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Final Paper

Link to final: 

For this project, I was originally inspired by an article that I read that was celebrating the 25th anniversary of the album OK Computer by Radiohead. That album is both extremely important to me and to the music world. I wanted to somehow pay tribute to the album and wanted to highlight the journey you are taken on when you listen to each song.

At first, I had the idea of doing a bit of a mashup, featuring small clips from each song to let the audience go on a journey through the album, and then accompanying that with a story about a modern day hero going through struggles and then coming to terms with his identity. However, I couldn’t quite get the songs to line up well with the storyline and vise-versa.

When I went back to the drawing board, I decided to focus on just one song and of course chose my favorite song both on this album and of all time, “No Surprises”. This song tells the story of someone who is constantly bombarded by life, love, and their job and feels extremely run down and uncomfortable with their existence until they finally find comfort in the simplicity of life. The music video for this song also really inspired me, and the video I made is an attempt to recreate the emotions of the video. The video is extremely simple- it’s filmed in just one continuous shot, and simply features a close-up shot of the lead singer of the band’s head in a tank that is slowly being filled with water, while the lyrics to the song and various lights are reflected on the glass. Even though its really simple, you go on an emotional roller coaster watching his head slowly submerge until he is fully underwater without air, and you experience pure joy and relief when the water is finally drained and you see him smile as he is able to gasp for breath. This video really highlights the change from torment to relief that is conveyed in the song.

For my video, I wanted to see if I could emulate the same type of feelings you get watching that video in a music video of my own. I also did a one-shot video and tried to create a storyline that conveyed the change from tortured to calm and safe (even if boring) that the lyrics portray. In order to do this, I dressed up as a “criminal”, with fake guns, golf clubs, masks and dark clothes, and then slowly walked in a straight line as I slowly shed the “criminal” elements of my outfit and replaced them with typical business clothes. I intended the audience to get the biggest emotional impact when the camera zooms in close to my face as I shed the mask and wipe off the dark makeup under my eyes, and walk away from my straight line or “past life” toward the safety and comfort of my home. I also used the clipping tools in iMovie to cut some pieces of the song so that this moment would happen as the song swells right before the end.

To make the video, I used various props. I also really relied heavily on the clipping tool as I had to cut the song down to the exact length I wanted it to be- I had to remove big instrumental chunks in the middle-adn then make sure that the events of the video matched up with the parts of the song they were supposed to represent. I also stabilized the video a bit (I had to get a friend to hold the camera and walk backward filming me after I set everything up because the timing of everything had to be right since it was one shot and I couldn’t get any of my friends to understand the timetable so I had to act it out myself, and they moved their arm a bit). Finally, I edited the color of the video, making it black and white to increase the darker emotions I wanted to stand out and messing with the exposure to make it seem like it was darker out than it actually was.

Essay:

For this project, I decided to make some 3D word art for a project I needed to complete for my anthropology of the undead (zombies) class. For the project, our group was tasked with making up our own zombie story and dressing up as zombies for a presentation in class. I thought that it would be cool if I made posters for each of our characters and used photoshop to make some word art that looked similar to the type of lettering that was used on old horror films.

For each picture, I first used the portrait editing skills we learned to touch up the photos, and then I made them black and white to really mess with the contrast of the images to make them look more creepy and make sure that our makeup stood out. Next, I overlayed a png file of some fog to again add to the creepiness factor, and finally I created and added the 3D words.

For both of these magazine covers, I wanted to do something that was a little bit different than a typical cover with each. This worked out well because the portrait I used was kind of edgy I guess, so it lent itself easily to a different magazine style.

For the first one, I started with the letter. I chose M because our last name is Meanor, but I also loved the way that the letter framed his body when blown up to a huge size. I used this as the title of the magazine instead of a more typical title that is placed at the top of the page. When placing the other text on the image, it took a lot of moving the text around to make sure that the image of the whole was balanced. In the same vein, I had to be really mindful of how much of the pink text I used to make sure it stayed powerful, so I tried to keep it for just the most important text. Additionally, I originally just had white and pink text, but it seemed pretty flat, so I added in the gray to change things up.

For the second cover, I wanted to do a more traditional format, because I wanted to practice making the title text look like it was behind my brother. I chose a more flourished font that looked good in all capitals and paired it with a neat block-styled font. To make this cover more fun, I first layered solid teal, and then lowered the opacity, then made a selection of the photo inverted. I originally had the image split down the middle, but the inverted effect looked weird on his face, so I used the rule of thirds and moved the inverted portion to the side.

In general, to make the magazine covers less traditional, I had to think of interesting headlines that I thought would appeal to different subcultures. I also made the conscious effort to keep the images darker in general and I used what could be considered trendy colors.

With this assignment, I really wanted to just kind of experiment with extremes of light and dark and get a feel for effects that I liked. I originally had some ideas for portraits with the long exposure app, but the app was giving me bad quality photos, so I decided to instead go for experimentation and see what I could get with just streaks of light instead. I found that I really enjoyed oversaturating the colors on some of them and making the background darker. This gave the pictures a neon-y city feel to them. Then, on the bottom two pictures, I wanted color, but in a more muted form, to kind of make you feel like you’re passing through an unknown place in the night.

Again this week I wanted to go for a gritty and urban look for my portraits. In order to try to get this feel, first, I took my brother (the subject) to an abandoned house on our street and to the train tracks and abandoned warehouse at the end of our road. I thought that both the lines from the house and the tracks and the run-down look of the buildings would help achieve this feel. Overall, with the edits I made, I thought that by exaggerating the contrast of everything, and by lowering the exposure of the background in each picture that that would also help to make things look grittier. Even though I took the pictures around sunset, I wanted them to look darker, almost night time. Honestly, having the pictures in black and white helped me do this a lot more effectively, but I also lowered the exposure of just the background (using the different select tools) on all of the photos.

Overall, I wanted to use pictures that felt abandoned or run down in some way. I used all of these pictures because I thought they conveyed some sort of decay. I thought this was fitting because its winter and everything looks a bit sad and run down.

1. In this picture, I cropped the image to make the lines from the bridge appear more symmetrical, and so the other end of the bridge would be in the center. The, I warped the image to make it look like someone was seeing the bridge as if they were standing on it (the original image was angled more towards the sky). Then, I made it black and white and messed with the color tones to make the forest really dark and to show the rust and moss on the bridge. I wanted it to look abandoned and creepy.
2. This was actually an old picture that I re-edited because I thought it fit well with the rest of my pictures. Once again, I warped it to try to make the house look more at eye level because the original picture had some funky angles. Next, I messed with the brightness and contrast to bring out the darker tones of the brick. Then, I selected the sky and bottom of the grass and made those darker to have the house stand out more. I wanted to make the house look like it was somehow calling you to it.
3. This picture I wanted to show the similarity of these two houses/garages. I liked the lines of the telephone wires and I wanted to make the picture a bit darker to highlight those, the imperfections of the houses and the sunset as well.
4. This picture is of an old car at a car meet. I wanted the inside to look smoky and dark, like a callback to when the car was originally in use. So, I made the exposure on everything really low and then selected the two windows and made those darker as well because the contrast was really high. Unfortunately, because this picture was taken on an iPhone, this kind of made the rain on the window look gritty…
5. In this picture, I wanted to really highlight the vastness of the unused railroad/lumberyard behind my house. I thought that by making the sky really big in the frame, it should emphasize how far the lumberyard stretched out. Then, I made the contrast high and lowered the exposure of any remaining bright areas to make the scene look lonely and abandoned.

I really liked trying to frame things differently with my camera. It was interesting to see how this changed the picture. Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to my car this week so I didn’t get to go to all of the spots that I wanted to take picture of, but I will save those ideas for another assignment. I’m excited to be able to do portraits or include pictures with people because Ive got some neat ideas for those.

Additional edits I made:

Warm temp

Original

Cool temp

Low exposure

Original

Overexposure

I set about exploring the different range of settings I could use on my photos really just by going through each tool and seeing how each one changed the picture, before choosing the settings I liked the best. In general, I think I found that I like my photos to be underexposed. I like the shadowy and moody feel it gives each of the images. It almost feels as if you’re stepping into a different world, and you have to crawl and duck and search to arrive there, rather than just looking at the image and seeing everything at face value all at once like you do when a photo is overexposed or at least has a high exposure. Although, I do like how the bus looks in the overexposed photo I have above. It makes the COTA bus look kind of like a space ship.

I am a little more undecided on which colors I like more. I think it depends more on what I want to achieve with each photograph. In the above examples I have taken, I believe I like the warm tones a bit better because it makes the trees and flowers look a bit sun-kissed almost like a fairy wonderland- it’s whimsical. On the other hand, the cool toned photo looks a bit eerie maybe.

Both of these photos add to the shared community of OSU. The photograph of the woods and flowers was taken on campus and acts as a reminder for me that although Ohio State is located in downtown Columbus, a natural escape is never too far away. The photograph of the bus is an example of my personal identity within OSU because I take the bus to get from my home in another part of the city to campus every day, and there are a lot of students who also do this.

Additional edits I did for fun: