Esther Magege : Assignment #1 Backdrop Mapping Proposal

Concept

For this project, I was required to photograph an architectural sire to serve as a backdrop for projection mapping. This photograph served as the backdrop for 3 Pre-Set compositions to express a conceptual idea. Using tools such as Adobe Photoshop and MadMapper, I was able to create a series of compositions that expressed what I had in mind.

My concept for this project was inspired by the second Avatar movie that came out 2 months ago. I was inspired by all the ocean waves and I imagined that it would be cool to have the contrast of blue appear on the building as well as the motions of waves being projected.

Design Process

The first part of this project required me to photograph an architectural site (interior or exterior) to serve as a background. After exploring and photographing the area around me, I chose a photo that I felt was interesting to work with.

Cinemark (Music City Mall)

The next step I took was to darken the sky. Since this was an exterior shot in the afternoon, I wanted to simulate an evening/night setting for the projection mapping. I went into Adobe Photoshop and selected just the sky to create a mask layer over. For this image, I created create two mask layers each. One was a curves layer that I played around with to lower the exposure of the images. The second mask layer was a photo filter layer in which I placed a blue filter over the sky to simulate an evening/nighttime setting. After these alterations, I exported the image in the same dimensions as the projector in MadMapper.

Cinemark (Music City Mall)

The exported image was placed in MadMapper and applied as a backdrop. Then I added quads on top of that. I honestly was struggling a bit more than expected and so I kept it simple and projected it onto the flat walls of the building and ground.

Interpretations:  

For the project, I was kind of inspired by the second Avatar movie which is why there is a lot of blue and ocean-themed projections. However, I'm not really satisfied overall with the project. I'm happy that I did learn to use MadMapper and I feel that I have an okay grasp of the software but my project is not what I wanted it to be. I feel that I didn't express the concept well enough.