Category: Sequence and Messaging

In the last couple of sessions we looked at static and sequential imagery and how to add actions and sound to a sequence. This week’s session was focused on action and interaction, by looking and different events on social media. It’s all about the companies creating something to get the consumer to interact. We looked at several types of comparisons, different events from similar categories, different social media platforms, different areas and different posts from same organisation. We looked at TikTok and Instagram as our social media platforms. Some of the organisations we researched were Coachella, Reading, Glastonbury and the Serpentine Gallery. This is relevant to our project as one of the outcomes we need to produce is a social media video, for Instagram or TikTok, so this is the type of research that we’ll need to do related to our industry/ event type. Below are all my notes that I made during the session and in my independent research:

Comparing different organisations : Coachella Instagram vs Reading Instagram:

Comparing different social media platforms: Reading Instagram vs Reading TikTok:

Comparing different social media platforms: Coachella Instagram vs Coachella TikTok:

Comparing different social media platforms: Glastonbury Instagram vs Glastonbury TikTok:

Comparing different areas: Burberry TikTok vs Hypnomotion TikTok:

Comparing different social media platforms: Serpentine Gallery Instagram vs Serpentine Gallery TikTok:

Comparing different posts within same organisation: Serpentine Gallery Instagram:

Stephen Dahl: he works in social media marketing at Sage Publications. Below are some of quotes from him about consumer culture theory:

Reflection: this session was interesting and has taught me lots about social media marketing. I learnt about the companies we looked at but more importantly I now have a better idea of how to research social media platforms in order to inform my creative decision making in the project. This type of research will help me better target my work to the relevant audience for a specific industry, product or event.

After last week’s session on static and sequential imagery, we looked at the action and sound of a sequence. This session was all about way of adding elements to a sequence to make it more engaging and enjoyable for the viewer. We first looked at an artist zine from the early 1900s called Cabaret Voltaine (Cabvolt). The message of the zine was about the importance of mistakes in an artists’ creative process. This links to the task we had later on in the session. The zine and my notes about it can be seen below:

Videos: then we started to look at different examples of videos to analyse the sequencing, actions and sound. My favourite one we looked at was a music video by Brazilian rapper Emicida titled ‘Pantera Negra’ meaning black panther in Portuguese. I like the limited colour palette of black, grey and red. This emphasises the title and the contrasting red is really eye catching and bold. The visuals are nicely synced to the song, sometimes with the lyrics and other times with the beat. The stand out part for me is the combination of photography and hand drawn overlays. This is a style I really like and would consider incorporating into my project work. Below are some screenshots from the video and som notes I made about it:

Movie titles: we also looked a some title sequences from the YouTube channel ‘Movie Titles’. These are a really good source of inspiration as they focus on music and actions. They are sequenced in a way to be engaging and capture the viewers attention, something that we’ll need to do for our social media videos (sequential outcome). My favourite of the ones we looked at was the Pink Panther title sequence from 1963. I like the fun and playful way that the characters interact with the credits. Below are some notes and screenshots from the video:

Mistakes task: this was our main task for the session and links back to the ideas seen in the Cabvolt zine. We had to pick from a selection of words and write it with random objects. Then we needed to create a stop motion sequence out of this word. The stop motion sequence needs to contain an action, something has to happen to the word.

This was the first sequence that I made. I chose the word ‘SUN’ and made it out of a pearl necklace and a chain of yellow paper clips. I created the stop motion sequence of Procreate. The action in the sequence is the paper clips moving to go from ‘U’ to ‘N’. The idea behind this movement was to symbolise a sunrise and sunset. The movement isn’t particularly smooth but this plays into the idea of allowing mistakes and imperfections to be in your creative process.

The second word I chose to do was ‘NEW’, which I made entirely out of paper clips. I used a range of different colours but made one fade into another to add another element of interest to my sequence. My thought process behind the action was to make the word appear from nothing so the action symbolises the word. I chose to make the canvas grow with the word to further emphasise this idea. I also made this stop motion sequence on Procreate.

Premier Pro: Adobe Premier Pro is an industry standard video editing software that I haven’t used before. It’s a very powerful tool so we could be used to make our social media videos. We had an introduction to the software during the session which was helpful but I felt I needed more in depth knowledge so I watched some extra videos after the lesson.

This is a labelled diagram of Premier Pro’s interface:

These are the notes I took from the in class introduction and my own additional research about importing media, essential tools, exporting and more:

iMovie: iMovie is another video editing software that I’m not familiar with. It’s a more basic software but is still good to learn about as it can be helpful for simple functions like adding audio to a video. One benefit of iMovie is that I can use it on my iPad so it’s more accessible for me whereas Premier Pro has to be run on a computer.

Some notes I made about iMovie:

Additional sequences: I decided to make a couple more stop motion sequences at home. To make these I used Procreate to construct the sequence and iMovie to add the audio.

New: I chose to make another sequence using ‘New’. This one looks a lot more professional in regard to smoothness of the animation and colour. Instead of taking photos I used a scanner to get each frame. This worked better as the colours came out a lot stronger. The idea behind the sequence is that the letters appear from one side, travel across the screen. They get scrunched up and leave the screen. Then the whole sequence is reversed so that the text appears again, making it ‘new’. This is a screen shot of my iMovie project, it has the stop motion sequence I made on Procreate above and the audio below:

These are 2 versions of the final video, the only difference is that the second one has a cartoonish style filter. My inspiration for these was children’s TV show titles so I chose fun colours, movement and audio.

Old: I chose to explore a different word for this one. I wanted to represent ‘old’ in a different way for each letter. For ‘o’ I used an apple and it slowly gets eaten, ‘l’ is a stack of coins that falls and ‘d’ is a piece of paper that gets cut. I made the sequence by taking photos and using the animation feature on Procreate. I chose to add movement lines to emphasise what is happening to each letter and make the movements more dynamic and cartoonish.

This is the finalised video, I’m happy with the actions of each letter and the randomness of what each one is made of. Also I think the movement lines add a nice layer to the sequence. Constructing the audio was fun, I chose different sound effects from iMovies library and made slight adjustments such as speed and volume to make them all fit nicely together.

Reflection: I enjoyed this session, I was able to learn a lot and get lots of inspiration for by project by watching different examples of sequences including music videos and movie titles. Also it was really helpful to get an introduction to Premier Pro and iMovie. I’d like to try out Premier Pro in the next couple of weeks and continue to work with iMovie for more simple video creation tasks. The mistakes task was really fun, I enjoyed creating several stop motion sequences with various methods. They progressively got better and I think adding audio made them more engaging and enjoyable to watch.

In the first session of the module we looked at static and sequential imagery, for the project outcome we need to create both static and sequential work so this was a good introduction to the topic. Below are some notes I made from the seminar slides:

Our main task of the session was to explore the short film titled ‘Crows’ by Akira Kurosawa, made in 1990. Above are some notes I made while watching the film. It is about a man who goes to a gallery to view some Van Gogh paintings. He is then transported into the paintings and becomes immersed in the world. He meets Van Gogh and then goes on a journey through the paintings, with his surroundings becoming progressively more stylised. It ends with him back in the gallery looking at the paintings.

We responded to the film with a sequencing task. We were put into groups and given a set of screenshots from a part of the film. We had to reorder the static images to create a new sequence which gives the story a new meaning. These where the sequences that my group created:

This is a review of the sequences that all the groups made and what their focus was. I was in group 4 and we focused on editing as for the second sequences we made we chose to discard some of the images in order for our sequence to flow better. We were also guided by how we wanted the sequence to sound. For our first sequence we planned to have it paired with an intense, dramatic horror movie inspired audio. Some other aspects that other groups focused on were colour, composition, contrast and story arc. These are all ideas that I could apply to my sequential project work.

Here are some more notes I made from the session including some key terminology and ideas about photography in regard to sequence and messaging:

One of the photographs taken by David Octavius Hill:

Reflection: This was a really enjoyable session, I think it was a good introduction into the module and some of the key concepts we will be working with. After this session I have a stronger understanding of the terms static and sequence and how I’ll need to use these for the project. The task was fun as it got us thinking about how we can compose a sequence from a series of static images and how editing the sequence can give it a different meaning. I found physically having the sequence in front of me and being able to rearing the images very helpful. Also I really liked Kurosawa’s short film and plan to watch more of his work.

In this session we were introduced to the Sequence and Messaging Module. Below are the notes I made about the Module aims, the briefs, assessment criteria and deadlines.

Project brief:

Assessment details: