Ari Aronoff Final Project

 

Concept: Akira is one of my favorite films of all time. I could talk about anything relating to this movie; the animation, the cultural impact, even details about how the movie's production. Of course, as an animation appreciator, I had to make this project an ode to my all time favorite. The original idea was to do a variation of the tape project but with slightly different material. I work at a print shop and cut some sticker vinyl into the shape of the hiragana letters for 'Akira'. From there I wanted to project onto the letters but sadly when I started to project the vinyl didn't catch the light well so I shifted plans.

Technique: This composition was fairly simple to do, just fairly time consuming. The first step was deciding what song I was going to use. There's an excellent video on YouTube of some 3D recreated visuals from Akira put to a remix of the main theme, so I decided to use that as it sounded a little haunting and 'epic'.

 Then I watched Akira more than a couple times to think on what footage I wanted to use. Ultimately, I decided to use the scenes of  destruction from the end because it would pair with the musical theme well. I then spent time editing the film footage to sync with the music in Premiere Pro. Then in MM I traced the vinyl cutouts and gave them a strobe effect that somewhat synced to the music as well. Because the light didn't catch well on the vinyl, I offset the position of the projected shapes to give it a little more depth.

Interpretation: The final product didn't quite meet my initial vision but after some of the technical and material difficulties I was very satisfied with the way this turned out. The way the video syncs with the music still gives me chills sometimes, but that could just be because I love this film THAT much.

*Side note: Big apologies for missing the critique, I had stuff done but couldn't upload because of an 80 render I was doing on the remote access labs and couldn't use my home computer/internet. Everyone's projects looks great though!