Monthly Archives: May 2016

BOOMERANG

It’s been a while since I’ve had a good phone with a decent camera, but a couple of weeks ago I finally upgraded to the iPhone SE. The camera and functions that come with it are extremely impressive. It has been what I have been yearning for for quite a while – a quick and easy to use portable camera with the capabilities to video and capture quality audio.

One of the new apps that has become a staple for experimentation on the iPhone is boomerang. It is a video service that captures split seconds of motion and replays them back and forth. I have tried to recreate the effect in the past, but this app makes it a much easier task.

Although this little project diverges a bit from the other exercises I have been doing this semester (and is probably a bit creepy thanks to the bottom right image), it is a concept that I will continue to expand on. With the four separate videos being introduced over a short period of time and revealing different aspects of the same story, it has a developing narrative (or has potential to be used better to develop a narrative and tell a story).

What I have tried to convey in this short example is the joys of having a cuppa and snack.

Julia loves cuppas from Gabriel Strachan on Vimeo.

– Gabe

EFFECTS AND AUTOMATION

For the last couple of weeks I have been putting most of my time into editing my growing library of footage in Premiere Pro. I have known of its editing capabilities but it has really shocked me at how powerful a program it actually is. I have been slowly making my way through most of the effects but the ones that have been featuring most prominently of late are: mirror, distort, turbulent displace, mosaic, generate, ultra key and emboss. Some of these effects have been used in the example below. It is a visual representation of the automation of effect parameters in the program. (An earlier example of this work with audio can be found in an earlier post, this one is slightly updated).

Automation Example from Gabriel Strachan on Vimeo.

– Gabe

REPURPOSING AN EVOLVING LIBRARY

For the duration of the semester I have been less worried about marks and having an end goal in mind and more concerned with this methodology of continual practice and expansion of skills. Just by keeping up a routine of filming and editing almost daily, I have noticed my workflow quicken as I familiarise myself with all the tools I have access to (my camera and editing equipment). While majority of what I’m doing is pushing the capabilities of the editing studios beyond their normal reach, I truly am gaining a better understanding of filmmaking – even if I am focusing primarily on abstractions and imagery. Another huge benefit of this semester has been creating a library of footage that continues to grow on my hard drive. Some of this footage has been used across different projects/experiments and will probably be used for many more. I have found that reworking and repurposing material and concepts has a place in my work. Take this little snippet for example:

Yes yes it is from Gabriel Strachan on Vimeo.

The mosaic effect has been layered on top of a piece of footage used in my Braille investigations. I have repurposed the footage by adding this effect and manipulating some of the blurred parameters. It looks very different to the original piece of footage and creates a lot more movement which to me is quite engaging. This snippet has been taken from a project I am working on with Sam of Potatoheadz. It is one of his songs that he has given me free reign with to basically do what I want. I continue to show him bits and pieces along the way and he revealed that the glitchy direction in which I am heading is something he is excited about. Although he is solely responsible for the audio and I am solely responsible for the visuals, it is definitely a collaborative effort. I am working with the auditory elements Sam has provided to help direct my work.

– Gabe

DIRECTION

Like I think many other students in the class I am creeping closer and closer to an established definitive investigation. My work is branching out heavily from the concept of vision and how impaired vision can be captured in film. It sounds silly, but breaking down my footage to make it less visible is where I find myself. I have taken a liking to the mosaic effects found within Premiere Pro and have been attempting to put this to use in my work. The pixellated effect complements my investigation into visibility.

I tagged along with my girlfriend to the lighting space at RMIT a few days ago and found myself having access to a blue screen. I struggled with the lighting because shadows were being cast on to the screen creating inconsistencies in the background colour. The footage that was captured was not perfect, but I made it work by maxing out the parameters in post and layering this previously mentioned mosaic effect over the top. This is what I came up with:

Dancin’ Man from Gabriel Strachan on Vimeo.

As mentioned in a previous post I am trying to step away from the idea of perfection in order to motivate myself to keep constructing and making videos whatever they may be. This little experiment used footage that would not be acceptable for a feature film, but for my purposes of grasping the editing capabilities of Premiere Pro, it holds value.

In prose, throughout the semester I have been investigating rhythmic editing capabilities and the interaction this has with a musical source, using my expanding library of footage as a foundation for experimentation.

– Gabe

TENNYSON – LIKE WHAT

Helena recently showed me the music video to Tennyson’s Like What. It features Nikita, a blind child listening to the song and then describing what she imagines the visuals to be. The director for the video has then either filmed or used found footage to match as close as possible to Nikitas descriptions – it is by all intents and purposes a visual representation of audio. It fits well with my theme of the impairments of vision. And is something that might be worth replicating, expanding on or experimenting with. What I really like is how beautifully natural the footage is. There is a definite emphasis on nature and it just looks reeeally nice.

As the video states, Nikita has been blind since birth. It is amazing to see how excited she is to be a part of something like this. It seems as though she has accepted the way her imagination works and helps her make sense of the word.

Tennyson – Like What (Official Video) from FANTAVIOUS FRITZ on Vimeo.

– Gabe

QUITE LITERALLY A GREEN SCREEN

After talking a bit about green screens in class, I had a very quick crack at setting one up at home. The only problem is I don’t have a traditional green screen, so I loaded up a purely green image on my home computer. I didn’t have aspirations to cut something out using the green as the background, instead I wanted to superimpose another video file on top of it. So I set up two cameras, one behind and one to the side and jammed along to a song I have been working on. This was the result:

Clip269 Copy 01 from Gabriel Strachan on Vimeo.

Although I could have probably cropped the secondary video and layered it over the top of the screen, the dimensions didn’t exactly match, so cropping out the green and inserting it as a layer underneath was the go.

– Gabe

PERFECTION?

I have been taking a much different approach to my work this semester compared to previous ones. I have been trying to put a lot more energy and time into the process of how things are created rather than having a set goal or finalised project in mind. I often used to be caught up on the idea that to release something or make something public it needs to be either perfect or perfectly constructed. The same methodology applies to the way I make music. There are countless musical ideas building up on my computers, most of which I don’t know what to do with them. But I am slowly moving away from this idea of perfection and it has benefited me greatly. With many different ideas in mind, I am yet to establish a clear cut visualisation of how my work will look at the end of the semester. This is not worrying at the moment. I have enjoyed going on different tangents in order to discover what is exciting.

The downside of this is that I may not end up with a completed or finalised piece, but for employment purposes, exactly how necessary is this? Sure, having something completely finished does produce a nice feeling internally, and is definitely an appealing skill displaying work ethic. On the other hand though, it is obvious that with each little experiment there is progression. This incremental development of work has undoubtedly helped me strive towards completion, but the question still remains of when to stop and pursue other areas of experimentation.

– Gabe

BRAILLE ALPHABET PROTOTYPE

I am continuing to work on this Braille concept. To go with the alphabet recital and visual representation of the Braille code I have edited in some footage I shot myself and a beat underneath to emphasise the rhythm of cuts. For this edit, the tempo of the beat is 120BPM. This means that for every 2 beats of a bar, 1 second elapses. I purposely cut each shot into 1 second segments to create this rhythm (to be honest, I have been using maths again to figure some of this stuff out)… It is just enough time to show what is happening, but not enough to fully process it.

The audio track itself is a work in progress, and I have found myself going between editing the song and editing the video to trial a few different things. It sounds a bit jarring (I quantised a random set of drum samples), but I like the uneasiness or unsureness that comes with it. I believe it captures my perception of what it would be like to be blind.

For the most part, this piece below serves as a prototype for what is to come. As discussed with Paul in class, it might be an idea to play around with the tempo of the cuts and perhaps split up the Braille grid into individualised shots and see how it compares to this one. I’m pretty happy with how the grid looks at the moment though, I think having individual shots for each grid number may throw out the symmetry.

Anyway, this is what I have so far:

Braille Alphabet Copy 03 from Gabriel Strachan on Vimeo.

– Gabe