Kristen Lowe's 4D Design Portfolio

Work I have done in my 4D Design class at Pratt Institute. 2013-2014. Also check out my other blog http://kristenalexandralowe.tumblr.com/ to see a larger collection of my artwork!

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Cinematic Time Part 3

Intellectual Montage Video

The second part to Part 3 of the Cinematic Time project was to create an Intellectual Montage. I used shots gathered from Part 1 and Part 2, along with additional shots that were not seen in any of my previous videos. This video uses discontinuity to explore the compression of time and space. I put the shots in a specific sequence that is not continuous to elicit additional intellectual meaning. By doing so, I also in a sense made the intellectual meaning completely different than the meaning in my original film. To achieve this, I sped up the duration of some of the clips and overlapped a new audio to make the mood of this piece eerie. I also changed the scale of some shots by zooming in and darkened all of the clips with a higher contrast. I thought a lot about how I could easily change the mood or meaning of my clips because of how absurd the whole idea is. I found it humorous to make the meaning of this piece more about an "orange serial killer," rather than just some innocent guy who wants his orange peeled, and then changes his mind.

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Cinematic Time Part 3

Metric Montage Video

For Part 3 of the Cinematic Time project, I used shots gathered from Part 1 and Part 2 to create a metric montage. My first step was dividing my clips into different categories. I chose two categories. The first category was peeling the orange, and the second category was putting it back together. I labeled the first category as "A" and the second one as "B." When exploring predetermined temporal structures, I enjoyed the rhythm of A-B-A-B-A-B. Since my film had two very distinct categories, I enjoyed switching from one category to the other back and forth, rhythmically and visually. All the clips in category "A" I made 4 seconds long, and the clips in category "B" are all 7 seconds long. This clip duration worked well with the cropping of the audio, and it is more visually appealing than having all the clips the same duration. I also found the clips in "B" to be more interesting which is why I chose to make that category longer.

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Cinematic Time Part 2

"Orange You Glad?"

Starring James Donovan

Continuity Film

For Part Two of the Cinematic Time project, I focused on using the continuity system. This is a technique used to construct the illusion of a realistic presentation of time and space. I re-shot my action using continuity techniques to capture a variety of angles and shot types which I then edited together to create continuity. In order to have a seamless realistic presentation of the arc of events I had to keep many things in mind such as, how peeled the orange is in the shot, or how many peels were on the table at that specific moment, etc., otherwise, the continuity would be broken. I cut the film up at specific moments where I would insert a cut of a different angle of the same shot, but occurring at the same exact time. To do this, I had shots from different point of views so you could get the perspective of what the character is seeing, what I am seeing, and what an outsider might be seeing. Using these cuts to create continuity makes the film much more interesting. Long, continuous shots can also be interesting, but for this film, the cuts make the film less boring to watch and capture the eye.

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Cinematic Time Part 1

"Orange You Glad?"

Real Time Video

For the Cinematic Time Project, the first step was to choose an action that has a narrative aspect. Then we had to shoot a continuous take of the action, exploring the choreography of the camera movement in relation to the action, subject, and environment. This means there were no cuts in the filming. It was just one long shot. I decided that I wanted my action to be simply peeling an orange. To turn that into a narrative, I decided to make it humorous. I had the character peel the orange, using various absurd methods, and then he changes his mind, which is shown by the change in ties, and tries to put the orange back together, also using humorous methods such as taping it, stapling it, hammering it, and lighting it on fire. In the end, he gives up, and decides to instead have a glass of orange juice, and a cigarette. My idea for this film is a metaphor, simply for life. It humorously depicts the idea of how in life, we change our minds all the time. Sometimes things work out, and sometimes they don't, but that is just life. If things don't work out, we try something new, and continue this process until we have a result we are satisfied with.

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Cine Roman

"The Building" by Howard Moss

Narrated by James Donovan

Still Image Film

For my Cine Roman Project, I started off by choosing one of my favorite poems, "The Building" by Howard Moss. I created a visual narrative for this poem by taking still photographs and incorporating different sound elements. This included the voice over that I recorded, and some background outdoor sounds that I also recorded. I shot a sequence of photographs that I edited into a narrative film sequence. The photographs were all taken in Brooklyn, New York, of various streets and buildings throughout different times of the day. To incorporate the repitition of the poem, without repeating the stills I had already used, I decided to gradually increase the saturation of the stills throughout the piece to make it more interesting and mysterious. I start out with black and white stills. Color begins to be incorporated about halfway through the film when the color of one still goes from black and white to color and then fades to black. This is the part of the film that takes a turn. After this, color begins to become incorporated as the saturation is increasing in the stills. The last time the repetition happens, I used very saturated long exposure stills to show the huge contrast from the beginning to the end of the film. I found these long exposure shots to be very interesting and visually appealing. I also felt that they went along well with the film and brought it all together. I edited all the photographs in Photoshop to manipulate the color. Then I imported the edited photographs into Adobe Premiere. This is where I applied motion to the stills and layered them to create my film. I also decided the duration for each still in Premiere.

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"Visual Music Animation"

Digital Animation Video

For the Visual Music Animation project, I took the Audio Composition that I created along with my Audio Visualization (both shown below) to create a time-based animated visualization of my audio composition. The result is a piece of visual music. By using the principals of animation and motion design, I expressed the qualities of my audio composition through the use of motion graphics design. I was able to achieve this by using Adobe Premiere and Photoshop. First, I chose specific visual elements from my Audio Visualization and put them on separate layers as "smart objects" in Photoshop. I then imported these Photoshop documents into Premiere , where I was able to add motion to my visual elements. The visual elements that I chose begin with are the star-like shapes. To animate these in a way that reflected my audio composition, I increased the scale of them as time passes, and make some have a higher or lower opacity to show the overlaps of shapes (and sounds). I also brought in the background colors to go along with the other sound element that plays at the same time as the star-shape element. I also changed around the placement of the star-shapes, and made some of them move across the screen in different paths. For the huge crash at the end, I took the appropriate visual element from my visualization and rotated it at a high speed to reflect the intensity of the sound. I ended my composition with the dial tone sound represented as thin red lines.

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"Audio Visualization"

This 2D Visualization goes along with the audio composition posted below. The second part of the soundscape composition was to create a visual vocabulary to go along with the audio we created. This visual was created in Adobe Illustrator. I used different opacity and contrasts to show the contrast of the sounds in my composition. The composition begins very softly and quietly, so i used transparant colors that are not very saturated to depict this idea. This piece is in a timeline form from left to right. As you go further to the right, the colors become more saturated, and more opaque to represent the loudness and pitch of the sound composition. The star shapes in the center represent the glasses hitting each other. The harsh white shapes at the right represent the glass smashing, which is the loudest part of the whole composition, and the five red lines represent the telephone sound.

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"Audio Composition"

(For some reason this is showing up in all black, but if you put your mouse over the area, when the hand symbol appears just click and it will start playing! I am trying to fix this, but for now...)

For this assignment, we had to create a "soundscape composition." I took field recordings of different sounds throughout my apartment. These included the footsteps walking up the stairs to my apartment, the sound of the key unlocking the door, and then the door opening. I also recorded the sound of the subway going by from a distance (I recorded it from my window), and glasses hitting and tapping each other. I enjoyed playing around with the idea of using these sounds to create a narrative. It all sounded a bit spooky to me, so I decided to use this as a theme in my composition. The composition begins with the subway and wind, then the footsteps walking into the building. When the door opens, a suspenseful tune starts playing, and as it gradually gets louder, I overlapped the sounds of glasses hitting each other a few times, along with the sound of a spoon in a glass. As the sound gets louder and more chaotic, it eventually stops when there is a loud sound of glass shattering followed by a telephone dial tone. I liked the idea of having a build up of sounds that were continuously getting louder throughout the whole composition, and that ended very abruptly and shockingly. I wanted the suspense in the composition to build up a lot to lead into the abrupt ending. 

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Chronophotograph: Video

"Monday Morning"

Video

The next step of the Chronophotograph assigment was to make an image sequence, or loop, of our still images to create a looping video. I uploaded all of my stills sequentially into Photoshop to create this video. I wanted the frame rate to be very high so that the movements would be  quick. I think that this gives this piece a general mood that involves the feeling of rushing in the morning to get ready and to make coffee. In this video, you can see the three variations of her pouring the coffee. I didn't want to just show the coffee being poured, I wanted to show the entire process, so I also photographed her making the coffee, putting in the filter, pouring the water, etc, and taking a sip of the coffee at the end, to add more variation to the piece.

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"Chronophotograph: Still"

Layered digital photographs

For our Chronophotograph assignment, we began by taking photographs with a fixed camera point of view of a movement or activity that involved usage of the x, y, and z axis. The idea was to choose a movement that depicted the passage of time. I chose to take photographs of my friend making and pouring coffee, because I seem to never have enough TIME to do that in the morning without rushing. I liked the idea of using this activity as a representation of the passage of time. I also love coffee. I wanted to choose a very familiar action because I felt it would tell a playful narrative. I shot this activity three different times with a slight variation. Each time she pours a cup of coffee it is slightly altered, and the last time she does it, she takes a sip. I then used Photoshop and chose four different still images from my image sequence that depicted the passage of time in this activity well. I focused on using image correcting, masking, and working with multiple layers to show time and movement in one still image, by combing the four images.

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"Personal Symbol Design Animation"

Digital Animation

The second part of the Personal Symbol Design Assignment was to draw our symbol on a minimum of 100 art boards and use the concept of transformation to animate it. After transforming my symbol in illustrator, I exported my still frames into photoshop where I then added in different video effects and the title animations. I also chose to make the background black rather than white at this point after receiving positive feedback at the critique from experimenting with the black background. After I put this all together, I used garage band to compose the music for my animation. I composed this audio composition because I felt that it went well with the movements of the symbol and was very playful sounding, just like the symbol. I slowed down the speed of it a tiny bit to go along with the speed of the animation.

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"Personal Symbol Design- Color"

Vector graphic made in Adobe Illustrator

For the personal symbol animation assignment in my 4D Design class at Pratt Institute, we were asked to choose three different words that describe ourselves. The three words that I chose were imaginative, silly, and kind. We then created our own personal symbol, using these three words as our inspiration. I took a more abstract route with my symbol. I felt that the curves and playfulness of the symbol represent the "silly" and "imaginative" aspects. The orange and green parts of the piece represent "kind" because they both act as though they are hugging the purple piece. I started off by using all different shades of purple, but after our first critique, the feedback I received made me realize that the color scheme was not dynamic enough for this piece. I then decided to instead use a bright purple, orange, and green. I felt that it looked nicer and I think the vibrant colors connected better to the three words.

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"Personal Symbol Design- Black and White"

Vector graphic made in Adobe Illustrator