Progress with iMovie

Over the last few months since we began our Location Photography and Narrative Image Making units, I have been randomly filming people in and around our class. I had no idea what I would use these short clips for in the beginning, but after getting to grips with iMovie I discovered a whole number of possibilities regarding editing.

My first initial attempt at a short movie was put the music of Pink Floyd and their song 'Us and Them' I realised an immediate connection with the lyrics and the people in the clips I had recorded.
With no plan or any idea what was my beginning, middle and end I just began sifting through the material I had recorded.

Listening to the lyrics closely I tried to arrange certain clips that may look or sound relative to the words being sang and sort of worked from there.

Below is a link to the video!

Learning a lot from this experience with iMovie I discovered the amount of layering that was possible in the editing process.

I had another look at all of my clips and decided to have another shot. Last night I spent 2 hours finishing off another movie with some of the same clips as my first. I found a lot of sound clips and transitions within iMovie I wanted to use, but this meant straying from the dramatic atmosphere I was wanting to create! So I decided not to take it too seriously and start playing around more!

This is what I came up with!

Light Trails

Here's a few shots I took earlier tonight with my camera. I've always wanted to tinker around the settings and see if I could capture light trails successfully. Adjusting the exposure allowed me enough time to draw words and shapes in the space in front of me where I stood in my bedroom. I was surprised to see it had actually worked first time, I think I was under the impression that it required more time to set up or something.

After Googling 'light trails' I was hit by a huge amount of photographs of highways and the lights of passing vehicles being captured. They inspired me to perhaps take my experiments outside and see what I can produce once the sun has set and vehicles are illuminated by their headlights.

Photography experiments

I've been looking through some of the photographs I've taken over the last week and tried to fuse them together. Finding 2 photographs that blend together is tough. I'm not necessarily looking for two images with similar subject matter - but images that compositionally work together. 

Here is an example:

Because of the empty space on the left hand side of the photograph, this makes it perfect to combine with an image with perhaps an empty space on it's right hand side. 

Much like this one underneath:

As I said I'm not bothered about the two photographs being explicitly related. All I'm looking for are two images that would blend together and become connected like 2 pieces of a jigsaw (kind of).

In this case I felt there was enough free space to work with in both photographs. So I got to work bringing them together and manipulating things like colour, brightness, contrast etc. 

In the end I came out with 2 final images. Here they are below:

At this point I can't decide which one I prefer! But pleased at the result. I think the black and white version has more fuzz and blur ('noise' I think they call it?) in the background, which make the colour image more appealing.

For the black and white image I chose to crop out the wall on the right hand side. I feel it took away from the main subjects of the image. Saying that I don't mind it being in the colour version.

I guess if I was pushing to relate the two images I've combined, I could maybe make the point of saying the photograph of the person (Alice) pointing the camera towards the ground, is opposing the perspective in which the other image was taken (pointing upwards, from the ground). 

Nonetheless I enjoy fusing images together and will continue playing around with my photographs and posting the results!

Un-edited Photographs from College

Niall gave us each a camera on Wednesday and asked us to take a few photographs in and around the college and it's grounds. I enjoyed wandering about, constantly observing and on the look out for things I could capture. Here are a few of the images I took.

Playing about with beach photos

Spent about half an hour on fusing these 2 pictures together. Using the editing app 'Afterlight' on my iPhone I was able to layer the 2 photographs (that were taken on my camera which I synched onto my phone using iTunes) and adjust contrast, saturation, composition, exposure etc. 

Neither of the photographs of my brother and sister were posed or set up in any way. Pretty happy I was able to achieve this with my iPhone, I suppose I have little faith in it when it comes to creative activites but this proves me otherwise! I'll continue to explore the features of 'Afterlight' and other such apps, and update my blog on my findings.

Testing the app 'Cinamatic'

Two weeks ago a man had an incident whilst out on his bicycle. He suffered a fall because of a bad heart. This meant that the local ambulance team were forced to close off the road and call in the air ambulance.

I decided to capitalise on this tragic event and take a walk down the road across from my street and take some videos of the helicopter. Of course I felt a little bad for the guy getting stretchered into the helicopter and all but - I had to try this app out right? He was fine any way, plus they were in no rush whatsoever! I was waiting for the damn thing to take off for more than half an hour... Eventually he made it to Edinburgh where I'm sure he made a full recovery!

The audio on this tester video cuts out after each individual clip but in the future I'll edit the sound out, or at least make it less obvious to people watching.

The filter choice irritated me and I settled for the default, grainy, cheesy retro look. It worked okay, but as I said I'm gonna keep my eye out for opportunities regarding subjects to film.

Cya First Year

First off - MASSIVE thanks to Siobhan and Niall for teaching, guiding and helping us through our first year on the course. It's safe to say I can speak for the whole of the Level 3 first year class in saying that their guidance has proved very important to our progress.

Secondly, I miss college. Having the resources so close to hand (Macs, paper, printing press etc..) was such a vital part of the creative process. Nonetheless I have been making the most of my sketchbooks and spare time! Staying productive is important to me, slipping into a lazy routine of what I like to call 'easy' activities like listening to music, watching TV and playing my PS4 isn't what I want to do all summer..

I've found that my Kindle has came into good use regarding my productivity. After recently downloading and reading 'A Game of Thrones' I have found that my attention and energy are being focused on more important activities.

My A2 sketchbook is my main outlet for these occasional bouts of creativity. I am lucky enough to have a garden in which I can sit in and admire a view that on a sunny day makes me feel very positive about creating some work. I am able to take that sketchbook outside, sit, and draw away at my surroundings.

As of late, my artistic interests have moved onto the more design, and idea based areas. Sketching and drawing when I can is essential to my progress even if it isn't my favourite thing to do, and so perseverance also becomes very important.

Separately, as my desire for an Apple Mac grows and grows with every day, annoyingly, my bank balance doesn't... Though this hasn't altered my aim in saving money for one! Having access to them daily during first year was a blessing and I grew to love using Photoshop and learning how to create and alter pieces of work. Having such a device at my disposable would be a valuable tool when it came to progressing with my own stuff.

Lastly, I feel at somewhat of a loss on what 'theme' or possible 'area' to pursue in my second year on the course. Going down the personal route and exploring possible issues or problems I have with myself or the world around me - is definitely not what I want to do. Dissecting my secrets and laying bare my every thought and feeling doesn't feel right to me. I love how others are able to do this with themselves though. Plus who knows you better than yourself, right? I don't want to rule out any personal references in my future work altogether, but I do want to address that going down that road just isn't for me. Actually reading over that last part it kind of paints me as some sort of machine like, heartless sod - I assure you this isn't the case! I have feelings too...

I guess I just want to keep things a little more subtle and less obvious - and if that means either myself or my work coming under fire for being too mysterious...then so be it!