Thesis Progress

My thesis is very near completion, which I think makes me a few weeks ahead of schedule. I do intend on creating a wrap around book cover for From Dust, and I think that will be the next part of the project. But to me this is a good thing. The end of the semester is going to be SO hectic, and I knew this, so I did as much as I could whenever I could (Friday nights, that sort of thing) to get this Thesis project done.

Here is the finalized Horace! one-sheet. The film is still in the early stages of post, so it will probably be a while before any prints are made. Horace! is an MSU Filmmakers Club Production. It's a humorous murder-mystery that takes place in the middle of the woods in the dead of winter. Grimy and frosty, but stupid and silly.

Horace motion poster from Kim Berens on Vimeo.

The MSU Filmmakers Club logo would be shown with every MSU Filmmakers Club production made.


MSU Filmmakers Club from Kim Berens on Vimeo.

And finally, From Dust is a novel written by my brother, Nathaniel Berens. I chose to create a motion book cover illustrating the subtle mystery that many of the characters in the book chose to ignore, the mystery of their history. From Dust is a timeless story about what drives humans into certain actions in desperate and strange situations.


From Dust motion book cover from Kim Berens on Vimeo.

Textual Tension

The latest assignment for my photography workshop class was to combine text with an image. I've done this many times before (duh, posters), but I it had been a while since I'd done it just because. When I was younger and everything was an experiment I would often just have random poems or quotes just so I could add text to an image. 90% of the time the text had nothing (nothing) to do with the image. I had a lot of fun during those experimental days, but for this assignment I wanted the text to relate to the image.

I also thought my professor might appreciate that too.

I had these pieces on my bureau (I think dresser is a more common name) in my bedroom. They aren't arranged like this on the bureau, but after staring at them for a while I decided this scene would be a hilarious arrangement, and not only that, but I should photograph it.
I didn't originally shoot these for this assignment, but once I was shooting, I thought several of the compositions would look great with text added, so I thought why not?


Buuuut, once I edited this version, and created a text box I suddenly sat there like, ".........................". I complained to my sister that there wasn't anything that would make this funnier. Inherently, it had to be silent. She tried to encourage me, but I was very set in my ways. Nothing would work.
I look through other photographs, because at this point there wasn't enough time to reshoot. There really wasn't anything I felt like working with, so I opened up the image again and inside the text box I made an ellipsis, "...". I thought that might count as text, so I put the image inside those three dots (actually, that's a lie, I did it this way because it looks like a lego, and I was playing off the lego characters in the scene) <- That's not true at all, just really coincidental.

But once I had the dots, I thought the images were a bit more difficult to read (no pun intended), especially the buffalo, so I wrote, "dead buffalo" underneath it, which seems to clarify and have a certain blunt humor also. Underneath Hermione (the second circle) I wrote "embarrassed driver" (Ron was supposed to have been driving, but I put him on the wrong side of car. But in the text image, the telephone booth isn't in the image, which means they could be taking a trip to the U.S., so really I could have done anything), and underneath Ron I wrote, "surprisingly innocent" because he probably would have gotten into an accident as he used a confundus charm during his driving test.

I thought the image would still be kind of odd to read, but the students in my class seems to understand what it meant, although I did explain it to them. Perhaps they were just being nice. But it was generally well received. I think the piece is still stronger without the text. A strong, silent type of photograph, if that makes any sense.

Actually, that last sentence describes the photo horribly.

Kim Berens name sequence from Kim Berens on Vimeo.

When I was assigned to make a motion piece, I knew I wanted to use After Effects. I'm really not sure why I haven't played around with it before now. But I want to learn as much of it as I can before I graduate. I've been doing a lot of tutorials lately, which feels like I'm wasting time having fun and not working, but it's important. I love my career choice.

Anyway, so I started with a simple rain effect in another image, but when I rendered it it was very choppy. Also, when I attempted to upload it to Vimeo, it said the file was too large. Maybe that's why it didn't render smoothly? But because of that, I decided to give After Effects another go. I looked on Video Co-Pilot and unfortunately wasn't ready for this tutorial, but after watching this one, I thought I'd give it a go. The professional's sequence looks a lot better than mine, but I'm totally okay with that. I'm super excited with mine and I can't wait to get more comfortable with the program. I just hope I have time before I graduate (tick tock, tick tock).

I wanted it to look kind of dramatic, like something that would appear before a Masterpiece Theatre movie. I think it I were to change something, I would change the color of my name and play around with the texture because it doesn't really look like a pen or pencil actually wrote it. It's beige, so of course it doesn't.

Cannon Ball Projections

I recorded my sister walking and jumping into a pool of shiny blue material. How? Projecting her image onto that piece of cloth! I shot a stop-motion video of her jumping, masked her images in photoshop and created an animation that I projected. I do not have the recording of the projection yet, but once I do I will post the image. The idea was the I wanted to project something falling or jumping into water. I thought of my sister jumping in because she's a swimmer and we have plenty of swim gear around the apartment. I shot her walking and then seperately had her do the cannonball motion while sitting on a stool because she obviously could not do a cannonball in the studio (She could have, but it would have hurt).
After the critique, I think that people enjoyed the real-time aspect of it. You have to be there to see the piece, it's not just an image, although I can take a picture or video of it, it's a motion piece that changes once made digital.
I think if I were to use this piece as a jumping-off point (haha), I would try and find a way to use fabric as other objects that people encounter in their lives, like tables or  trees that the projected figure can interact with.

High Dynamic Range is like fudge.

HDR is good in little amounts.

My use of framing in the first image is very symmetrical. I wanted to emphasize how the stove looks like it is used frequently. The only lighting is the kitchen light on the camera's axis, and then the light above the stove. I took about four shots of different shutter speeds, and the resultant image has more even lightning than any of the four images. I don't much care for heavily HDRed images, so I intentionally toned down all the the options. I'm happy with the result, however, and will probably use the feature in the future, but only subtly.

I like that the highlight on the wall is not too bright, but I do feel the white stove-top could be brighter. I'm very happy with the shadows in the image. If I were to use this as a jumping off point for a series, I'd probably photograph people's kitchens (I'm interested in how other people eat) or maybe just the most used part of the living space. That would be interesting to see how people use their spaces to fit their personalities.

My second image is of my sister, who sat very still for me as I took about six or seven images of different shutter-speeds. I do feel the light is still overexposed, but the HDR was still effective with most of it. This image was difficult in using HDR becuase it either looked over-done or under-done. I played around with it or a while before I decided it looked normal.

I don't think I'd use this image as a jumping-off point for anything, because I don't think this image has much value. Maybe if it were the only image of my sister, but there are so many images of my sister, that this one does not stand out at all. I think my favorite part is the bird on top of the fruit bowl because of the way it's balanced and because it's a bird.

Time to Think About the Future

I forgot to bring the Windex, and didn't notice when the scanner would become dirty. However, my sweater proved to be a crucial friend whenever I would notice the smudges.

Regardless, for not coming as prepared as I would have liked (not only did I forget my wallet (I was going to buy transparent sheets in the art store), but I forgot my card to get into the room (luckily people were all over the building and I got in just fine). I live just to darned far away (not really) to go back to get these things. Part laziness, part I have a dinner party to go to tonight and I don't want to be late, but mostly it was that I can't stand a wasted trip - using up the gasoline and time - when it was very likely I could use the ingredients I brought with me.






So when I set up the scanner to prepare my project, I only had a CD case (transparent), petroleum jelly, dusting powder, and my time-turner. I'm surprised that I actually like a lot of the pieces I made. I brought the CD case because when I go into interviews, I often bring a CD with my digital portfolio on it (although a hard copy is better, I hear), so to be a jewel case, or what goes in it, is my work, which represents me, or rather, what I can do for an employer. But I don't know what the future is going to be like at all. Despite what hopefully is a well-rounded background, I don't know what I'm doing.

I didn't have the transparency paper to smear the petroleum jelly on, I instead put it into the CD case, which worked about wonderfully because it really shows how I have no idea if the piece that represents me to a potential employer is clear or not, if it really shows me, or if it just kind of shows me. Another way of looking at it is that the portfolio is my gateway to my future, but I can't really see what my future is. Whatever my future is, however, my portfolio is a major factor in getting me there.

The time-turner, along with of course representing my somewhat unnatural love of the Harry Potter story, represents my preoccupation with time. Like most people, I calculate how much time I should spend on this project, and then this project, and then this project. The time-turner also represents how my time at college is ending very soon. I'm looking forward to getting a job, but I love college and I know I will miss it. So the time-turner represents my diminishing time of college, but also the amount of time I devoting my preparing for my future.

The last one is when I realized I still hadn't used the baby powder. I sprinkled it on there and did a scan with my face over the powder, but I'm reading A Million Little Pieces, and the powder reminded me too strongly of drugs. But when I started cleaning off the powder, I thought it looks really cool, so I did a scan of that with my hand in it.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

These pictures are actually from assignment #4 for my color photography class, but I never posted them! I posted the works-in-progress, but not the final images! But alas, here they are!


The first three images are the ones you've seen before. They haven't changed too much (except maybe the last one) since the works-in-progess.
The idea came from this amazing cover of Over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwoʻole (originally from the Wizard of Oz). My sister loves the song as well, and when I came up with the idea for these images, it was a time when both Beth and I were really happy and constantly listening to this song. The song and these images just make me feel that happiness is bigger than just one person or two people - that people can spread happiness to other people just by being pleasant. 
I think the song is about Dorothy wanting a life with meaningful happiness, which is ultimately what she gets at the end of the movie when she returns to her family after wishing to go home. I feel the person in my images has already achieved that wisdom and is happy with her family and with her life, but she still likes to take her time just for herself, when she goes over the rainbow (there's a rainbow in the second image).
As for the order of the images, I really don't know. I like them in this order the best, but it doesn't really make sense. One image is over in the clouds, the second is her flying into the sky, and the last is her on the ground (probably), and the colors of the sky don't match up either. These are the way I originally imagined these images, and I never changed it. I tried, but I didn't like anything else, I like the way these look.


This last image I made in a night, the night before I had to print the images, actually. I went home and thought, I have to have one more image for my class. I had never done to re-make of a movie poster, which, if you know me, is very odd that I didn't do it for every assignment. I want to make movie posters as my career. I feel like most of the art I have created in my lifetime has been preparing me for my future career as film key art designer (posters, etc.) I just love it. I re-make my own movie posters for fun (mostly Harry Potter). I love trying to copy exactly, because then I learn why the designer did this instead of that. One can learn a lot from copying. I've made posters for a few students films, and I got to use my knowledge I gained from copying the masters!
Anyway, so I didn't have a lot of time, because I'd spent most of my time working on the above images. I looked through my movie posters inspiration folder on my computer and selected this Casino Royale poster. I didn't have a gun (real or fake) to use, however, and my roommate suggested I use my wand. I could not think of one legitimately good reason not too, so I did. I set up the lighting as closely to the original as I could. I shot it myself, so I thought it would be really hard to get the pose right. It isn't perfect, but it's close. I actually think the real reason it's not perfect is my shoulders are a lot smaller than Daniel Craig's shoulders. His simply fill more of the frame than mine could possibly. I did my best. In the end, it probably doesn't matter. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out. 
It might surprise you to learn that, not only is the background completely photoshopped from brushes (there is a very blurred out and nearly transparent picture of a house, just to give random variation of tone), including the lights, which are just several layers of the same things but slightly different opacities and colors, but the figure is actually made of up of three different images! One for my hand, one for my body and one for my head. As I was shooting this myself, running from camera to seat and posing in ten second, it was hard to get it completely right. So I just photoshopped it together. I think it's perfectly okay in this situation (unlike here, where I would have preferred to do it right during the shoot). In fact, I prefer photoshopping things for posters, I feel it's on of the few acceptable places to do so, and therefore I want to take advantage. As long as I never churn out anything like this Huckleberry Finn poster. First of all, it doesn't even look like Jim is running. But the worst part is, if you see the movie, you know the body of Elijah Wood is actually another character altogether. It's...  I mean, the poster's purpose is to make one want to see the movie, but once one does, it's obvious the body belongs to someone else!
I've been holding that in for years.

Lazy Sunday

Here is my video piece for my color photography class. I'm quite proud of it. That is, I find it really amusing. Thanks Lindsey for the idea at the end. ; )







Also, I have my other piece, which didn't take nearly as long, but I still find it fun. It is supposed to resemble the American Idol ads.

And then the image off the billboard.

With the video, I took pictures from my bed (I love my homework). I tried to make the first pictures abstracted, because the person is waking up and nothing really makes sense. But then as the sleeper stays in bed and slowly wakes up, the images become more clear and readable. I created the inside of the eye lids in Flash, exported them as jpegs, imported them into Final Cut, and added the blur in there. There is probably a better way, because I had to blur every single frame. Which wasn't too bad for this assignment, but for anything longer, that would have been really annoying. But this way I got to control how much blur I wanted in each frame. At the beginning of the eye opening and the end of the eye closing, the blur looks way to heavy at 100%, so I the beginning and end have around 30% and it works it's way up to 100%. Surprisingly that looks a lot more smooth than all frames being 100%.

The Darth Vader thing was a suggestion of one of my friends, Lindsey, as a joke. I did it anyway, and it was hilarious late at night when I was working on the piece, I still think so, but it didn't get much of a reaction from my class at 8:30 in the morning. Which is great in itself. But, yeah, the Darth Vader thing isn't part of the piece, really, and if you visit my vimeo, you'll find that bit missing.

As for my American Idol billboard, I just tried to look to the actual American Idol ads. Just to capture the spirit of the ad while making it look like it maybe came from a different season. I shot my friend in a unique, rock-star-y and hip-hop-y outfit holding a guitar, so it kind of speaks to all types of musicians: country, rock, pop, R&B, etc. I tried to keep the treatment of the type as close to the original ads as possible. It's a different font and texture, but I think it matches pretty closely, and I'm pleased with how it turned out.

A Lazy Sunday

Here's what I'm currently working on. It's a video, but it's not for my Time and Motion class - it's for my photography class! Imagine that

What this video is supposed to represent is an eye opening as the person rolls over in bed, contemplating getting up. I'm hoping to make the eye movements smoother. I exported the flash file as jpeg, but I think there needs to be more jpegs to create a smoother transition. I'll see what I can do.

Work in Progress for Photography

Here are my images where I use the cloud tutorial from before. I'm not sure how I feel about them yet, but I'm starting to like them. I think my issue is that this is not what I had originally planned, so I don't know where I'm going. Because I actually don't think they're that bad, just unexpected.

Here is a what I'm thinking of doing for my next Photography assignment. I want to reshoot both the "clouds" and the subject. In fact, I might not even do a person anymore, but we'll see. I'm thinking a lot of the film Science of Sleep. I don't want it to be exactly that same (obviously), but the idea that it doesn't look like an actual Earth-space I really like. Here is my ten minute collage that I did this morning just to help you get the idea of where I'm heading. Again, I plan on reshooting, so it will end up looking completely different.

Assignment 3: Place

For my forest photographs, I approached them all similarly as far as composition. I liked when the shadows were coming toward the camera and the sun is in the shot. I liked that the sunlight hitting the leaves would leave a nice outline, or highlight, and create this really crisp look to the photographs. For my other landscape shot, when I was there i was thinking the same thing, putting the sun in the back, but this one shot I was looking to the right of the sun, so there wasn't much compositional thought behind it besides capturing the texture of the field, but balancing it out with a third of the top dedicated to the sky. For The photo where I'm holding the old photograph of the same room, I really wanted all the doors and pieces of the old and new photographs to match up, but it never worked out because the dimensions are the same, so to match them up, I would either have to back up a lot and have a whole person in the picture, which I thought would be distracting. But the room didn't allow me to back up anymore, so it was pretty much impossible. Therefore, I just put the print in the middle of the shot and you can still tell it's the same room, but much updated.
I think my landscapes show a subtle dramatic side of nature. Nature is not always peaceful. The image with the guy, the concept was pretty much: climb on that limb. Of my friends, he was the only one who would do it. I wanted it to look somewhat like a shoot of a celebrity, where the person is the main focus. Same with the one where I have pussywillow coming out of my head and sleeves, I wanted the figure to be the main focus. Originally I wanted the background to be a forest, (which is why I have many pictures of trees), but the pussywillow completely disappeared with that background, so I changed it to this neutral flat background instead. The image where I'm holding the old photograph, the concept was just to point out the past and present and how things have changed so much.
The photograph that required the most work was the composite of me with the pussywillow coming out of my head and sleeves. It was not actually too difficult, I simply masked out the braches, shaded where I thought required shading, and played with the colors a little so there was a unified color and white balance. The one where I'm holding the photograph, I happened to be home one weekend and took that picture because I thought worded great for the assignment. The other images, I traveled to those location specifically for those photos.

My goal for creating the composite image was to create a realistic figure made of plants. I'm not sure how successful it came across. I love the legs, but not the hands and head as much. I don't think it is believable. For the in-camera collage photograph, my goal was to get that "my, how time has flown" feeling of the old photo within the new photo and the updated living room. The other photographs I simply wanted to create stunning fall-inspired landscape photos.

My in-camera collage photo reminds me of a few photographers who hold up old pictures of building and take new pictures of the streets those buildings were on and composite them together to show how time has changed. It is a very similar idea that have done with my living room. Here is an example of a photographer who does this sort of thing: http://www.sweet-station.com/blog/?p=11341.

Memory Composite

I made a panorama of a field, the hard and arguably more fun way (when you have time time, of course), and photoshopped an image of myself into it. It is inspired by a memory I have of running through a field at night time. I wasn't alone. I was with about twenty other people, but I didn't feel they needed to be included in the image.

I think I really want to start making landscapes. Not just to have landscapes, but to put people into them for posters. The background is just as important as the subject in the foreground.

As the image is so wide, when I uploaded it, it reduced the size. Therefore, I thought it would be nice to provide a detail, below.

Digital Collage Exercises

I did these a while ago to practice different methods of collaging images together in photoshop. The image in front of the Hogwarts castle I changed my head, but (hopefully) it's hard to tell it was photoshopped, therefore I have provided the oringial (which is shown second).

I also recently changed the way I select the outline of a person. I've always used the lasso tools, but in my photography class I've learned about masking and selecting through the pen tool. Although I feel comfortable using the lasso tools, I do think masking is actually a better way, because the image is still there, you can bring back what you cut out. Here's my example of that:

And then I played around with making part of the image illlustrated, which I think it very well executed in this poster:

But a lot less effective in my own:

Memory

Fake Sun, Fake Horns, and Fake Drama

My three final images for assignment #2 in my color photography class. My favorite is the last of my sister. She's being overly dramatic making pie, it's hilarious (to me).

This first picture is of my friend, Susan. This is a candid picture taken just after she bought the horns, but I thought it worked really well for the assignment. I altered the colors slighting, made them less vibrant, and gave the shadows a cyan-tinge.
When I took this picture is was simply a candid of my friend, but after I had chosen it for my project, I looked at it as a piece of art to see what it was saying. I think it literally says, "I'm trying on these horns, and I feel kinda dorky, but I'm okay with that". But if the person looking at this doesn't know it's candid, he or she might think it means, "I work for the devil, but I don't take my job seriously", which is what I imagine Susan thinking when I look at this picture. Or maybe she's thinking, "Yeah, I'm the devil, but don't judge me, there's really nothing I can do about it. I'm just trying to make a living just like everybody else," which is also funny.


The image of me sleeping on the coach was a lot of fun to work with. I shot the picture myself, so I was running from the camera to the couch over and over again. It looks like I just get to lie there and sleep, but it was actually a very active photoshoot!  I really like this one because the colors looks great (the prompt for this was complimentary, hence the red and green), and of course I love it because Hagrid makes an appearance. I thought of taking him out, but I really wanted to keep him in there. For a couple of years I have actually been kind of embarrassed about the my enthusiasm for Harry Potter, which came from someone close to me telling me that it was sad that people only read Harry Potter and never moved on the bigger and better books. What I think this person didn't realize was Harry Potter was the gateway book, which is exactly the opposite of what he thought. At least it was the gateway book for me (this is the very reason my blog is title Unembarrassed Enthusiasm, as a reminder to myself. Anyway, I know that seems off-topic, but all of that thought went into keeping Hagrid in this picture (and any picture with a Harry Potter reference), so I thought I may as well mention it.
The bright streaming sunlight thought the window is 100% completely photoshopped. Sorry to anyone who thought it wasn't.  Well, technically, the highlights on the couch, blanket, and my hair are not photoshopped, but the huge yellow glow is. I tried many different angles and intensities for the light and ultimately went with this one, feeling it looked the most natural. I am completely aware it doesn't look natural, but I like the way it looks and it creates the type of mood I wanted originally but couldn't achieve in-camera due to the actual sunlight and the angle with which is doesn't stream into my window.

This image is inspired by an image I did in my Photo 2 class that I took with a view camera. I loved the original pictures, but unfortunately for my kitchen, the film was black-and-white. The brilliant yellow of the walls, the blue of the hat, and (you can't see it here), the array of colors of the apron my sister, Beth, is wearing look too amazing to be recorded only in black-and-white. And so ever since shooting with view camera, I've wanted to reshoot in color with the exact same clothes. And we did! I also dressed up, in a big pink dress and dark red lips, and Beth took some pictures of me. So while I shot these pictures, that's what I'm wearing.
During the shoot I kept directing Beth to act like a dramatic, lonely house-wife, and I wasn't really sure why. I'm still not sure, but I knew what I wanted. I think I achieved it. Beth definitely looks like a way overly dramatic house-wife making pie (we actually made the pie during the shoot - sweet potato pie sans butter and sugar! - and ate it while looking at our shots. If you're interested in our attempts at healthy cooking, we have a blog called Fourth Broomstick).

Unfinal

I'm sorry, they're all of either myself or my sister. It's hard taking an hour from anyone else's time. But what do you think of the photos?

Work in Progress...

 For my current assignment in Color Photography, I have already shot a few images. However, I think I need to re-shoot the couch photos, because the image are incredibly grainy.

For the photo of my friend in the horns, this was just a snapshot that I took of my friend that I think came out really nicely. To be honest, I pretty much want to completely reshoot. I love photographing people, the only issue is the time where me and the model are available. I have a feeling I'll be turning in several self-portraits for this assignment.