Individual Video Portrait Anthology Process

I first started brainstorming on ideas in which I can do my video on. I decided I wanted to do a self-portfolio on myself. I first thought of what I'm good at and enjoy the most which is dancing. My goal for this video is to show the viewers how my dance style (popping) really expresses your true emotions and how you can dance anywhere by relieving stress and not thinking about anything.

For my first shoot I thought of the movie "you got served" in a scene where Omarion practices his dance moves in the rain which shows he can dance anytime, anywhere and even last minute. At this time of year it's been rainy a lot so I thought of dancing that scene but with my own flavor. Around 10:00 I went to a parking lot where there was this big lamp post and decided to put my camera in the car and film myself dancing in the rain. I got a few good shoots of the rain on the window, the shadows of the lighting and my feet.

My second shooting took place in an auditorium at Champlain College. My friend was doing a video also and needed dancers so I thought of the opportunity to shoot also some footage over there. The stage was very black and had big lights that would shine on the dancer to show like that person is the star of the stage. I filmed the whole day and interviewed my friend who does another style of dance called Techtonik and asked him how I did and what not.

After this I brainstormed some more and I knew more what I want to do more with my video and different ideas. Most of my shots are dark with som kind of lighting. I thought that I will continue that genre and on my next shoot have car headlights and dance in front of them or to the side. I will also have to travel around and scope other places with that type of lighting. I have friends voice explaning his dance and how I did so I will film my other friend doing the same and have split screens with other screens showing what they say like the style of dance.

Shooting 3: I recently went out to do my third shooting for my car headlight idea. Everything started off as planned but I did more shooting than expected. My friend Mike who is also a popper came a long with me to shoot. We first went in the parking lot of BestBuy but it was to open and there were people playing hockey. We ended up going in the back alley of FutureShop where there was nice ambience lighting from the building and a nice brick wall where my headlights of my car could shine.

I was shooting Mike first dancing a solo to test out the lighting and it went pretty good. I installed the tripod and we started dancing and doing exchanges. I had an expensive sound system for my car that I paid and it gives out a crazy projection of sound for us to dance to which went really well.

My other friend Nathan showed up from my old crew that I danced with and he joined the filming. I interviewed both Mike and Nathan to describe popping and I added a little saying. Now I filmed the the three of us doing a trio exchange. Towards the end it was really windy and I had like 2 minutes left to film on my Mini DVD which I already filmed 28 minutes and my tripod fell to the ground because of the wind with my video camera attached to it. I was really scared my camera broke and I lost my footage but it did a data recovery and I was really lucky and happy in the end.

My next idea is to film myself dancing but close ups and my limbs like just one arm, one leg, my body, my head and use split screens to form my body. I will probably do this in a dark room with a white wall or something I'm not completely sure. I also found a friend who filmed me dancing on a cellphone and hopefully I will be getting that footage. I also will be going over with my old friend some archives of back in the day when we filmed ourselves dancing like years ago. I will also get footage of when I used to dance with my old crew called AM Crew. I will try and download them off YouTube because I lost all my old footage because my external hard drive broke. So far I have around an hour of footage maybe more didn't exactly calculate it for my one minute video so I have a lot of editing to do.

This week I came up with a new idea for my video. I didn't take any more footage but just brainstorm ideas. I came up with that to start the video of me with the split screens of my body shots and have my name with a masking still image of multiple me doing a different move. I will do a complete voice over with the footage and explain what popping is if I can't put copyrighted music. The ending should have music to show an example with close ups of me.

Week of Nov.10 : This week I really brainstormed about my editing. So far I have edited my video to a minute long. I went through my archives of old videos and I chose one that I will put at the end of my video in black and white to show how far I achieved from when I first started off dancing. I also need to film my last part which is filming just my arms, legs, body, head and to make it all split screen making it into different moves. I also need to take pictures of me to do a masking effect that will have multiple pictures of me doing a different move. For this week my goal is to get my movie in the right direction and get most of the editing done to see where I'm at. I will also have to start doing some voice over to explain some parts to give the viewers information on what I'm trying to express on how poppin relieves stress. My goal for editing is to explore more techniques in split screen and and make it more entertaining.

Week of Nov.24: This week was my touch up week. I did my last thing and it was to record my voice so I can do voice over in my video. I just basically talked into the camera and I'm going to transfer the footage and just take the sound from it for my video. The touch ups I did was to really edit my transitions and make sure that they are smooth using cross dissolve or fad in and fade out.  I made sure the sound was clear and proper to hear especially with the part of the half half split screen with me and my friend who is doing tecktonik. I made sure that both of us were hitting the music on the beat because we filmed each other to the beginning of the song and I had to connect the music with our dancing. I changed the speed to zero when he's done so he doesn't move so it looks like I'm continuing after. 

Remix Culture

Today many people don't realize it but we are already forming a remix culture with all our different and exciting lifestyles. Remix culture evolves around music, fashion, collages, art, web applications, created media and much more which will continue to rule the decades to come.

For an example the designer John Galliano who is a fashion designer for the house of Dior mixed other tradition looks of East-Europe and other sources. He collects and mixes his own clothing fashion which he branched off from other sources when he travels.

I believe remix in fashion is something I truly find incredible. I personally enjoy fashion and it describes who you are. For John Galliano to create and take old fashion ideas and make it his own unique designs is a good example of remix. He takes his own tastes with tastes from other designers and creates his own personal designs. In a way it's unique and if you enjoy it and where his clothes than it is who you are and from that you already represent the "remix culture."

Music is everywhere now a days either from headphones to restaurants, clubs, outdoor festivals, television and radio etc. Dj's are the prime example of remixing music. I'm sure everyone who has gone to a club heard and felt a remixed song go through their body. The song by Pink Floyd - We don't need no education  CLICK HERE to the link.I've heard often and it's remixed to our style of dancing with a trance vibe beat to it. I find this amazing because it brings back old songs but in a newer version. I don't find this to be copyrighted since it has a whole new beat and meaning to our new culture.

Cars are also into the "Remix Culture" where we can modify them to the point where it can look like whole other type of car. There is a perfect television show that shows this which is called "Pimp my ride." Xzibit the main host of the show takes people that have cars that look like junk and by the end of the show it becomes one of the cars like fast and the furious. He has used technology to remix cars and uses personal taste in making the car look like something people would stare at.

There are a lot of applications out there where you can mash up videos and photos to create your own collage or "remix." There is photoshop which you can manipulate photos and do so much things like change a persons hair color or just distort the image completely. For video there is final cut pro, adobe after effects and many others to change around videos like you can take an exisiting video and just edit it in your own way. You can rearrange the order of the video, add effects or just use parts of the video and make your own. For examples of manipulated photos go to this web page.

The remix culture has expanded a lot and is continuing to grow. You're living in it right now and it's up to you to take part in it and realize what's going on with media and how it's evolving. I can't wait to see in the future how the remix culture will grow or become something really different.

Typography

This is the word I decided to choose money. I chose money because this is what everyone strives for in life and it's what runs the world. Without money no one would be happy. In both pictures I used photoshop.

Bottom Picture: I added black backgrounds to make the letters o, n and e to stand out. I painted half the letter m and y to give a nice contrast. With the money symbols I had a back shadow with a little grain to give a tiny effect.

Top Picture: For this picture the typography is in color and not with the black and white theme. I used a see through font so you can at least see the money. I used the dripping font because it gives the effect of how money can disappear or how rich people can have money but it can make them sad. I blurred out the face in the bill image to show how it's not important who is on the bill. I stuck to the color green because it represents money.