Project01

Final
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Since the goal of this project was to alter the meaning of something with type, I thought showing people's actual thoughts while engaging in a cordial conversation with someone they hardly know would be a good setting. We've all had a conversation like this at some point in our lives; the one where you run into a familiar face and feel forced to say hi. Personally I find this happens a lot at university. I came from a small town where everyone knew each other so this environment where you're constantly meeting people produces an excess of casual acquaintances that I'm just not used to having. Since I associate this sort of situation with being at school, I not only used it as the setting but also as the inspiration for my typography. I wanted the type to look like it had jumped off the page of someone's notebook doodles; just something very rough and hand drawn. To give the type a little dimension, I offset the coloring from the black outline then animated it to rotate in 3d space. The coloring on the type is a loop of 3 frames, making the type dance around to create some visual interest. I wanted the type to be the focus so the rest of the video is done very minimally. I chose to photograph manikins rather than film people for my shots for a number of reasons. First, they create something of a blank canvas for the type to stand out on. Second, it solved the issue of trying to find people who are remotely capable of acting; I've tried using my friends in the past but bad acting makes the video bad, no matter how good the rest of it might be. Third, it created a unique opportunity as far as the audio for the conversation. I was able to record an unscripted conversation so the audio is more like what a real conversation like this might be like. I could then plan my shots based on the audio. I didn't use anything other than the conversation for the audio because I feel it makes the whole thing seem just that little bit more awkward. **
 * Rational

Process
Initial idea was to give meaning to otherwise meaningless images by overlaying poetry. I've had a hard time finding something already written that would work well within this concept and I am in no way a good writer so anything I came up with on my own is guaranteed to sound cheesy. I think I might move on to another idea. [e.t.a. through researching for this idea I actually found something that would work really well for my project 2 so in the end no time was wasted :) ]
 * Brainstorm**

The other concept I've been playing with is the simple anatomy of a business conversation where people never really say what they mean (same concept would work with a conversation between 1950's type housewives or just really passive aggressive people). I would go about filming this in a somewhat abstract way so the focus is more on the typography (which of course would be translating what the people are really saying) than the images of the people.

On a related note, there is a great scene in //Human Traffic// (1999) where a character runs into someone he knows but doesn't really care about and they exchange pleasantries and part. Then they redo the scene with the main character saying "this is what this conversation would be like if we were just *#@!ing honest with each other" (not an exact quote but close enough) and in this version, the two acknowledge the fact that they don't really know or care to know each other, how awkward their conversations always are, and they part saying how they couldn't care less if they ever ran into each other again. I love how true to life this is - there're always those acquaintances that you don't really know but are obligated to talk to when you see them and the conversations always have the same "how are you" "I'm great. How about you?" format. In the context of this project, the video would revolve around a conversation between two people and would again make use of type to give a voice to what they actually want to say to each other. I think this is my favorite idea but I feel like a lot of people in the class are doing similar things so I'm going to keep trying to come up with something else.

I decided to go with the awkward conversation between acquaintances with what they really want to say in type. Originally I wanted to avoid this concept because as a design student, I am not entirely proficient in writing scripts and no one I know can act anyway. To get around this, I decided to take a somewhat backwards approach. Rather than scripting and storyboarding a conversation, I simply gave the scenario to one of my friends and recorded the audio of our unscripted awkward conversation. I edited the audio to be the right amount of time and awkwardness and then wrote the script for typographic conversation to fit in with this audio. I really want people to be able to relate to this video since I'm sure everyone has had to suffer through this sort of thing at some point in their life. As such, I didn't want to simply have this scene play out between two actors because then the focus is too much on them (and again, since I don't know any good actors, the bad acting would take focus off of the main concept). Instead, I used my drawing manikins and some creative camera angles to create something of a blank canvas as far as imagery. The grey models on a white backdrop provide the perfect opportunity to use creative, colorful, and expressive type that dominates the scene.
 * Official Concept

Script & Storyboard** I always forget to upload my rough work, mostly because in the back of my mind I know no one else can actually read or understand my thought process and thus cannot benefit from my uploading, but this time I remembered so I thought I'd put it up anyway. Sorry for the lined paper but I was initially just going to write the script but realized after two lines that I needed to work out the visuals at the same time. Again, I realize it's pretty much illegible but I'm just putting it up for process points.