Semester 2 Final Portfolio

Project 10 Prework

In this project, I will be working in collaboration with Bella K. to create two short films depicting a utopia and dystopia. I will be making a short and silent film depicting a dystopia. Before I can start to film my clips for the short film, I will present my definition of what is a utopia and dystopia.

A utopia is an imagined place where everything is perfect.

A dystopia is an imagined place where everything is unpleasant or bad.

To get a better idea of what I am going to be filming for my utopia and dystopia films, here is a video that I will be using as inspiration for my own film.
Baraka

Project 10: Silent Film

For this project, I worked in collaboration with Bella K. to produce two silent films depicting a utopia and dystopia. I made the film depicting a dystopia. I found this to be a difficult task because on the day that we were filming, the weather was very nice and allowed us to get many clips for the utopia.

Here are the short films, enjoy.
Dystopia
Utopia

Project 9: Fake Magazine

In this project I partnered up with Bella K. to make a fake magazine. When I say "fake magazine", I mean that the magazine has only photos and the text is just a place holder. We decided to make it about games. I found it to be interesting working with her to make sure that our parts of the magazine did not clash with each other. If you want to see some more work by Bella, here is the link to her blog: http://www.nontan.ml/

Here is the final result:

Cover by Bella

Pages 2-3 by Michael 

Pages 4-5 by Bella

Pages 6-7 by Michael

Pages 8-9 by Michael

Pages 10-11 by Bella

Back Cover by Bella

Project 8: Two Portraits

For this project I took a few portraits of some people and turned them into either a fine art portrait or a commercial portrait. For my fine art portrait I focused on the person's face and where they were looking. For the commercial portrait, I was focusing on where and what the person was doing and I added a message that would try to sell a product or service.

Fine Art Portrait:

Commercial Portrait:

Project 8 Prework

Fine Art Portraits:

Portrait of David Bowie by Carolyn Djanogly

Surreal Portrait by David Talley

I really like these two portraits by the photographers because they both use the lighting, colors, exposure and background to emphasize the emotions of the person in the portrait. I feel like both of the photographers were able to capture the personality of the person. The first portrait of David Bowie has a more significant impact on me because, David Bowie recently passed away at 69 years old. This gives the portrait a feel that you would find at a memorial. The portrait heavily contrasts the different shades of grey, which enhances the expression of his face. Since the photographer made the portrait black and white, it drives home the notion that this portrait is a memorial. The second portrait utilizes the background, flying crows, and the child to immediately set the mood of the photo. The photographer used the crows to enhance the mood of the photo. In addition to the stare of the child sends a chill down your spine.

Magazine Portraits:

In these magazine cover portraits, they focus on the subject of the focus with the person in the middle with plenty of room on the sides to add text that will have the name of a specific article in the magazine. The photographers used the lighting of the photo to highlight the face of the person who has their back turned to a blank solid background. The portraits are also trying to advertise a product that is relevant to the type of magazine that the portrait is in. In the first portrait, the text that is advertising men's fashion is right next to a well dressed Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Project 7: Surrealism and Photo Montage

In this project I had to make surrealist photos. For the most part, the photos were made by selecting a portion of one photo and pasting it on top of a background. Then I would warp and re size the photo that was on top of the background. To make a shadow, I would make a copy of the photo and use the paint bucket to turn it black, then I would adjust the black layer to make it look like it was coming from a light source. I would get the shadow look from the black layer by applying Gaussian blur and adjust the opacity.

Music of nature

In this photo I was thinking about the music of nature. Whenever I go on a hike, it all feels like there is a song that is being played that can only be heard when you go into the woods. In this particular photo, I got the cloud things by using the brushes that I downloaded from the last project.

Giant Foot

In general, I really did not like working on this project. I am not too interested with expressing the unconscious mind and the unreal.