Yu Yu's Creative Blog

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will" -George Bernard Shaw

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Poster for HIJACKED

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Project name: HIJACKED

Contextual Statement

The video I have created is a car drive that has been hijacked by a trickster. Throughout the creation of the video I have constantly kept asking myself “What would the trickster do?”. This video is intended to confuse the audience and have an unsettling mood, the audience will not know when the next ‘trick’ will happen. Tricksters are among the most entertaining characters in world mythology, they delight in breaking rules, boasting and playing tricks on humans and gods. Tricksters do not recognize the rules of society and are often childish, greedy and lustful but they can also be friendly, helpful, clever and wise. Tricksters re-articulate: body, self, identity and land. They re-articulate the very structures that exist within society. My idea draws inspiration from the many great tricks that tricksters have pulled off and being able to outsmart others which are unaware of these tricks. The work draws inspiration from all tricksters and their nature, making me embody a trickster through the process. There are trickster themes about imperfection, hunger, gender, making and breaking rules. I didn’t want to just incorporate the trickster theme into my work, I wanted to put the trickster into my video and let the trickster take over. Tricksters will always exist within our society whether we like it or not, this video gives an insight to what happens when a trickster hijacks a ‘normal’ car ride.

Two pieces that were highly influential to my work were “Oracle Drive” by Gabriel White and “Waking Life” by Richard Linklater. I drew my main inspiration for HIJACKED from these two films, both of these films ask questions that no one really asks. “Waking Life” is an animated story about a nameless young man who finds himself trapped in a continuous series of dreams. He listens to a range of theories by philosophers and intellectuals that explores many points of views of past and current trends in philosophy. “Waking Life” explored many themes such as dreams, reality and portals. The use of portals in Waking Life really stood out to me and the idea of people going through life without being consciously aware of everything around them. I took these two core concepts from Waking Life and adapted these ideas into the video. HIJACKED is a portal into a drive with a trickster, showing insights of the trickster’s true character. Consciousness is a key concept in Waking Life and in the video I created, the audience will watch the video not being entirely aware of their surroundings or of everything that is happening in the video. The audience will fall into the trickster’s traps without consciously realising and the trickster loves it.

“Oracle Drive” has had a huge influence on HIJACKED. Oracle Drive is an experimental documentary set in Albany and has the trickster within the film. Oracle Drive has performances which are very immediate responses to the various environments. The monologues in Oracle Drive provide a narrative voice in the film - the monologues are reflective, sardonic, whimsical and self questioning. As each scene goes by in Oracle Drive it is very hard to tell what is going to happen next, I drew inspiration from the uneasiness that comes from this. In HIJACKED I set out the tricks so that the audience would not know when the next trick will happen, making the tricks very obvious and hidden. There are strange things that occur during Oracle Drive and things just happen because the trickster wants it to happen, I drew an abundance of inspiration from the trickster in Oracle Drive. The audio in HIJACKED is very eerie and unsettling which was highly influenced by Oracle Drive, the audio has a perfect balance of sound and silence. The tricks start out simple and slow but as the video progresses, the tricks start evolving and become harder to spot. The trickster goes through the whole video, leaving all these evolving tricks behind hoping to trick people along the way. Throughout the entire video there are no people and no cars driving around making the mood of the video very disturbing but the trickster enjoys making people uncomfortable and taking them out of their comfort zones. 

Conceptual Statement

“HIJACKED” is a studio project that incorporates traits of Tricksters such as breaking societal norms, reveling in the destruction of the known and creation. The aim of this project is to make the audience fall into the tricks that the trickster has put into the video. The purpose of HIJACKED is to haunt the viewer and intrude their real world. This video will raise questions such as “What is happening?” or “Why did someone make this?” and that is what the trickster wants, the trickster wants the audience to become more consciously aware and start questioning the way things are in our society. The trickster wants the audience to reflect on our society and start asking more questions instead of being a drone.

HIJACKED shows a car drive that has been hijacked by a trickster. Just as the mood is constantly evolving through the video, the trickster’s tricks start evolving in the hopes that the audience will be tricked. The tricks in the video range from very obvious tricks to subtle tricks that are very hard to pick up on. Originally I had a big storyboard that included people doing strange things in the mirror as the car drove past, as a creative decision I chose not to have any people in the video at all because it would take away from the core concepts. The big storyboard idea was great in theory but it is important to make sure the idea was feasible, I wanted to keep the idea as simple as possible and then build off of it. The opening to the video has the car window winding down, this was a simple indication to the audience that the video has started and that the tricks are going to begin.

Throughout the entire video there are no cars or people, this is because the trickster wants to layout all these tricks while no one is around to trick them later on in the day. The first trick in the video is a simple yet effective trick, the car drives, stops then goes into reverse. The intention of this trick is to make the audience wonder what is going on or wonder if anything is happening at all. The car gets to one point then continues driving forward again and coming back to a stop, this is meant to confuse the audience and keep them guessing about what is going to happen. The next tricks start slowly picking up pace and becoming more intricate as the trickster is learning and evolving. The car keeps driving and then two short glimpses of red pop up, then a long red and then a mixture of blue and red. The first three flashes are meant to be very jarring to the viewer and are demanding attention from the audience. The tricks start picking up pace and the video goes fast forward with two different footages being put on the car mirror. The idea behind this is to overstimulate the viewer and to flaunt the trick right in their face as though the trickster is mocking them. The trickster knows that the audience won't be able to digest all the information in and wants to disorientate them. The last trick is that the footage on the car mirror is a different footage to the background, this makes it very disorienting and unsettling for the viewer. The footage in the mirror does not match the footage to the background and although it is a small change, it is one that will confuse or possibly annoy the viewer. The video ends with the car slowing down, pulling into a driveway and the car window winding up indicating that the trickster is done tricking for the night.

Looking at my project, I am really glad that I kept it simple so that I wouldn’t lose the core concepts. Keeping it simple is more challenging because you have to have a restraint to not lose the ideas behind the project. By keeping the video simple, I was forced to think of other ways to trick the viewer and be creative in the way that I made these tricks. Embodying the trickster made this project incredibly enjoyable, gaining the curiosity that I had when I was a kid made me explore new ways of thinking and provided a fresh perspective. I am very satisfied with how this semester has gone, I am truly amazed with how the video turned out but it is also the conceptual and contextual meaning behind the video that allowed me to achieve my goal.

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This is the completed piece of audio for the video. The sound starts off slow and quickly picks up pace as the trickster continues to trick along the way. The mood is constantly evolving like the trickster’s tricks. 

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Sound for the video so far. The sound starts off quite slow and has an unsettling mood about it. The sounds starts picking up pace and starts evolving themselves.

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I used a mask to create the footage above. The mirror has been replaced with a clip that is different from the background, I really liked how this effect turned out, it took a bit of fiddling to get it to look like it belongs there but I like the outcome. I wanted this trick to be quite subtle to the viewer.

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When I was going through the footage and cutting it down, there was a short bridge that we had shot. The footage of the bridge wasn’t that long but I had the idea of looping it as a trick. I took the footage of the bridge and cut it before it ended and duplicated it a couple times and put a cross dissolve in between each cut. The trick was very subtle but I really liked the effect it had. What I found interesting what that when I played the footage to a couple people in class, they did not realise the footage was edited.

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This is one of the clips that I used the mask in. The footage is sped up and on the mirror there is two footage's that have been put on top of each other. I wanted to create this fast forwarding scene since I wanted the mood to be constantly evolving, the video will start slow and start evolving.

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The mask footage I have so far. Going to experiment with different ways of utilising it. I’m really excited to do tricks with this footage

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For one of my other tricks I wanted to recreate one of the ideas I had come up with earlier on. I wanted to replace the video footage on the mirror with a different footage to the background. I wasn’t sure how to create the mask so Ben helped me out and showed me how to do it. He gave me some really useful information since he has a lot more experience with video editing. I had the mask and Ben showed me how to use it to replace the footage. Luckily the camera doesn’t move so it made masking it easier. I experimented with different ways of using this mask to disorientate and confuse the viewer.

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I applied the knowledge I learnt about animating with key frames onto the clips that I edited. The clip continues on from where the car stopped and continues driving. As the car keeps driving the frames have these short glitches of red that are on screen. I wanted to make the first two glimpses of red, long enough to be noticed but short enough to be shrugged off as a small occurrence. The second red is a lot longer than the first two and the third trick has a red and blue ghost effect that is animated using key frames. I really liked how these little tricks turned out. I like how jarring the first three flashes of red are.

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Learn how to animate effects using keyframes in Premiere Pro CS6.

I found this incredibly useful video showing how to animate effects using key frames. I wanted to animate some effects but had no idea how to do it and luckily this video explained it very clearly. I have a very basic knowledge of Adobe Premiere and watching these tutorial videos are really expanding my skill set. I want to apply this knowledge to the scene that I talked about before.

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I experimented with a combination of different colours but the trickster liked blue and red. These two colours strongly contrast each other and I liked the combination of the two together. The ghost effect video works well with a moving subject but since the frame of the mirror stays at the same place throughout the entirety of the video, there is no movement. I want to find a way to get some movement or animation of these frames and make them move to disorientate the viewer further. 

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During my research I stumbled across this video showing how to make a ghost effect in colour by using Adobe Premiere Pro. As a trickster I thought this would make a very nice simple trick within the video. I want to apply this technique in a couple ways to trick the audience. The first way I want to use this technique is to have a glitch effect on the video, a short glimpse of red within the frame. The second way is to have a similar effect shown in the tutorial video and have blue and red as an almost 3D effect on the video. I would really like to see how exploring these techniques will turn out

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Learn how to create more polished interviews by smoothing out jump cuts between sound bites using the powerful Morph Cut in Premiere Pro CC 2015 and later.

“What is Morph Cut?

Morph Cut is a video transition in Premiere Pro that helps you create more polished interviews by smoothing out jump cuts between sound bites.

A common challenge that comes with editing footage with a "talking head" is that the subject can stutter, make frequent use of "umms", "uhs", or unwanted pauses. All of which keep you from having a clean, continuous sequence without the use of jump cuts or cross dissolves.

Now, you can effectively clean interview dialog by removing unwanted portions of a clip and then apply the Morph Cut video transition to smooth out distracting jump cuts. You can also use Morph Cut to effectively rearrange clips in your interview footage to ensure a smooth flow without any jumps in visual continuity.

Morph Cut uses an advanced combination of face tracking and optical flow interpolation to create a seamless transition between clips. When used effectively, a Morph Cut transition can be so seamless that it looks as natural as shooting the video without unwanted pauses or words that can break the narrative flow.” (Adobecom, 2016)

Reference:

Adobecom. (2016). Adobecom. Retrieved 28 October, 2016, from https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/morph-cut.html

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For my first trick, continuing from the editing done in the previous video I wanted to do a simple reverse of the footage. The trickster would want to do what it is best at, tricking people. I want the audience to watch this video and wonder what the heck is going on, or wonder if anything is happening at all? Is this simply a normal drive or has a trickster hijacked the video? The video goes into reverse and then at the next point continues driving back forward and stops at the same point. 

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Currently have around 40 seconds of editing. The first part of the scene has a fade in from black to the imagery. The window winds down indicating that the video is starting. I also cleaned the mirror as much as possible to ensure that the mirror would be clean and to easily see the reflection. Learned that from the first couple of times I went out to shoot, which I thought was a minor detail but turned out to make a huge difference in the end. The video shows the car driving around a car park, onto the road then coming to a stop. Will need to work on an opening title once I have finished editing the entire video.

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With my footage going from one hour long to being cut down to 20 minutes, this means that there are many jump cuts in between these shots. In some of the shots, as a trick I want a smooth transition between the two clips to make a subtle yet effective change in the scene. I’ve been doing some research around the types of transitions and the effect of these transitions. A transition refers to how one shot ends and the next one begins and the filmic device that bridges one to the other.

Cut

The most basic and common type of transition is the cut. A cut happens when one shot instantly replaces the other. Cuts are so widely used that feature movies normally have thousands of them. Cuts are essential for the effect of juxtaposition. Most cuts exist simply for a technical need, the abrupt replacement of one shot by the other often demands a certain interpretation from the viewer. Cuts became industry standard for two reasons: First, during the early years of cinema, when editing actual film, the editor could very easily cut the celluloid strip with a blade or scissors and splice it together. Any other type of transition would require further processing from a specialized lab; therefore increasing costs. Second, the other types of transition are more distracting. Cuts allow for a better flow of the movie.

Fade in/out

Fade ins and fade outs are the second most common type of transition. Fade outs happen when the picture is gradually replaced by a black screen or any other solid colour. Traditionally, fade outs have been used to conclude movies. Fade ins are the opposite: a solid color gradually gives way to picture, commonly used in the beginning of movies. Fades are used sparingly because they imply the end of a major story segment. Fades are also utilized when allowing the audience time to catch their breath after an intense sequence.

Dissolve

Also known as overlapping, dissolves happen when one shot gradually replaces the previous shot. One disappears as the following appears. For a few seconds, they overlap, and both are visible. Commonly used to signify the passage of time. The trickster in me really likes the look of a dissolve being used to confuse the audience, I want to use a dissolve but make it a subtle change so that the audience will not know the scene has even changed at all.

Wipe

Wipes are dynamic. Wipes happen when one shot pushes the other off frame. George Lucas deliberately used then throughout the entire Star Wars series.

Iris

An old-fashioned transition hardly employed today is the iris, when a circulars masking closes the picture to a black screen.