Author: Jane Lee

20 second film group task: Initial storyboards, process and the finished presentation + film.

After discussing ‘Seamless 1999’ and the concept for our film, I made a very rough storyboard to start fleshing out our ideas.

To figure out the general camera angle and transitions of the shots in the film, Kit filmed this short video where you can see parts of Sze’s installation.

He will later render the scene in After effects.

After planning out the camera angles, the next step was to plan the movements of the ‘character’ more clearly. To do this, Ash made a more refined storyboard.

I asked Bjorn to create the backgrounds for the film in procreate which Kit will then add later to After Effects. To the left is a screenshot of early background development.

The idea/approach we had for the background was to make it by creating a digital collage of images of various objects and architecture so we could explore the themes in Sze’s work in our own way. (going for a mixed media look)

To reference her influences, we decided on using the primary colours too. (see previous blog post and final presentation below for more details)

This swatch of the three colours on the left was decided upon after collectively deciding that the initial red colour was too saturated.

The gallery below has all of the finished backgrounds used in the film:

Here’s all the source images used in the background collage.

To make the final presentation, Kiyana used InDesign to lay out some of the images we took along with the research I did. Her choice in using a minimalist design for the presentation is another call back to Sze’s influences.

PDF presentationDownload

Finally, for the music I experimented with my launchpad to create a simple soundtrack. (resulting in three before we picked the final one you’ll hear in the film)

I tried to make it have a futuristic feel to fit the mood of the clip and in the end I decided against applying sound effects for the round shape moving. This was mainly because it wasn’t colliding into anything but the bucket at the end and by then the shape was very soft looking and I figured it wouldn’t make much of a sound.

Next time I collaborate with a group I’d like to use sound effects more effectively.

Here’s the Final Film:

20 Second film: One day assignment

“MAKE A MICRO FILM OF A JOURNEY BETWEEN 2 SPACES“​

Indoor to Outdoor OR Outdoor to indoor, using just ten separate shots.

I don’t think I did the task very well because I got caught up in creating a short narrative with my film rather than focusing on the sounds I could hear.

That being said, I did think about how the sounds sounded in this short clip.

I experimented with speeding up the sound in certain areas of the clip, overlaying sound from two different places (the underground and the soft chatter of voices in the tate gallery) and finally editing the sound to have a softer quality to match the CRT look of the last clip.

I didn’t want to add any audio effects that would block out the soft conversation of the two people when the girl got her bag stuck in the door since I thought it was important to the short narrative I constructed.

I’ll focus more on sound and enhance the audio in the next task, since the audio in this clip is quite soft and not very interesting.

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Sarah Sze: Research on ‘Seamless 1999’ & Initial planning for the film.

As a group, we visited the Tate modern to research and collect information on various artists for the 20 second film project. (Group members: Jane Lee, Ash Liu, Bjorn Jueman, Wai Kit Law, Kiyana Khadivfard) 13-14.10.2021

After going through the gallery, we decided to focus on Sarah Sze for our project.

Below is the text and research that I did for the group presentation that is due to happen on the 21st of October (It currently needs to be formatted for powerpoint and reviewed by Kiyana) :

We chose this artist because the way that she repurposed everyday objects to create work such as the one we saw at the Tate (‘Seamless 1999’) was inspiring and it left an impression on us largely due to how she placed the objects into a fascinating arrangement that also interacted with the architecture of the gallery itself.

A prominent example of this is how sections of her work goes through holes in the wall, as seen in this photo I took.

It was reconfigured to interact with the Tate’s walls since it was originally exhibited in America at the Carnegie exhibition in 1999.

According to the Tate website, her use of everyday objects in her work also links it to modern consumerism culture and abstract art. 

To the left is the list of objects used to construct this installation.

https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/display/materials-and-objects/sarah-sze

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/piet-mondrian-1651

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/de-stijl

Sze has stated that she was influenced by De Stiji’s work, specifically Piet Mondrian’s Composition C with Red, Yellow and Blue which is displayed in close proximity to ‘Seamless 1999’ to highlight it as a reference.

Since Sze was inspired by abstract art and the repurposing of everyday objects to create work that interacts with the archetecture of the building itself, we decided that the film would be quite abstract, focusing on the journey of a shape travelling through a space.

This shape would transform and move around in this space much like the dots in Norman McLaren’s ‘Dots’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3-vsKwQ0Cg

20 Images Narrative

These are the 20 images I compiled for the first task in ‘Introduction to animation.’ The rough narrative that I came up with was that a witch invites some birds to her home to celebrate something (like a birthday party or a festival maybe?). Instead of getting a picture of a witch, I decided to try and collect images that create a witch like motif. The cat and mouse ceramic objects and the broom I found on the street after Halloween last year were chosen for this purpose.

The clothing items are there because I interpreted that the witch would lend the birds some of her clothes to help them be less cold when they head home after the celebration.

An alternate storyline I thought of was that this series of images could represent the passing of time in the lives of a group of birds, since the seasons change in the images below from spring to winter. (where at the end the duck forms a family)

https://artslondon.padlet.org/shilton8/hjj6j84qhzu7xz50