To start, I pressed Ctrl + I to import my videos from my video data and started with my first clip.
I then cropped the beginning and end off of the clip, leaving me with the part of the video that I needed.
I continued to add each clip to the timeline, cutting and cropping the clips to fit into the animation.
Multiple Clips
I then repeated this process with another 4 clips, layered on top of one and other so each clip plays at the same time.
Changing Speed
To adjust the speed of a clip, right click and select “speed duration”. Then change the percentage to make the clip faster or slower.
Title
Digital Image
To start off, we imported the images we took into Lightroom and flagged the images we wanted to use for our digital image.
Once we decided on our final 4 images, we began editing them, adjusting the lighting, contrast, exposure and highlights.
For the images with a black background, we had to edit around the shoes to make the whole image black. To do this, we opened the images in Photoshop and used the Clone Stamp tool, selected a black area and drew around the feet.
I made the the digital image in photoshop. I used a screen grab from one of the videos of Michael wearing the VR, and the 5 animated scenes all at the same timeframe so the character lines up.
I then added some glitched text effect by using 2 layers behind each text. To make it better I added some blending mode features, such as, emboss and bevel, etc.
I used shapes and clipping layers to add all the images into to insure all the shapes are even.
This is the final image which represents the whole NFT film. It shows the most important scene, which is the split scene that includes the animation as the NFT exhibition is called 2lives (online and offline), it shows the real world and the virtual meta verse.
We used our storyboard to organise our shoots, to know where/what/when we were going to shoot.
We decided that Michael was going to be Model 1, which would mostly be in the start of the video, and Reuben was Model 2, who was only in the last half of the video. Matt (me) was recording everything, and Ollie was the director and manager.
We had to make a VR headset using a printed off image of a VR headset and then we taped it to some sunglasses.
Shooting
First, we went to a open green area, which we filmed most of our scenes at.
We started off with the main walking headshot video, then we recorded the drone shots of Michael wearing the VR. After I recorded the scene where Michael and Reuben meet in real life and the last scene where they are talking on a bench.
After, we went to record the scene where Reuben takes off the VR headset at a gaming setup.
We couldn’t record a drone shot of a house, as you can’t fly within 50m of houses/property.
Editing
Once we had all the recordings Michael and Reuben started to edit the video on Adobe Premier Pro. They used special effects, such as the loading… visual effect, and static sound effect, etc. They also time-mapped some clips to match the beat of the music.
This shows the half and half effect, with the timeline on the bottom half of the screen.
This is one of the special visual effects, which is used at the start of the video. Also, the timeline is zoomed out, so you can see all of the film on the timeline, and all its layers.
This is how the time-remapping was done, as seen on the left. He used key frame to change the speed of the clip at different time intervals.
To begin editing our final project, I began by importing all of the individually shot clips from the local drive into Premier Pro, as we had been shown in our workshop with Liam Nunn. I double checked that these were the correct videos by using the small preview tool at the top right corner of the screen, and I also put them in the order I wanted them to be played to make the overall process a lot easier and less time consuming.
I then dragged and dropped the individual clips onto the timeline, making sure that they did not overlap each other by placing them in a pyramid-like structure using the two middle segments of the timeline. I also stretched out the clips so that they were more spaced out and made the overall video longer.
For the background music, we explored lots of different royalty free tracks until we found one we liked on Bensound called ‘Dreams’. To add it to the video, I deleted the background audio which was already there from the individual clips, and imported the track which I had downloaded and saved to the media drive.
For my groups NFT Film, we decided to use animation as a part of our video. I made all the aminated clips in Blender. I started off by finding low-poly art models of Sketchfab. then imported them into blender. Once in Blender I used simple animations to move the location of the scene, to give off the impression of the character walking.
This screenshot shows the timeline for the character walking. Every dot/diamond is a different movement of the character to make him walk. The character doesn’t actually move, it just walks on the spot. So I would have to animate the background. He walks on the spot as it makes it easier to only move the direction of the arms, legs etc, instead of the movement and lactation of everything. So the character and camera are stationary.
This is the scene, everything highlighted in orange is what is animated and included in the scene. I added 2 keyframes to the timeline. The first keyframe is where the buildings start, and the second is where they will end after the move and slide backwards. It slides backwards to give off the effect that the character is walking forwards. Each 2-3 second scene takes an estimated 8 hours to render.
This is the node setup for the lighting. I used a HDRI which is a spherical photo taken in real life, and the program works out where is sun is and creates the same lighting situation for inside the workspace. The orange box is the HDRI which is connected to the right two default boxes, then I added a remapping node to make the horizon of the world line up with the horizon I made in the workspace, so there aren’t photos of trees floating in the sky.
The Street Scene
Overall, the street scene is quite small. The scene is colourful which adds lots of contrast. All the scenes use depth of field to blur the background more as the character walks forward.
The left side is the object view, without the colour. Where as, the right side is the rendered, with colour.
The Farm Scene
This scene is more complex, as there is more shapes and objects. There is also larger range of colours, ranging from red to green, etc.
The Mansion Scene
This is one of my favourite scenes, as it features our main character walking outside his mansion. It is visually pleasing as uses a lot of dynamic shapes and contour.
The Beach Scene
This is one of the most colourful scenes as it uses mostly topical/beach colours. It contributes to having a diverse location for the 5 scenes.
The Space Scene
This was one of the harder scenes to make as I had to add a space helmet to him, however it is the most extreme scene as the character is in outer space.
The Zoom Out/In Animated House Scene
This animation was made to replace the original shot idea, to use a drone to zoom into a house, but we couldn’t do it due to privacy rules. So we used amination as a replacement as it fits in with the online/offline format and style.
This is what the scene looks in blender. The greyed out screenshots are the view in shader view, where as the coloured view is the rendered view, which is what it looks like when it is finished.
The camera is animated with 3 keyframes, both for location and rotation. It ends still to let the clouds move in, which allows for a clean transition from this clip to another, using a white fade transition. Overall, this clip took 12 hours to fully render 120 frames in blender.
Overall, this scene is good as it ends with a clean transition, of the clouds covering the screen. The camera is mostly smooth which follows the exponential curve, which allows for fluid movement.
For this experiment, we decided to edit some of the photographs from our NFT shoot in photoshop to make them more interesting and engaging for the viewer. To edit these image, we duplicated the image we wanted to use and then used the FX tool on the duplicated layer to erase the both the blue and green channels on the layer. We then shifted the original layer slightly to the left in order to create the blurring effect.
A storyboard is a visual outline for the video you are planning to make, they are usually hand drawn, however in recent times storyboards have been created digitally in computer software. The format of a storyboard is usually chronological, helping the creators visualise the video before filming begins. Storyboards also include notes about what is meant to happen in the video, like little captions describing the process from beginning to end. A completed storyboard may look similar to a comic strip, it is like a visual script for the production team to fully plan how they want the video to look. Click here for more on storyboards.
Storyboard Examples;
Our Storyboard;
Our group created the storyboard below to help us plan how we wanted our video shoot to go, describing the different shots and how we imagined them playing out on screen. Firstly, we started with the simple title of ‘Women’ for our NFT film – however, later in the process we changed out idea to the title ‘WomanKind’; a sort of play on words to mankind while also hinting at the stereotypes of women needing to be sweet and innocent, in other words ‘kind’. Our opening shot is planned to be of a wooden door, large and imposing, taking up the entire frame. We plan on having someone open the door from the other side to lead the camera into the first room, we also aim to edit this first sequence with a black and white filter to represent the timeline it portrays. We plan for our second scene to show a woman, dressed in typical early 1900’s attire with an apron, whisking something in a bowl walking through her kitchen. We will set the camera on a tri-pod in the centre of the room and follow the woman as she moves, before seeing her stop to put on a ‘Votes for Women’ protest sash. We want the satire of the ‘innocent housewife’ to juxtapose with her later fierce and strong mood as she walks off through a different door on the other side of the room. Our third and forth scenes will follow the same filming format, however in the second our model will pick up a ‘Women’s Rights’ sign before leaving, wearing a 60’s/70’s inspired dress and edited with a dull saturation (colour appearing as time moves on, and more rights for women are put in place). Our last shot is planned to show our model in a idealistic world of freedom, walking into frame and looking at herself in a mirror, feeling confident within her femininity and loving herself without it needing to be sexualised for the male gaze. We plan for our model to look straight at the camera lens and smile before leaving through a final door into a world where she can feel confident and comfortable.
Video Shoot Planning
Who – The model we are using for this video shoot is the same woman we had in our initial photoshoot images. Caitlin has a timeless look about her, she is also an actress who is comfortable in front of the camera and has confidence in portraying the different emotions we want to convey; eg, sadness, anxiety, excitement, happiness.
Where – We plan on using one of our group member’s grandmother’s home for our video shoot due to its vast space, rooms, doorways and availability for use. The house we aim to film in is also decorated with similar regal furniture and wallpaper as the work of Lissa Rivera, who is our main source of inspiration for the project.
When – We aim to conduct this video shoot on Thursday October 14th as the weather is meant to be bright and sunny, resulting in perfect natural lighting for the shots we want to film in the kitchen (a room with very big windows). Additionally, on this day we all have a free period last lesson which provides the perfect time to film before it gets too dark.
How – We are planning to film using my Canon camera and tri-pod so all the footage is in one place and it is easy to find for editing. We will attempt to create transitions between doorway to room – however if this is not possible in the space we are in, we have a plan B on how to film our video, using a simpler format.
Why – We want to create this video to shed light on the decades of struggle that women have gone through to get equal rights, we know that we are lucky enough to live on an island where equality is noticed and seen, for the most part, however we also realize there are many countries and areas where women do not have the same rights as men and still need to fight everyday for the privileges that should be theirs for free. We want to create a video showing a timeline of women’s rights activists during the different waves of feminism, connoting ideas of freedom and passion for what they believe in.
On Wednesday the 29th of September we took part in an embroidery workshop with Yulia Makeyeva, an emerging multi-disciplinary artist who grew up in Russia and is now based in Jersey. Yulia has a background in art history, silversmithing and jewellery making, however turned her full attention to art in 2019. She likes to use photography to help her observe textures, patterns and shapes in everyday objects – she uses these observations to create artwork that is unique and unexpected. Yulia experiments with different mediums in her artwork, using sewing, painting, drawing and photography to create dynamic pieces with storylines and meanings. She has an interest in concepts of memory, responsibility, stereotypes, borders, boundaries and multiculturalism, and is also working on a range of projects involving historical research.
A statement from Yulia reads ‘I like to push the boundaries of the ordinary. Exploring the capabilities of materials, I learn through making. I draw inspiration from my home, family and surroundings – any texture, object, light movement, story, music, etc. can become a starting point. At a research stage, before making a decision, I play with the idea in my head and with the material in my hands, tactility is very important. Actual making process comes further, usually in the form of labour-intensive contemplative repetition. What do I want to say with my art? I want to reveal a different angle and engage the viewer into an active dialogue with the world around.’
Her Work;
Inspiration
During our embroidery workshop, we did some further research into our project by looking through various collections of embroidered work in books around the class. In one of these books we discovered this piece by Ghada Amer and Reza Farkhondeh called ‘The Bugs and the Lovers’, created from a series of drawings they made together in 2005. Two pink roses are the main focus of their piece, with various insects dotted around the watercolour flowers which symbolize the stereotypes of romanticism, women being delicate and frail. It is difficult to see from the image, however sewn into the painting is an outline of a couple making love, with emphasis on the woman’s face and body – there is obvious irony in Amer’s subject matter choice. The pink colour of the flowers and the symbolic metaphors for a woman’s innocence and fragility are juxtaposed by the explicit embroidery that overlaps, it creates the impression of women being comfortable within themselves in a society that still views them as weak and naive. This piece links to our idea on showing the representation of women as it evolves through the different waves of feminism, when deciding what to sew for my embroidered piece I took inspiration from the flowers and pink tones.
Ghada Amer & Reza Farkhondeh | The bugs and the lovers | 2008
Experimenting with text
During this workshop, we were given the task to create a piece of embroidery inspired by our NFT Community project – taking inspiration also from ‘The Bugs and the Lovers’, I wanted to create a piece with a soft colour palette of pink and white to represent innocence and purity, some stereotypical qualities of women. We had a range of materials to work with, the main being some large fabric panels from the People Make Jersey exhibition which were placed on tables around the room for us to use in our pieces. I had the idea to cut out different words and phrases that linked with the idea of women’s rights and feminism, such as ‘who risked her life’ and ‘house workers’. I wanted to sew these phrases onto a piece of fabric that linked to Ghada Amer and Reza Farkhondeh’s work, using the motif of flowers for fragility. After gathering all of my words, fabrics and threads I decided to lay them all out in an order that created a story – I came up with the verse ‘woman; forced hope. her sacrifice, gratitude.’ The meaning I wish to be interpreted from these words is one of justice and fighting – the forced hope of generations of women fighting for the same thing year after year, the sacrifices made by suffragettes and other freedom fighters, the gratitude we feel for those who have fought for us in the past; women.
The words I cut out from the exhibition panels and the fabric I planned on using.My verse set out on the fabric I planned to use for my piece.
Final Embroidery Piece
The aim of our workshop was to combine traditional methods of making art (analogue), such as embroidery and stitching with digital media like photography to create a short stop animation movie as a GIF. My GIF above was created on Adobe Photoshop using these steps –
1. Create layer for each image 2. Window > timeline 3. Select > Create Frame Animation 4. Drop Menu > Make frames from Layers 5. Timeline > select Forever 6. File > Export > Save for Web Legacy > reduce image size to 720 x 720 pixels
My GIF shows the process of my embroidery, however it also tells a story of repetition – hinting at the years of constant fighting for equality through the 19th and 20th century. The overlapping images the come together one by one create a dynamic animation conveying ideas of the same thing happening (or not happening) over and over again. Furthermore, as each new word or phrase is sewn on it gives the impression of time moving forwards, more and more women standing up for what they believe in and fighting for the rights they deserve. I wanted to convey a sense of irony also in my piece, using colours like pink to juxtapose the hard hitting message within my text. The motif of flowers that also features hints towards the stereotypes of women, the metaphor of a flower is often used to describe a women to make her seem feeble and weak – the opposite to the women described in my verse. Additionally, I wanted to use different coloured cotton and thread to sew the words on to the fabric -I began by using a thick red wool to sew in the word ‘forced’, again irony as I had to force the needle through the two fabrics to sew them together, but also symbolic of the struggles and pain that past and present activists have to go through, representing passion/blood//danger. Other materials I used to sew into my piece were thin threads of cotton in different shades of pink, showing repetition and symbolism of women throughout. The flimsiness of the cotton also adds to the idea of a stereotypical woman’s place, doing jobs around the house that do not require strength or muscle – all creating a pun towards the representation of women throughout history.
Cindy Sherman (1954-present) is an American filmmaker and photographer who focuses her work on critiquing themes of gender and identity. In her early years Sherman created fine art, however abandoned painting for photography while attending the State University of New York at Buffalo, and in 1976, moved to New York to pursue a career as a photographer. Her work has been the subject of many museum exhibitions, including those at The Museum of Modern Art in 2019, and at the National Portrait Gallery, in London during 2019. Sherman captures self portraits, her most notable body of work are her ‘Untitled Film Stills’ which feature the artist herself as a model in various costumes and poses, and are her portrayals of female stereotypes found in film, television, and advertising – all captured in black and white. In the film stills, rather than quoting from recognizable movies, Sherman suggests genres, resulting in characters that emerge as personality types instead of specific actresses. The first six images of the series depict the same blonde actress at various stages of her career. Later, the character appears as a seductress, waiting at home for her lover – then afterwards Sherman might be seen as the trope of the diligent, stay-at-home wife who remains attractive and available to her husband.
Sherman’s Film Stills have been described as “a hybrid of photography and performance art that reveals femininity to be an effect of representation.”. Sherman states “I like making images that from a distance seem kind of seductive, colourful, luscious and engaging, and then you realize what you’re looking at is something totally opposite,” she reflected. “It seems boring to me to pursue the typical idea of beauty, because that is the easiest and the most obvious way to see the world. It’s more challenging to look at the other side.” Sherman on being a female photographer; “There’s a theory that there were so many women photographers at the time because we felt nobody else was doing it. We couldn’t or didn’t really want to go into the male-dominated painting world, so since there weren’t any artists who were using photographs, we thought, ‘well, yeah, let’s just play with that.’ “
I love the way Sherman can create such a strong narrative in her images, each one tells a story and forms some sort of message towards the representation of women. Her style of photography is so interesting to me, her images are intimate and close, allowing the observer to feel connected to her scene. The black and white filter also evokes a sense of melancholy in her work, and her exaggerated ‘feminine poses’ seem to mock the portrayal of women in a patriarchal society. Her work holds strong links to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, and her ideas on ‘The Male Gaze’ stating; visual media that respond to masculine voyeurism tends to sexualise women for a male viewer. This sexism within the film industry is what Sherman has captured in her Untitled Film Stills, shedding light on the negativity of some feminine stereotypes.
In our project, we really want to take inspiration from Sherman’s series of images by replicating her stereotypical style and narratives. The ‘house-wife’ character is one we wish to represent in our NFT film, using ideas surrounding what stereotypically ‘should be a woman’s place’ and filming in the setting of a kitchen. We plan on our images holding hints towards a woman’s innocence eg, wearing white flowing dresses etc to show her purity and goodness. As we plan on using these shots in the early stages of our project, the timeline will begin in the first wave of feminism and will hold reference to the suffragette/suffragist movement of the late 1800’s – mid 1900’s.
Clare Rae – Never Standing On Two Feet
Clare Rae is an artist and photographer from Melbourne Australia, in her photographic practice Clare explores ideas of performance and gesture to interrogate and subvert dominant modes of representation. Her work is informed by the feminist theory, and presents an alternate and often awkward experience of subjectivity and the female body, usually the artists’ own. In 2017, Rae undertook an artist’s residency with Archisle: the Jersey Contemporary Photography Programme to research the archive of Claude Cahun works held by Jersey Heritage. It was during this time that she created the photographic series ‘Never Standing on Two Feet’, paying a homage to avant-garde artist Claude Cahun (1894-1954), drawing upon Cahun’s photographic archive to explore the female body, self-hood, ritual and the male gaze in cultural and geographical landscapes.
A quote from Clare Rae, on ‘Never Standing on Two Feet’ – “My series, Never standing on two feet, considers Cahun’s engagement with the physical and cultural landscapes of Jersey, an aspect of her work that has received little analysis to date. The photographs Cahun produced in Jersey are intimate. They explore an idea of self within the immediate environment and were produced in collaboration with her lover, Marcel Moore. Many threads of inquiry emerged for me while viewing the archive: Cahun’s performative photographic gestures; the nature of photographic performance for a lover; and the repercussions of imaging a woman’s body aging over time, to name a few.”
I really enjoy the way Rae’s self-portraits explore the coastal geography and Neolithic monuments of Jersey, relating body to place and creating a sense of mystery. Similar to how Cahun used self-portraiture to subvert the dominance of the male gaze, Rae has created a series of images that tease at the idea of women’s bodies being objectified, and women fighting back against this. As her portraits show parts of her body hidden away by the landscape, it conveys the ideas of 3rd Wave Feminism and the fighting women did for equal rights (including pay, reproductive rights, the ERA etc) during the early 90’s and 2000’s. The monochrome filter on these photographs creates an interesting atmosphere of mystery and sadness, representing the oppression of women still holding significance in society as time moves on.
For our community NFT project, we wish to take inspiration from Clare Rae’s ideas on women standing up for what they believe in and taking action towards their oppression. We have the idea to represent Women’s Rights Activism throughout the late 20th Century, using Rae’s technique of hiding parts of a woman’s body to make a statement on its constant sexualisation. We wish to do this by using a woman’s rights poster in shot, which will be lifted to hide our models torso as she walks past the camera – demonstrating activism, and hinting towards the exploitation of women.
Lissa Rivera – Beautiful Boy
Lissa Rivera is a photographer based in New York, she received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, where she became fascinated with the social history of photography and the evolution of identity, sexuality and gender in relationship to material culture. Rivera grew up in a small town, without much excitement or things to do, therefore she had to create this excitement and wonder herself in order to capture images of meaning and significance. Most of Rivera’s images are staged and hold an almost regal atmosphere to them – her style of photography is expressive and vibrant, something our group wants to portray during our NFT film. Our group discovered Rivera from her project ‘Beautiful Boy’, where Rivera and her domestic partner use staged portraiture as an expressive way to explore male/female identity and reclaim a personal definition of beauty.
A statement Lissa Rivera made about her project in ‘Metal Magazine’; “Beautiful boy was born out of a series of conversations between my friend BJ and I about femininity, fantasy and gender. At the time we were not in a romantic relationship and had no idea of the future. On a subway ride home from a queer film screening, BJ (who is now my sweetheart) confessed that they preferred to be feminine and often wore dresses. In college he was able to be open about his gender expression, but since moving to the city and taking on a new job, it had become more complicated. We spoke about the struggles that we both felt with femininity, how femininity is still considered weaker and less valuable in our culture. I offered to take BJ’s portrait, so that he could see himself.” Additionally, Rivera states “It is important to show his femininity as strength. I want to feel empowered as well, and to have an intimate muse. Together we investigate feminine fantasies presented throughout the history of photography and cinema. The project is a way to “step inside” images that we have found alluring and examine what it is like to live each scenario out. We explore both our captivation and our ambivalence towards these depictions of femininity. By presenting my partner within the lineage of great beauties and populating the media with our images, we are reclaiming in our voice what is attractive and beautiful.”
I love the way that Rivera can capture such innocence and bravery in these images – they inspire and break gender norms that societies have created over the years. The compositions of her photographs hold symmetry and leading lines which draw the observers view towards the main subject. I really enjoy Rivera’s use of monochrome colours in her images, the blocky pinks, blues and browns hint at ideas of simplicity in a world of chaos – where one can truly be themselves without judgement or oppression. This theme is one we wish to take from Rivera’s work, the idea of being free as yourself, feeling comfortable in your femininity and allowing yourself to feel confident without the need for it to be sexualised.
For our NFT project, we are aiming to take inspiration from Rivera’s regal setting and style of photography. The curtains, chandeliers and extravagant wallpapers are all aspects we wish to replicate during our photoshoot due to their link with confidence, power and authority – all of which a woman must fight hard to have. We have the idea to use Rivera-style videos/images at the end of our community project, representing the timeline of women’s rights with this ending demonstrating empowerment and luxury.
A storyboard is a graphic organizer that consists of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualising a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence.
NFT STORYBOARD
Our idea is to show how women’s fashion has changed throughout multiple different decades (70s, 80s, 90, 2000s, and 2020s). In order to achieve this we will use one of our friends as a model and have her walk across two points in front of the camera wearing the outfits from each decade. During our editing process, we will then merge the footage together so that the final piece cuts between the different outfits as the model walks across the camera.
