Assignment 3, Reflection

Reflection in Regards to my video Kraftwerk - Das Model;

Why did I choose this song for my Assignment,

I chose this song because I am actually a fan of the band and have been listening to them for
years. I chose this particular track out of the group because i find a deep resonance with the music track and the style of the band.

The Identity of the Song,

I chose to use the lyric 'Das Model' and interpret it to one of a more mainstream audience.
What with the large cosplay (costume play) fanbase in Brisbane i thought it appropriate to
base my video upon the craze that is Cosplay. The identity is made up with the use of Cosplay models making poses to the music, using different transitions and effects. The end of the song i believe is very symbolic of the Cosplay sub culture, the last scene you will note is a line of identical women in cardboard boxes with barcodes on their legs.
To me that symbolises a prototypical-clone mentality of the cosplay culture; which is essentially the copying of a certain characters dress sense. Cosplay is popularised and mostly derived from manga and video games; people choosing to dress as their favourite character from an Anime or TV show.

The Syle,

The video is shot on a large comic book sheet, with black borders. In keeping with Kraftwerk music videos i added a robot theme to the video, a theme that becomes more apparent towards the end. The heads at the start are images i drew from my own head that i outlined and coloured, again to fit with the Kraftwerk image.

Symbols,

I chose to use confronting imagery and outlandish story archs to capture a symbolic ending.

Motion,

The movement of the piece is very robotic, and i chose to go with a more technologically advanced and creative movement to the piece. With the arm in the middle and the resizing of the disc mask half way through. I chose to animate the keyboard at the start to give it more edge and to keep with the Kraftwerk style. (note that the keys played are the actual notes of the song).

The composition in regards to the Identity,

As a whole i believe that the composition contributes to the identity of the Kraftwerk image and sound. Using robotic movements and effects i believe i have created an animation that captures the Kraftwerk element. While doing so also adding a modern edge through the gritty realism of the last three scenes.

What would I do differently?

In hindsight i would have animated the models a little better and given them more character as opposed to the still images moving across the screen. Overall i think the animation of the keyboard was a tiny bit out of time and i should have spent more time on that also. I would have also used the keyboard more consistently and would have animated the whole songs notes.

References

All cosplay models, camera and copperdisc are creative commons images sourced from Google
Image of keyboard is owned by Yamaha
Deviantart sources - Warehouse by Eufrosis
- Warehouse 2 by kls204
- Warehouse by mnphotobug
Music by Kraftwerk

Physical Graffiti - Animated Masks

For this one we were asked to make a short video that would show three images that we turned into stencil graffiti, being revealed by animated masks.
I chose to use three of my favourite musicians faces for this exercisel; Siouxsie Sioux, Trent Reznor and Robert Smith. By pulling the pictures into photoshop and playing with the levels I created a still black and white image, I deleted the white background and used a change to colour tool in the final composition, so that it would match the wall behind it.
This is the final outcome:

Physical Graffiti - Sin City Imitation

For this exercise we grabbed an image with a creative commons licence off of flickr,
and then turned the image into a strictly black and white image.
Then playing with layers and effects, we created rain and gave the image a dialogue box, to insinuate a comic book effect similar to SinCity.
Here are two examples:

Sexy Meat

For our first exercise we were asked to use photoshop to create a spatial montage using five

seperate images. I chose to use the piece of meat and several location shots for mine; simply because of what it represents. The idea behind this piece is the vulgarity of meat, the attraction to red wet meat, to me the meat represents sex. So in a way this piece talks about how common sex is used these days, it's idolised and everywhere.