Let me introduce you to BiRain, my favorite cute-handsome Korean singer
In this piece, I make him look like Romeo in Shakspear’s famous novel (everybody know what it is). And the dialogue is actually from that novel as well ^__^
Sources:
The guy: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~vk447/rain1.jpg
The gun: http://www2.itexas.net/dwharris/cb.jpg
The dialogue: http://www.julietandherromeo.com/dialogue.htm
AND THE FINAL ‘MEZZY’ COMPOSION
Okie…First of all, I’m not really in to Graffiti… Athough a lot of people think that’s an Street Art or something like that, I just can’t stop myself to perceive it as “How jobless people destroy community properties”.
Howerver, I still have to finish the task.
I made a clip with graffiti style as what the task is… It’s actually a combination of some random images that I found in my hard drive such as:
In my opinion, this idiom is best to remind the audience about
Saigon which is famous by its two seasons, rain and dry. Another reason is that I am an nostalgic person, so using the old name of Ho Chi Minh city, Saigon, following by an old phrase “after rain comes sunshine” would be totally appropriate. As a result, the nostalgia is chosen as the main feeling throughout the clip.
2. Contribution of the motion:
Motion plays an important role in forming the visual aesthetic of the piece. It is supposed to be smooth and calm as the nostalgia theme is chosen. The speed of motion is slow overall, it is increased slightly as well as the number of materials used. It represents how the identity of a person change day after day as well as the experiences achieved. From 1:07 to 1:14, many photos are flashed in to create the feeling of how fast life has changed as time elapsed. The speed is slow down at the end of the clip to give the feeling of the thing that does not change, like the sun rises and sets everyday.
3. Contribution of the composition
The composition was adjusted strictly in order to create the nostalgic theme. Most of the photos are old. Gentle voice recorded is play on the background of soft music. Text is used to help the audience follow the narrative voice and make the “slide show” less monotonous. The sound effect is exploited effectively from the raining footage and the war extracted movies. It give a stronger feeling, in compare with a rain photo or a war photo, of how heavy the rain is in
Saigon as well as the destructive “fire and sword” situation during the war. As the tagline is “after rain comes sunshine”, there is one raining scene appear at the beginning of the Identity piece and repeat at the end, and a sunrise scene was placed just before the clip finish.
4. Target audience
The target audience would be people who want to know about where I am from and by which culture I am influenced. My family and friends are also included because on different level, they contribute in forming my identity. To be honest, the clip could have an appeal to people who is interested in the history of Saigon-Ho Chi Minh city. However, that is not what I aim to do as my work is not a traveling advertisement. I did not really talk about Saigon in the real world but actually
Saigon in my mind.
After Effect Techniques
There is no complex technique employed in After Effect to create this piece of work. I mainly use the opacity adjustment to make the layers fade in and out. Blending mode is used for the documentary movie. Mask is applied to create the boundary of the war movie, and the way my name appear at the ending scene. However, it seems to be boring with all these flat images and 2D animation so I add a lighting layer to make it looks more interesting. I did not use any camera movement as it is unnecessary.
Reference list for Assignment 1:
1. Photos:
Many thanks to:
Henry Bechtold for the photos and postcards of
Saigon, old and now. http://www.henrybechtold.com/Postcards/Postcards.html
(accessed September 2nd, 2008)
Documentary Library.
http://baigiang.bachkim.vn/
(accessed September 9th, 2008)
and Nguyen, Thanh Hai (my father) for all the family photos.
I know it's quite late to talk about dis topic so i'm not gonna say much... Dat is one of the photos that i took last weekend from the Mid-Autumn Festival organised by The Vietnamese Community here in Brisbane. I'll finish the whole stock n publish it later on!!! Hop u guys HAD a great Autumn!!! Btw, it's Spring now in my place T___T (but i didnt have any "spring-feeling"...damn it!)
Oh…wait… this is actually not what is the task about… I’m supposed to look for references for the Temporal Identity Assignment… Sorry
But… yeah… I think it’s a good practice to get used to After Effect. I recorded the footages and put them together with an interesting bloloblala sound background (that I completely have no idea what they are talking about coz it’s Japanese).