Daniel Malia

Ferris Bueller Scene Recreation:

I underestimated the scale of this recreation. I didn’t consider sound at all. But we soldiered on. We recorded sound by having one of our team members holding a recording device between and below the actors. So she was crouched in a very funny position. We used a tripod at very high angles to recreate the scene which made the camera wobble even more since we were shooting on a lawn. You can see the focus shifting a little throughout the video.

Lighting test:

We used my Spongebob model for the film noir lighting tests. The toy was hollow and because of that the light made it look like it glowed. Even though it looked cool, it messed up the silhouettes we were trying to achieve. We shot the lighting tests in a dark room inside a cabinet to make it as dark as possible. At first, the light was very harsh. Thus, we used paper to soften it a little and it helped us achieve some good lighting.

Week Three’s Excercise:

I took a back seat on this project and didn't direct. Our group had differing ideas on what should be shot. Instead of lounging around and wasting the precious time we had, we got on and just started shooting. Xiao Xuan wanted to replicate a shot from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Thus, we found a stairwell and did a homage to it.

Week Two’s Excercise:

Having a storyboard really did speed things up. During production, however, the noise was a problem. There were people being noisy in the hallways which forced me to cut out the sound completely and replace it with music. I felt the music helped with the editing process too because I cut on the beats. Besides giving the editing process a backbone/structure, the music created an added to the weary theme of the short. The scooter we used on the short was Steven’s, he parked it outside the building which was very convenient to have as a prop.

Week one’s exercise:

This video was short and silly to make. We had fun experimenting with different creative shots. I came up with the silly premise of the video and used heartbeats as a template/guide on when to direct the editing cuts. I feel the eerie music adds to the absurdity of the overall premise.

From the 80s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx_G2a2hL6U

Currently

https://youtu.be/EA0P1Cd7o4I

I chose the theme of perception for my assessment 3. Naturally, I went in the direction of making memes again for my final ever studio assignment. I brainstormed the idea of making them in different platforms. I narrowed it down to paper collage, video, image and regular drawing.

The way that I created the paper collage is by printing and cutting out a sheet of paper with the images on them. I then glued it with regular glue to assemble and used a scanner on the digital darkroom. If I had the time I would have taken the idea of memes in different platforms further. I wanted to do a 3D print of a meme, but Vaughan seemed reluctant to participate.

Just like memes. Changing the context of these memes changes the perspective of how we view a meme. A new context keeps the meme funny. By breaking these meme moulds, I attempted to make memes into a more physical and tangible thing.

The final video incorporates all the memes I’ve made in this assignment. Having Vaughan in the video is integral because I have made 'meta' memes about him throughout the semester on Tumblr. Keyframing and green screen were used to create the final video. 

I feel this video is a shit post, I would actually admit that I've been shitposting for all my ADAD assignments. But it's an act of rebellion, I game the system using my own perception. If I hit all the criteria in the rubric I can't fail, right (please don't fail me, Vaughan)? But would it matter? I already earned my 65% to pass right?

Bibliography:

Adeney, E 2012, ‘The Sampling and Remix Dilemma: What Is the Role of Moral Rights in the Encouragement and Regulation of Derivative Creativity Digital Sampling/Remix Culture Forum: Papers from the Forum Held on Friday 6 July 2012 at Deakin Waterfront Campus, Geelong'. Deakin Law Review, Issue 2 2012, accessed 28 May 2018, <http://heinonline.org.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/deakin17&id=354&type=text&collection=journals>.

Marwick, A (au.) 2013, Memes, Understanding People in Their Social Worlds, Fall 2013, 12-13, accessed 29 May 2018, <https://search-proquest-com.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/docview/1459191506?OpenUrlRefId=info:xri/sid:primo&accountid=12763>.

Mckeough, J 2012, 'Copyright Review: Issues for Cultural Practice Digital Sampling/Remix Culture Forum: Papers from the Forum Held on Friday 6 July 2012 at Deakin Waterfront Campus, Geelong'. Deakin Law Review, Issue 2 2012, accessed 30 May 2018, <http://heinonline.org.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/deakin17&id=332&type=text&collection=journals>. 

Miller, G 2015, Greenscreen package, accessed 29 May 2018, <http://www.filthyfrank.net/>.

For this meme I went into the medium of video. I cropped out a picture of Vaughan and made it into a PNG for it to be transparent. I then ultra keyed the green screen video and overlaid screenshots of my Tumblr. If I had more time I would make the key framing of Vaughan’s head more accurate and mess with scales too to improve the illusion of movement.

For this meme I printed out images, cut them up and glued them together montage style to create art and craft style meme. I scanned it using the scanner in the digital darkroom so that it returns to its digital image form.

I revisited the standard meme making software for this meme, PhotoShop. I used the “Is this a pigeon” meme as a template because of its sudden resurgence in popularity after 2011.

For my assessment 3, I plan on using the weekly theme of perception. My plan is to make memes in different mediums other than the regular old PhotoShop and collate them together in the end as one work. This is just one of the mediums I will work in:

Week 9 Perception: Oracle by Anish Kapoor a response.

Vaughan added this artwork to his own version of the weekly slides. Anish Kapoor has the creative rights to the pigment “Vanta Black”, the blackest paint in the world. The artwork messes with our perception, it chiefly messes with our sense of sight. The rock formation seems endless like a void.

We then searched online for any similar artworks, and came across this:

It is by Kristian Nygård and titled “Optipess“, it responds to depression. 

Our response to “Oracle” is to see if we can re-create the concept with humans. We started brainstorming and settled on getting a black morph suit to recreate the effect. So we decided to buy one.

We then brainstormed on how to actually use the suit, we whittled down the options into a photo portrait or video. The concept throughout our discussion was a man wearing it but acting normal. The only thing that’s different is that we can’t see any part of him.

Eventually, we settled on the video idea. This is our shooting list of what is needed:

Laying down the guitar track was especially difficult because it was really hard to see and hold chords properly in the morph suit. It took upwards of one hour to get a good take. 

The suit was also very hot, I had to take a few breaks to take the mask off so I don’t get claustrophobic. I would’ve turned a fan on but that would have messed with the audio quality.

Here are a few pics of me in the suit + clothes:

During the shoot, we made sure to clap sync everytime we were gonna start recording to make it easier for the editor. In the end, we had to cut a lot of stuff to keep it under the 5-minute limit.  

Statement:

Daniel and I were taken aback by Anish Kapoor’s artwork, Oracle. Taken from Vaughan’s version of the weekly lecture slide of Perception. In the video, we have decided to produce a video after debating whether it should be a photo portrait or video. We liked the aesthetic of something everyday being roughly removed in Photoshop using the select tool and paint bucket tool. This led us to the idea of getting dressed in a morph suit with normal clothing on top.

We played with the concept of perception by doing normal and everyday things wearing a morph suit. We aimed to show what would happen if the inner self is blank. Identifying things such as race and sex are hidden by the morph suit. The viewer would become unbiased and instead have a different lens to look from.

In the end we continued and developed Kapoor’s idea of messing with our perception of objects by having a “cut out” aesthetic. The raw footage took ages to upload from my home so I had to go to uni to upload. It would’ve took upwards of 24 hours to upload everything to the cloud. We split the cost of the morph suit and brainstormed the shot list and idea together. The filming took 2 days to complete, we filmed together on campus. After that, I brought home the equipment and shot the footage needed at location. 

The song played on the guitar is “A Day In The Life” by The Beatles, recording the track was very difficult because of the morph suit. The reason I chose the song was because it gives a detached and dispassionate way of looking at the everyday life we are so content to let pass.

Daniel edited the video using premiere from home and uploaded it to YouTube for easy viewing. I gave my thoughts and recommendations and he changed some bits to make the video the best it can be. We have collaborated really well to make this video happen, if I were to do it again I would want us to start the project earlier to get more time to refine the details

Bibliography:

Kapoor, A. 2013. Oracle

Nygård, K. 2012. Optipess

In this assessment, I have chosen to explore the video medium, this video was inspired by Planet Bin Chicken (Matt Eastwood & David Johns, 2017), be it less majestic. 

Throughout the experimentation process, I created memes, music and a set of questions. I thought it’d be great to combine them into a lighthearted interview about the most boring thing ever, a box.

Keeping the idea of transformations, I created meme like drawings to enhance the video watchability. I made the drawings using PhotoShop and added them to the video using Premiere.

Here are the drawings by themselves:

The “Music”  playing throughout the video was made using a toothbrush and a box, it was recorded using my phone. I looped the clip to fit the whole video as it was only 16 seconds long, it was in 4x4 timing I had the four sides of the box in mind when composing. The short “A whole new world” clip was made by using my Yamaha keyboard on the square lead synth setting to keep with the box concept.

In this assessment, I thought of the concept of a box instead of a physical box. I looked at performance artists as my inspiration to have the interviewees to play with the box. Yoko Ono’s instruction pieces, particularly Pea Piece (1960), were a source of inspiration for this video.

Bibliography:

Eastwood, M, Johns, D. Planet Bin Chicken, 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4dYWhkSbTU>

Tibbitt, P. Idiot Box, SpongeBob SquarePants, 2002

Ono, Y. Pea Piece, 1960.

I started messing around with my box and I noticed an something important! The sound it makes! I used a balsa wood stick and my metal ruler to lay down a rhymic percussion beat. 

Then I used my Yamaha keyboard and chose the Square Lead synth option because of the box theme, duh. 

I wanted to add some nonsense lyrics that sounded like DaDaist artist Hugo Ball’s poetry, but making the 2 track clip was hard enough. “I, Zimbra” was a song by the talking heads that adapted Ball’s. “Gadji beri bimba” into a song.

Memes are boxes. Let me rephrase that, memes are contained in a box. Thus memes are fair game for this assessment! 

To help link it more to the topic of boxes, I will exclusively make memes that are only about boxes. 

Theoretically speaking, memes are boxes that keep transforming over and over. A template can be transformed infinite times under a different caption or context. Take the new “Gru meme” for example, over a week it has exploded to different variations. Here are some examples:

This is one I made myself:

Here are some memes I made using photoshop:

Here is the original memes/templates:

With these memes I’ve transformed, I see a parallel between myself and Richard Prince’s work. Although I significantly altered the context of the original meme, the original meme by the artist was used without permission.