Puppet Research

As our theme is humans and technology, I came up with the idea of being controlled by technology, and by extension I thought about puppets. I wanted to use this as a metaphor for how technology has a constant presence in our lives and often pulls us away from things that we're doing. For example when I'm out with friends/family or doing work, if my phone goes off I'll usually stop what I'm doing and check it.
This lead to my decision to do my dual screen with one screen showing a person going about their day, and whenever they get distracted by their phone the one of the puppet's arms or legs gets pulled up.
My first thought from this was what should me puppet look like. It needed to be relatively simple as I knew I would need to animate it but I was quite interested in the idea of voodoo dolls and Mexican skulls, so I looked at images of them as a source of inspiration.

Mexican 'Day of the Dead' puppet

Skeleton Marionette 

African Voodoo doll

Twin Screen Project Initial Idea

Initially I thought of doing something to do with constellations, and having an animation created on after effects of a specific star sign being drawn on one side and on the other side a live action film of a person to whom that star sign belongs and them doing an action that links them to their star sign.
I began looking at lots of different videos of constellations created on After Effects such as:

I found this graphically very interesting and I thought it might be something I could try out, and it also linked to the After Effects tutorials we had been given over the past few weeks, where we learned how to use shape layers and made things appear as if they were moving in across the screen. My thought was that it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to do from what we had learned and would be very visually interesting.
I soon moved on from this idea as it seemed very superficial and didn't stretch me creatively.
I began looking at examples of dual screen films and and other short films, and I came across some interesting films involving shadow puppets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrpMncSZe-I

Final Edits

Aries

'Upbeat and magnetic personality'

'Always look out for their friends with caring and generosity'

'Natural optimism'

Capricorn

'Deep, mysterious and full of intrigue'

'They live by self discipline and responsibility'

'Concerned by public standing'

Libra

'They have mastered the art of relationships'

'Lazy when getting their hands dirty and doing work themselves'

'Likely to be underachievers' 

Taurus

'Not a total social butterfly, and can be shy to strangers'

'They have a stubborn streak that can result in laziness'

'Avoids talking about their emotions'

Virgo

'They need to learn to calm down and not over analyse a situation'

'People might find them cold or detached'

'Can tire themselves out without even moving'

Photoshop

After importing my images into photoshop I was quickly able to see that I had to do quite a lot of colour editing as I had done my photoshoot over the course of an afternoon and was using the light from a window, so the sun changed over the hours I was there, which created different tones and colour hues on my subjects skin. To compensate for this I use the adjustments tab in photoshop and used the 'exposure', 'brightness', 'contrast' and 'saturation' tools to play around with the colours and make them match each image. 

I also cropped the images down to help with the framing.

I had a slight issue with the composition, as when I took the photos I was too focused on the subject and when they showed expressions to notice the framing at some points, which meant that I ended up with some odd areas in the background. 

An example of this would be in one of the photos I had cut a photo frame in half, which distracts the attention of the viewers from the main subject of the photo. 

To overcome this I used the clone tool to edit out the photo frame from the edge of the image, so it's just plain wall. I also cropped the images down to help with this.

 

I wanted to try out something that was inspired by Amy Friend, and I was thinking of trying to incorporate star signs into my work but when I did it ended up looking tacky and so I decided that it would look better without.

Final Photoshoot

Practice Photoshoot

Our astrological signs aim to speak to the individual, although they are generalisations they supposedly reflect who we are or at least parts of us. This concept of personal reflection is what helped decide the setting for this series. I wanted my subjects to be in a natural scenario rather than a controlled one; I chose a window seat at a local coffee shop, as opposed to a studio. I believe this gave these people the space to be comfortably expressive, or natural.

During the practice shoot I spent some time figuring out the most aesthetically appropriate camera settings for daylight photos. Before heading out to the location I used the opportunity of a similar set up in my room – capturing a person in the natural light from a nearby window. At first the photos were far too dark, I took a few without a particular point of focus just to work out a suitable aperture to shutter speed ratio.

Digital Stills Project Ideas and Research

For my digital skills project the theme is 'Reflection'.

I have began to look into star signs, as people often look at their horoscopes as a reflection of themselves and try to pull some kind of meaning from it.

Andrew Lundwall

Research – Andrew Lundwall/Amy Friend

These fragmented portraits of people represent the human need to connect the dots of their own personhood, a self-defining process according to their assigned star constellations. As these images show constellations overlaying the fragmented faces. This connected with my theme of astrology and urged me focus on what horoscopes mean to the individual.

Amy Friend