Friday, May 4, 2018

Maritza Soriano Project 04: Relief Mapping

Concept

When I saw the head sculpture, my first thought was to use it as a backdrop to tell the a story of someone's thoughts. So, I was thinking, "What do I think about the most?"
I'm a very sentimental person, and I tend to look back into my past often, so I wanted to present an archive of my memories, an ode to the people who I carry in my heart. In order to really make this project personal and put a piece of my heart into it, I decided to use the song "Hermoso Cariño" which is a song close to my heritage, and my family in general. In fact, it's the song that my grandfather sang to me for my Quinceñera. 
My second projection was my way of learning and honing my editing and video work. I decided to mash up two things that've been hitting close to home as of late. Paramore's music has been with me ever since I was little, reminding me of my sister, and have been a bright light when things seemed bleak and endless. Their summer 2017 album "After Laughter" deals with the band's anxieties and pessimism, and I wanted to create visuals from their music videos, and put it with the song "ECHO" by Crusher-P which deals with the topic of anxiety and such. I felt the two would provide a great creative outlet for me in this project.  

Process

The first composition required me to go through my files and look for as many evocative pictures/videos as I could find. (Mostly thanks to airdrop!) I pulled videos from Facebook, pictures from Instagram, media from Snapchat Memories, and from my phone's gallery. After that, I took everything, put it into AfterEffects, and made necessary cuts and adjustments to try to get as much media on the screen. Working with weird aspect ratios (thanks to vertical phone filming) was difficult, and instagram photos are tiny (Don't even get me started on facebook videos). But everything was used and incorporated!







The second composition proved to be pretty difficult, considering that prior to making it, I had no idea how to edit video in AfterEffects. I took my videos, precomposed them, made "supercuts" (cutting and splitting footage I wanted to use) and then started piecing them together in the main composition timeline. I wanted the lyrics of the song to clearly be reflected by the visuals, which sometimes required multiple video clips layered on top of one another. There were a TON of layers, but precomposing them made things a little more manageable. Long and tedious, but a labor of love.








Interpretation

I learned how to spatial scan a object to project onto in MadMapper, I also got to get a little more familiar with line and mask controls this go around. Along with some basic editing skills that I had originally lacked. However, I learned how to put my heart into my projects, even when I'm in a rut and when times are hard. 

Recordings


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