera and starts taking pictures, they even take a "selfie". The oblivious two burst out into histerical laughter when they realised that they were recording a video instead of taking a picture. They were so happy that the dopier of the two releases the phone from his grasp and watches the phone fly away, whilst still recording.

My vision may be slightly compromised when coming to edit and produce the video, but the message we are trying to get across will do so. Production didn't cos much, we only spent money on making the costumes which consisted of tin foil, cling film and cello-tape. The video overall did get our message across. Audio levels could of been tweaked more but we wanted to give the audience the impression that this was a very cheap production, so costumes won't be up to scratch, acting certainly wont, every aspect of this video was deliberately made to look mediocre.

Time Art - My Ideas

My 3 Ideas:

1.
I had this idea where on each screen you will see one person; close up shot of the torso, barely showing neck and waist. The first person on the left is holding an old book, looks nostalgic and dusty. When they open the book, a memory appears to be coming out of the book, almost magically. The book, still in view whilst the memory is playing controls whether the memory can be seen or not. As the person closes the book the memory closes with it. The person then hands the book to the next person who is on the next screen. With the same motion as the person in the previous screen, the person opens the book again and another memory will play and close. The memory will be a different type of memory, maybe something that person didn't particularly want to remember, like they're scarred. They might have one arm, opening the book, and the memory is of them losing the arm. The third with the same motion, different memory. Each of them are 3-3 and a half minutes long, enough time for a decent visual of a memory for each person.
I cannot honestly tell you where I got the inspiration from to do this, it was more like a vision I had. In all fairness I could of chosen any object for the memories to come out of, but I chose the book. I chose the book because the book has depth to it. The knowledge you can get from books is like no other source. The power of your mind reaches its peak, allowing your imagination to run wild and free, the possibilities are limitless. By choosing the book this allowed me to create any memory I wanted to. So I've thought carefully and chose to go with 3 different types of memories; one for each person; one happy, one sad, and one hopeful.
I want to create an effect like the ones I have found below regarding the book, almost magical transactions occurring. I was torn with what colour the background should be in the final video(s), either black or white. I chose white because the colour white to me is more free and never-ending, I just feel that the colour black will restrict me from a few shots, and it wouldn't really work with a happy memory, whereas the colour white can be interpreted in many different ways; new possibilities, the light at the end of the tunnel, the start of a new life, practically anything.

The apparatus that I desire to execute this video instillation are the following:

• Standard Camera x3
• Tripod
• Green Screen
• 3 participants
• A book (prop)
• Editing Software such as Adobe Premier
• After Effects

Because I need a green screen I would shoot my footage in a studio on campus, so I will need to hire out a studio. To get the desired look I want of the book I will stain the pages using tea bags, give them a few rips to look more nostalgic, as if it's been in the hands of a lot of people.
I will also film the memories coming out of the book using the standard camera in different locations. I will then use After Effects to execute the transaction of when the book is opened and when the dream is played.
Shooting would take place on Monday 17th February. The Location would be in a studio situated on campus. That's IF I can hire out a studio. If I am unfortunate to do so I will book it on the next available date. The shots will take a day in the studio to master, to get the timing right and to get the motions right, so the majority of the day will be practice until we get the perfect footage.
I will film the memories in locations such as a nearby field (there's plenty around here), a nearby road (not a busy road, just any road will be fine) and in a room in a house. All memories will be shot in POV, to engage the audience more.
The memory that will take place in the field will be a happy memory, maybe a young couple laying down enjoying one another's company.
The memory that will take place on a nearby road will be a memory that has effected you tremendously. Picture someone on their bicycle riding along when suddenly they fall into the road. They injure themselves quite badly, but then they see a car coming towards them and it looks like they can't slow down properly. They start honking their horn, the closer they get the louder the horn gets, and as soon as they get real close up the memory fades to white.
The memory that will take place in a house will be of a mother, nursing her new born son. (I'm not going to use a real baby, I will use a prosthetic one which will look somewhat realistic). Her partner will walk in, stand over the mother and new born, kiss the mother on the head, maybe the baby too, then walk off as the mother smiles and gazes out of the window. I could have a scene where as soon as the memory finishes the baby you saw in the memory will appear in the actual video, only difference is that the baby will be a little older, holding onto the mothers hand when she shuts the book.
The shooting for the memories will take place on Tuesday 18th February, giving us plenty time to master the effects and editing that is greatly needed.


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2.
There is a person in each of the screens, all of them holding pieces of cardboard. In the background will be a time-lapse of busy places with lots of people. All 3 of them will turn each card around to the camera simultaneously. The card will show the viewer a message. Each person will tell their own story. The viewer won't be able to read all the messages at once, so I figured it will give the video some sort of replay value. The messages, that I haven't properly finished yet, will be short, yet powerful, keeping the audience's attention. In the end all of their cards read the same message "Time Waits For No Man". Each story will be linked to this phrase, giving different angles and perspectives on it.





3.

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Picture 3 screens. The 2 outside screens are filled with stars from outer space, and in the middle you can see the world as a planet. Using after effects, I will spin the world, slowly, making it look kind of real. You will see stars slowly come in and out of frame, entering the next screen either on the left or the right. The globe starts to spin faster, more vigorously, again to make it look realistic I will move stars and other objects in sync with the world's spin to show the gravitational pull. Again the world gets faster and faster and eventually the world will unravel, like a carpet would, and at the start the countries will be how they were when the world first started, and then they slowly move apart, slowly spreading onto the other screens until they are in their correct geographical locations they are set in today. I was thinking of maybe including some video clips of evolution, as the world is spinning to show how fast the world is evolving. The clips would be semi-transparent, slowly gliding through each screen, as the world and stars are spinning.

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