Class Exercise 2

This exercise was about using basic elements like lines and dots to create 2 abstract or semi-abstract images to depict two words, one for each word. Me and sinyee from DW2 teamed up and created the following.

Afraid:

For this word, we drew a big and small circle. The big cicle was coloured in black to make it more intimidating. Both circles were placed more towards the left to show the smaller circle being cornered. The curvy lines by the small circle was used to show some emotions of being scared.

Flash:

By using a black background and some curvy lines normally used to show a flash of light, we managed to depict flash. The "flash" was placed right smack in the centre to be visually enhancing.

Assignment 3: U C What I C

This assignment involved using 8 photos to tell a story. We had a choice of whether or not to include a twist in the story. Hence, I decided that it would be good to address an issue on suicides. At first I thought about having a twist with the last scene showing that the previous pictures were actually part of a depression campaign poster but decided against it as it was too much of a mood spoiler.

How I began this assignment was that I had a mental image of a girl lying dead on the floor with her wrist cut and blood flowing all over. From this image, I developed the other 6 images which were the process of how she committed suicide and why she did it on the storyboard.

For the photos, I desaturated them to the point where it is low in colour but not to the point of black and white to give it a gloomy feel. I also used the function "lens correction" in photoshop to create a black shadow around the edges to bring the focus towards the center. Most of the crucial elements of the photos were placed at positions following the "Rule of Thirds" to make them more visually pleasing and noticeable. In the last picture, the photo is in black and white to depict death but with the blood being in its original colour so as to stand out.

Through this assignment, I learnt how to connect a series of scenes to tell a story. At first thought, it may seem easy but when I actually got to doing it, I realised that certain portrayal of a frame can result in the break of flow from the previous frame or next frame. Hence, each and every frame must provide new information but at the same time have connections with the previous and next frame. In addition, as people might interpret a picture differently, the message must be very clear so as to reduce misinterpretation. For example, instead of just showing a bloody wrist in the 7th frame, the pen knife was also included in the picture to make it certain to the audience that the pen knife was indeed used to cut her wrist.

Photos, unlike videos, hold many constraints when telling a story. It does not show the whole process of what happened. Therefore, it was important to identify the distiguishing frames and moments and then using them to tell a story in an effective manner so that the audience can understand it easily.