Please post a link to your finished video for this project to the comments here. Include a short reflection (~200 words) about how you approached the project and don’t forget to include your full name and working link to the video.
Project 2: Creativity in Motion / CHOICES
Choice # 1: PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST Select a specific subject within School of Fine Arts (student or faculty member). Shoot a montage portrait of your artist at work, capturing specific activities and tools used in their creative process. You are in charge of scheduling with your subject, getting release form. Plan for best location, lighting, and camera / equipment. Use a tripod (or other rig) to capture a variety of steady shots and controlled camera movements. Light your subject deliberately. Edit to 1 minute with simple sound or music. Upload to vimeo.
Choice # 2: DETESTABLE MADNESS Participate in a crowd-sourced video project for Detestable Madness. TO Do this project you must Sign up to attend the preview performance ( Wednesday, March 11 at 7:30 in the Dudley theatre) AND one performance of UMD Theatre show. Use mobile phone / handheld camera to capture video. Share raw footage with Megan R. Edit your own montage to 1 minute that captures intensity of performance with a variety of audience point-of-view shots.
SIGN UP to attend the preview on Wed March 11 in UMD Dudley Experimental Theatre
AND also ONE OTHER PERFORMANCE DATE:
March 12-14 & 24-28, 2015 @ 7:30 pm / or March 29, 2015 @ 2 pm
Detestable Madness uses modern dance, pop music, and puppetry to bring to life stories of female strength, struggle, and sacrifice. This original collaboration based on the 1000 year-old plays written by Hrotsvit of Gandersheim and explores universal themes. Detestable Madness is adapted by Jenna Soleo-Shanks and the cast.
Choice # 3: MASH DASH! In this alternate version of the MashTash project… Attend Moustache Run on March 7. Capture video using a range of shot types and camera motion. Use both handheld and tripod on location. Remix video with other video from Mash Stash. Edit 2 versions / 30 sec and 60 sec spots that capture the spirit of the event in a creative way. Possibly, include work with an actor to build in a fictional character. Upload to Youtube and link 30 sec spot to the MASHTASH map. Upload 60 sec spot to Vimeo.
Visual Narratives Resources 
https://vimeo.com/123766613
Ryan Gilman filming Elizabeth Siemers
I approached Lizzy about this project because I programmed a game that she did the art for and I really liked how passionate she was about her art. Walking into this shoot I knew that I wouldn’t be using any audio because there really isn’t any involved with digital art, it’s all drawing on a tablet and hitting keys. And as exciting as the sound of keys being pressed probably is, it’s not the most important thing. Now, Lizzy works primarily in her bedroom when working on her digital art, so that was the place to film, however there isn’t much for artificial light in there. So there were two options, bring my own lighting, or use the window. I decided that natural light would probably work best and opted for that. The only problem was that the day of filming there were a few clouds in the sky. This made it so that when the sun was out I had perfect lighting, but when it would occasionally hide behind a cloud, everything would get blue and underexposed.
After filming and going into editing, I realized that I really should have used a tripod because my hands were extremely shaky during filming. So I tried just leaving it as is, but everyone in class commented on the shakiness. So I tried using some post-production to stabilize the shots, and while it wasn’t ideal, I fixed them up somewhat and it overall looks better. However there was one shot that was just so shaky that there was no fixing it, so I subbed it for one that was slightly more stable, although the new shot was from an angle that is used later in the film, cutting down on my variety of shots. Some of the stabilized shots are also somewhat warped. End Rant.
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https://vimeo.com/123579440
Hannah Bockbrader, Portrait of the UMD Costume Shop
My portrait of an artist initially started as a portrait of Kelsie Bias, the costume designer for the show Detestable Madness. As I filmed our sewing process, however, I began to fully realize how costume building was a collaborative art. Theatre is an exceptionally collaborative art. The project slowly morphed to include all of us who work in the costume shop—Laura Piotrowski is the head of the shop, Kelsie, Pat Dennis does makeup and hair, and Heather Olson, Jess Parnow, Katie Martin and I are all employed through work study.
I wanted to keep my focus on the atmosphere of the shop. There is always someone singing, laughing, or telling a story, and the energy is always high and fun. I documented the creation of costumes visually, from drawings and designs to the costumes on the actors during the show. The audio is various clips I recorded throughout the day. It’s a little disorienting, but that’s an accurate depiction of what it’s like in the shop sometimes. (The “Gumbies” are a term given to the students who have to take the costume construction class. Pat called them that one day, and it stuck.) The camera gets a little shaky, but overall I feel like I captured the atmosphere of the costume shop perfectly.
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Sadie Ostwald
https://vimeo.com/123800787
My portrait is of Amanda Poston. She is a very close friend of mine that I met in band. She is a talented and skilled musician; performing in the summers in Minnesota Brass. With all of the instruments that she plays she is constantly having to change her posture and body in order to play the instruments.
Because of this, I wanted to highlight the different parts of her body that are used in order to play – bouncing on her toes when playing the marimba, having to hold her elbow out with the flute, and her unique way of playing piano because she self-taught herself when young.
Also, because it is her playing we collaborated and made a piece of music. It is rough and could use a lot of work, but we had a really good time playing with chords, keys, rhythms, and tempos to figured out a piece that incorporates all of her different instruments.
There’s a secret, we did not use all of the instruments she plays!
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Matt M filming Fatih Benzer
Because I never took an art class here at UMD I did not know who to film. So special thanks to Joellyn Rock for helping to set this up. I wanted to film an artist that did not require sound so I thought a drawer or a painter would be good. I got to meet Fatih and it took about a half hour of shooting. He was making a watercolor painting for demonstration in one of his classes. It was great working with him. I filmed this from various different shots and different points of view. I tried to get a few close up shots as well. I also filmed with a tripod which helped to keep the camera still.
https://vimeo.com/123806286
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Mitchell Ringness
https://vimeo.com/123806173
For my Mustache Run short film I decided to go at it from a different approach than from what I had originally intended. Originally I was simply going to interview people at the run, and film some typical event-like clips. However, I thought that idea was overdone, and wanted to increase the effectiveness of my short film by giving it a comedic twist. Therefore, I inserted a simple story between the newscaster, Cyrus Shepard, and his camera operator/assistant, Sarah. I thought that a hostile relationship between these two people with whom you’d typically associate professionalism and maturity toward would create a silly scenario from which I could successfully build some comedy off of.
I worked on this project with Taylor Maki, who plays trash-talking Sarah in our film. We unfortunately ran into some serious issues while going through the editing phase, as we realized that some of the video and audio that we had recorded at the Mustache Run was either corrupted or deleted from our memory card. Therefore we had to tailor our short film toward a film that was a little different from what we had anticipated. However, I believe the versions we got out of the little footage and audio we had left were more than sufficient. Overall I believe our films turned out quite well, even with the corrupted files. We successfully created a interview-themed comedy, complete with “fun facts”, mad trash-talking, and popped collars.
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Liisa Beck filming Meghan Tupper
https://vimeo.com/123767137?utm_source=email&utm_medium=clip-transcode_complete-finished-20120100&utm_campaign=7701&email_id=Y2xpcF90cmFuc2NvZGVkfDVhYjUzZDM0OGRlMzk3ZTIwNzAzMzNkN2E5N2EyZTUyMTY5fDM4ODc0ODg3fDE0Mjc5MTMzNDV8NzcwMQ%3D%3D
I enjoyed the techniques that my roommate used to create images for her senior show and wanted to help show the process and small details of how she creates her art, using recycled materials, and a very different process then we are use to. I really enjoy the quality of her work along with how she takes something so simple like an eye, and creates so many different pieces of art from it.
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Anna Frank
https://vimeo.com/123787238
I filmed my best friend and roommate, Nova Miller for this project. They are a general studio major, so since we were both working on our ceramics project, I thought it would be fun to do. I love watching people work with clay. Its so malleable and can be made into virtually anything. I went back to using the original music because the shot transitions were more timed for the first song I chose rather than the second. I think either one works well for the video.
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Tony Moore filming Charlie Cochrane
https://vimeo.com/123658218
Charlie is not in the School of Fine Arts but he is my roommate and I have seen his artistic talent in the form of drawing, painting, and music. I decided to focus on his musical talent because his hands and fingers move a lot and I thought there would be opportunities for some cool shots with his picking hand and his fingers on the fretboard.
It did not turn out as well as I originally envisioned because we did not have the equipment to record a version of the song that could be used for a base audio track while I put it different clips of him playing on top of that. Instead, I had to Frankenstein a song together from various clips. It was hard to work with three different parts while keeping the tempo consistent so some of the timing is off but the song is still pretty catchy.
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Kristine Allen
https://vimeo.com/123909613
I chose to film the play called Detestable Madness. There were two separate acts, and I chose to make a video out of the first film, which was about a rape case. I chose to film the play, not only to help out people that needed it to be filmed, but I felt I could get some good shots! I had a hard time, because I got so much footage that I didn’t want to get rid of any of the parts for the video. Overall, I think I made some nice choices in what to include in the 1 minute video.
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Ian Walesch – Dark of Light
https://vimeo.com/123798370
For my artist portrait I approached it with an open mindset. Ive never filmed anything like this before so I went in the space with some general ideas and just reacted to the things I found interesting during the shoot. Ian and I bounced ideas off one another and ended up with all the shots we needed. I’m pleased with my first attempt at something like this, it was also interesting shooting in low light conditions.
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https://youtu.be/p1AHujE05bg
Taylor Maki
Our Mustache Run project became something of a parody of the average day at a real news station. We have behind the scenes shots of the unorganized, poorly run newsroom, complete with bad camera work, spiteful co-workers, and half-baked schemes. What you get on the screen is not always what you get in real life!
We got some interesting footage of the Mustache run, and combined it with interviews of Mustache Run attendees. We also inserted a little bit of backstory for the main anchor and his camerawoman. Just another day in the field!
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Taylor Schwinghammer Project #2
https://vimeo.com/124710134
I chose to capture the Detestable Madness play because I found the subject matter to be interesting. The fact that they appropriated plays from medieval times to relate to society now was intriguing. The fact that problems like rape and body image are still a relevant issue in society even after several hundred year. I also knew that not too many people from our class would attend the play, I felt like if I were to be able to capture this event in short they would then take note of the events that are happening and then maybe further their understanding of the topic.
When there I wanted to captured the important scenes, which turned out to be most of the play. The interaction between the characters and the way they worked with the audience just made it that much more real. When editing I decided that I would focus on the first act, which was based off of an actual event of a girl being raped to only know it happened through social media. I felt that it was important to showcase this part because all too often victims get blamed for their rape due to the fact of that they are drunk and can not control themselves. Once again I wanted to make sure that people who did not see the play got the most important information possible within the one minute time limit.
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