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.