Reflection:
This week’s reflection hasn’t been based much on feedback on class this week. Instead, it’s been about deep diving into my User Journey, and understanding the scope of my major project. As mentioned last week, I have made significant progress with my personal project, and as the semester comes to a close, I needed to finalise the direction for my work in the next several weeks to ensure I can end it on a high note. I have decided to, rather than expand the work for another three minutes, cap it at a, maximum, three-minute intense experience. I came to this conclusion after having some individuals come over and sit through alternate edits of the experience, one where it is the current, minute and a half video, the other containing an exciting, over the top ending. Hearing the feedback that the exciting ending invoked feelings of “the universe being unmade” and “like I’m witnessing creation itself”, describing that it “felt that it was incredibly surreal” in its approach, leaving them confused in a way that left them feeling random and curious simultaneously. This has left me feeling very accomplished with the direction I was heading in and encouraged me to make the conclusion as great as it can be. This is a great feeling, especially as last week I was unsure about the scope, as I felt the project had increased in terms of its ambition compared to what I was initially thinking, which, while I’m happy with, left me conflicted in terms of whether I was expanding it to a point that would continue into the holidays. This has also given me the opportunity to also revisit things with my music composer, and instead focus on developing an entirely different experience that can explore a deeper relationship between the music they will develop with the images I produce. During my brainstorming with them, we found exciting potential in making a more musical focused video, where the music and images can work in tandem, rather than being an addition to the other, which has both excited as we go forward with our new direction, since we can explore a deeply shared vision on creating a new experience within a chosen state.
Research:
This week’s research was focused on two components.
The first was the user data collected on my current project which was developed into a User Journey. This User Journey emphasises the points brought up from last week, which explores how the project reaches it’s peak earlier on, and as it continues throughout the experience, begins to lose it’s momentum, and starts to feel comfortable. I knew I needed to discover ways to reinvigorate and intensify the experience.
This ultimately led to me making the decision to add a new ending, before proceeding to test that on a few new audience members, who, after a point of getting comfortable, had their expectations subverted through the new ending delivery. Collecting this data has been incredibly helpful, especially when evoking the feelings of surrealism, which are associated with “the whimsical disregard for tradition” and conveying “deep symbolism” within a “disdain for convention” (Voorhies, 2004). My project now, more than ever, I feel delivers on these goals, and it is a matter of refinement in the coming weeks to make the ending feel as seamless as possible.
Voorhies, James. “Surrealism.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm (October 2004)
The second, was focused on the initial exploration of music, alongside my partner, for the direction we could take the new project. We had a meeting together to discuss our preferences and interests in media so we could find some common ground, with both of us settling on wanting to explore one of the following words: Sublime, Exhilerating, Mesmerising, and Surreal. We had discussed the idea of using a Shepard Tone in the music to create a sense of tension, which we can flesh out through additional melodies and instruments to ground it in any one of the selected words.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzNzgsAE4F0
In particular, exploring the relationship of tension in music, and visuals doubles into my goals of immersion with the audience that I’ve discussed in relation to my previous project. This helped me in exploring several sets of music, to which I have shared with my partner to help us begin to develop the audio direction.
For the first set of references, we both share a love for animated films, and in our discussion of the ethereal, mystery, and wonder, I found two tracks from the movie Coraline that have creative use of instruments, that are utilised within moments of the melody to evoke those feelings.
Next was a specific track from Rayman 2. This track shares similarities with the Coraline music, however it also carries a slightly uncanny, surreal aspect to it, while leaning more on the whimsical side. This is primarily achieved through it’s momentum of the air instruments pulling you in, being contrasted by the use of piano to cut through, creating this tension, while utilising higher key’s to feel less horrific, and more playful.
Returnal contains music that shared similar feelings from the soundtrack of Arrival which my music composer shared with me. Part of what my composer liked about Arrival’s soundtrack was how they described it feeling otherworldly in it’s nature, and creates this interesting tension throughout the track that feels creepy, uncanny, and surreal.
Speaking of Arrival: There was one track that stood out to me that I felt perfectly represents the feelings my composer described.
Lastly, was Silent Hill 2. In my personal opinion, this horror game contains has incredibly iconic music, due to how far it leans into the feelings of mystery, and the disturbing through conveying emotion through it’s melodies. The first track out of these two is a personal favourite of mine, due to the use of large drawn-out ambience that gets broken up these sparks of a xylophone to create a brilliant contrast that left me slightly disturbed, yet curious. The second track creates this elegant use of tempo through reoccurring motifs and piano to evoke the feelings of surreal as the audience attempts to rationalise the mystery it conveys:
Progress:
My progress this week has been exclusively focused on ironing out the finale of my final project. Currently, the finale is sitting at 1,300 frames, and it is within this final set of frames that I will experiment with a variable framerate to create an unexpected delivery in the finale. At the time of posting this, my first render is expected to be completed in another 14 hours, where I will then convert the used images, into a saved batch, then re-run the image generation till I can highly refine the result.
Based on some quick testing, the batch generation of images after the initial use will be faster, and lead to some exceptionally compelling results. This is due to having developed the entire foundation of the video’s frames, which I can then use as a mask in my AI generation tool, while also training the AI to recognise the images with the prompts I use, creating a more consistent image that will lead to a more immersive experience. I am also looking into converting it into 360 images and have started discussing with one of my lecturers in my other class about the methods for which I can convert it. Depending on how those conversations go, there’s a very real possibility that I may be able to adapt the project for a full 360, VR experience, that could potentially create an even higher emotional response.
For my BPD project, I plan to spend early next week stitching together several videos for the director, and looking into upscaling the final products as we get ready for the test runs on Thursday. Upscaling these videos will be relatively quick, as I initially rendered the images for the videos at a higher resolution, meaning that in less than a day I can convert whatever is needed.
Lastly for my new music video approach, I will be discussing with my music composer on Tuesday about the duration of the music piece, and how they’re feeling with their current development of the audio track. Depending on how that discussion goes, I will be able to begin the development of a low fidelity prototype that I can present in the following week, before refining it in the final weeks of semester.
Lighting Up Your week 