Journey to Insanity - Task 3

Change of Plan - This will be my main exemplar.

Bookmarked years ago because of the impact the work had on me at the time I have decided to focus more on the collage aspect rather than the graphic direction. This is because of a few things - my assets were driving me in that direction and my experimentation in the software was definitely leading me down this path. I love the aesthetic and specifically the sound. The second reason was that I received advice from my tutor that I should add the graphics last in AfterEffects and so they became a separate process and one I would revisit at the end as an addition rather than a focus.

Design conference exemplar - Tail Jar Director
https://vimeo.com/339256315

With all my ideas I was struggling to stay on top of this task and If I may make a personal statement here. I developed an ear infection in week 2 that rapidly developed into a complicated set of appointments and misdiagnosis. Over the next 7 weeks I would have limited or no hearing in my left ear. It was challenging and uncomfortable but most of all it put me in a space of frustration, pain, disorientation and the muffled silence of my own thoughts.

In hindsight, it has had an effect on my journey and direction in this last project. At some point, my movie started with a zoom into an eye but as it happened I found a better start point for my entry into the mind - and thathappened to be the ear canal... I loved this footage because mostly it looks deliberate but actually, my daughter did not want to be filmed so she was covering her face and would not let me film her eyes. This worked for me :) ... but upon reflection maybe it was also a subliminal topic of choice for me with my own ear issues at play.

The opening image for my final movie.

Creating content became my focus for every part of my day. I recorded things on the train, at the beach, at home. Images, videos, sound. I had a huge bank of visuals and kept starting again because I wasn't happy with the libraries. I was playing with tutorials and random images in premiere because I understood I NEEDED to learn this program.....AfterEffects was getting the better of me.

I was tempted to just make a very long gif.... Chats with my classmates and seeing their projects helped steer me in the right direction. This weekly interaction with even just a few of my peers was critical in my experimentation and support of my more iterative and random approach. I was very much concentrating on collecting source material and learning the software at this point...I thought If I did that I could pull it together in some sort of cohesive story later on. I just loved cinemagraphs and I knew I could easily do this but I did want a challenge. Stop motion was wonderful but I was too impatient to pursue this type of project and most of all I wanted some new skills I could use in my industry work and be confidently able to navigate around Adobe Premiere.

I was becoming more and more obsessed with peoples eyes for expression - probably because I could not hear them. :)

I turned my attention to eyes and ears. I suspect because I was now relying more on my vision to understand and communicate with everyone... This was made even more nuanced by the mask-wearing restrictions in the state and everyone's eyes stood out now.

I was visually analysing everything I saw and heard. I can no longer watch moving images without trying to see the techniques and approaches. I sought out podcasts on the drive to Brisbane each week on topics of film and animation. I revisited titles and films that sat deep in my memory as things I had seen and loved. Not being well with my ear infection meant I could make a reasonable excuse to sit and watch some old titles instead of housework or marking tasks - My whole family were subjected to Hitchcock and Good Omens (pictured below)

Link to viewing https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/good-omens/

https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/good-omens/

I had a huge amount of fun and collecting imagery and footage. I visited the imaginaria, the vintage centre, the beach, the city, It was now time to put it all together.

This was the point I realised I was working as an artist and creating intuitively in an experimental way. The process was as part of my objective as was the end goal. I quickly understood that the box was creating boundaries I no longer wished to work within. It had been great to start somewhere and it had led to my idea of having a box inside with emotions. When my thousands of images were not working (and my kids couldn't seem to open the box correctly ever) I wanted to visually put the box inside the body in post-production - then I discarded it altogether. Rewatching the dream sequence in Hitcocks Vertigo gave me the courage to move forward and leave my other ideas behind. I wanted to illustrate the insecurities now, show the chaos and tension. I knew the type of sounds I wanted, and these closely resembled the exemplar of the design conference. Dark, dramatic, awkward and unsettling.

Examples above of just some of the Images collected and curated, making gifs and editing images in lightroom and photoshop. Making timeslices inspired by Dan Marker-Moore took up far more time than it was suppose to but it was so much fun. I didn't really use these in my final project but it was initially an area I had looked at incorporating.

Some of my simple timeslices...I will spend time doing this in the break when I can sit for longer at sunrise.

Above are some of the images I took at the vintage centre camp hill - This was an accidental visit when I was meeting my mother and uncle. It happened to provide a vast amount of content for my mind.

I got started on creating gifs and small sections of my timeline.

I created this background with food colouring and milk and dishwashing detergent. The shadows are all me and pasted together .. Inspired by Good Omens where the movement is disjointed and not perfect

This gif was created using the background I photographed in the imaginaria. The fish was from a homewares store. I loved the idea that it linked the colours from the washed out diver scene to the eyes. I felt like I was drowning in deadlines so underwater felt apt.

This was my final gif in the sequence. It was not made with that in mind but because the speed was easily able to be edited to move with the building sound I choose this and added a few of the initial gif features such as the palm frond and upside down eyes to signal the full circle of the narrative.

This was my initial gif shown in class, and it was changed to take out the human form. Instead replaced by random and not connected items. I wanted it to get cray before it got calm

The colour in this is my photography. Taken of flowers with the colours boosted - I needed a spiral - It had to symbolise movement but also the spiral out of control. It is my entry into the mind and my entry out

The most unpolished gif of the lot - mainly because I wanted it to be feel like the most chaotic, but also because the grass hopper was on a screen door and that meant my quick select mask is rough around the edges. Something I would fix in post production. This is my favourite gif for sound - it has many different sounds layered

The most used gif. It depicts the breath, the heartbeat, the darkness. I used it on its own but also as overlays with blend modes on other images to create the subtle constant rhythm.

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