Racing
Category: Visual Literacy
Finally, think I might be on to something.
In making and watching the stop-motion with the contents of our recycling bin, it was very obvious to me that the majority of it was made up by take away containers and boxes. I then began noticing the array of different eating habits people had in my house. These spanned from preparing and cooking each meal, to ordering takeaways and eating microwave meals everyday of the week. Investigating why this might be I learnt that one of my house mates has very little cooking skills or knowledge. This contrasts with my own attitude to being in the kitchen, I really enjoy cooking and as a child took part in cooking lessons and then later studied Food Technology at GCSE.
Look Up Editing Notes
Having had to had in my video unfinished to the exhibition due to my extension, I made some notes on how I am further going to edit and develop it.
I have been using Premiere Pro, a program I am familiar with but have never really used any of the motion and scaling tools before. I have been finding this quite challenging to place the speech bubbles in correct position at the beginning of the frame, then combine this with frame length and the end position, so that the viewer has enough time to read the lyrics whilst still keeping the visuals in time with the audio track.
To get the social media comments to appear letter by letter or word by word I took them into Illustrator after I screen-shotted them, then used this to reproduce the file, each time with a new part revealed. This was quite time consuming but relatively easy.
I also have been using my two apple devices to iMessage myself the lyrics which I then also screen-shotted and used Photoshop to edit out white backgrounds. For this to work successfully I had to have the font size on my iPad turn right up.
A section I struggled with was when Turk is talking about activities that are going on in the ‘real world’ I wanted the lyrics to represent this. I did not like my first attempt and wasn’t widely keen on how I did it in the final outcome. Any bits where post-it notes are featured would be the first to be re-evualted if I had more time on the project.
I do love a good stop-motion!
Having struggled with what my online research was turning up. I began looking closer to home for inspiration. Recently I implemented recycling into my new student house – I was surprised at how quickly the bin filled up, even after we were recycling, both were still filled to the brim within a matter of days. Waste is the forgotten consequence of food, chosen to be unseen. The way we see waste is integral to the way society deals with it. I feel there is an element of the idea of recycling to reduce environmental impact falling on deaf ears, the movement started in the 1960s – at the same time as the universal symbol for recycling being designed by Gary Anderson – and we’re still going on about it. Our habits still need to change. There is a lot of buzz about food wastage as well at the moment. More than half the 7 million tonnes of food waste we in the UK throw away each year could have been eaten and amount of food thrown away costs the average family, with children, £60 a month.
Initial research and where it’s led…
I love a good mind map to get the brain thinking about a topic, also the workshop Marianne ran after the briefing was helpful when being introduced to the project – a more active version of a mind map.
I began by researching two food issues that stood out for me, milk price cuts and the fetishisation of food. Mainly reading news articles, blog posts (see reading list and orange folder) as well as making my own observations.
VisLit Task 1 Evaluation
At this stage I haven’t explored many new areas of practice, I took part in a screen printing workshop which also included Foiling and then a Cinema 4D animation workshop. Both areas I stated in my action plan.
Practices I am yet to develop on are digital printing and audio/visual technologies. With my research for task 2 going the way it is at the moment I expect to be able to continue my development of skills. I enjoyed not having to focus on the output in the screen printing workshop – because it wasn’t involved with a particular theme – however moving forward the influence of the Food and the City brief will allow for more direction and purpose when it comes to expanding my tool box of skills.
Cinema 4D workshop
This was a very interesting workshop. I enjoy stop-motion animation, mostly with objects not illustrations. So learning about a piece of software that can create almost any 3D object and move it within a space was something I had no real knowledge about. I’m not sure how I would incorporate this software use into any work I am currently working on, but for the future it is something to be considered.
I made notes and took some videos during the workshop, unfortunately I can’t upload them too my blog.
Foiling – Brief Instruction
Screen Printing Workshop
Screen Printing Workshop; Monday 27th October.
Important Information
- Screens cost £2.
- Yellow Meshed Screen – Paper printing.
- White Mesh – Fabric printing.
- Date screen +1 week.
- Positive needs to be a black as possible.
- Wash inks off as soon as finished.
VisLit Proposal
My action plan for the year is to, develop skills in printmaking and add to my Audio/Visual/Computing skills.
VisCom Blog 