The Smoke Lady

Sadly, I spent way too much time seeing if I could digitize the person in my picture with smoke. Though the final image was awesome, I couldn’t figure out a good way to put it into my final pictures. Grr….

How did I do this? A strong mix of patience, glowing edges, smoke images, the burn tool, and more patience.

 

MOVIE PROJECT: Am I done?

All, I know it’s been a long, rough road on this movie project. However, I must say that I’m pretty content with this version, though I’ve learned by now to never call anything a “Final Version.” I recommend turning the sound up.

How did I add text? LiveType of course! Mia was incredibly helpful in showing me how to change the type, texture, and effects using the various tabs on the right-hand toolbar. Also, I gave space between the two sections (“The Hunted” and “2010”) so that I could cut the new film to fit with the audio on Final Cut Express. Onwards!

Pictures for Fantasy

I went into the woods today and got the pictures that I needed for my project. Unfortunately, I couldn’t secure I high-quality camera before I went, so I did my best to change my camera settings before I went outside. I used a Canon Powershot SD1200 IS (or, in other words, a tiny digital camera). To change my settings, I clicked “FUNCTION SET” then, as scrolling downwards, changed the ISO to 1600, the AWB to CLOUDY, and the picture size to 3648 x2736px. That’s HUGE! These are the pictures that I am most contented with, though they haven’t been photoshopped yet:

 

The Top 10 Things I Learned at the Princeton Conference

As Nell had me write a reflection after missing half a class to see my Dad, I’m going to cover my behind and justify missing all of Monday’s class. While on the plane home from NYC to Atlanta, I drafted out the ten things I learned while attending Business Today’s International Business Conference, a highly-selective program run out of Princeton University. I was supposedly surrounded by the game-changers of Generation Y. Many of them started non-profits as early as middle school, and just as many are already CEOs. To be upfront, I have done neither of these things. That’s probably a good thing, because attending the conference became a learning experience.

The original format of this blog post

Without further ado, the top 10 things I learned at the Princeton Conference were:

1. Stand out. Will Ethridge, the CEO of the North American division of Pearson, could not stress this enough. There is no way that somebody can climb to the top if s/he just blends in, even if s/he is doing phenomenal work.
2. Networking isn’t just about who you know. It’s about who they know, how well you know them, and how far they are willing to go for you. Of the 150 attendees of this conference, I friended about 50 of them on Facebook. Of those 50, I intend to keep in touch or follow the careers of 20. These relationships are extremely valuable, and I don’t intend to lose them.
3. Comedy has power. I asked a feminist question to SAP CEO Bill Mcdermott that I prompted with humor, and intended to follow up with a real question. My prompt was a joke about women changing their names when they got married (Mcdermott had just closed his keynote on personal branding). Though I was cut off from the rest of my question with an uproar of laughs from the smartest people in my generation (were they laughing with me or at me, I’ll never know…), many individuals sought me out afterwords to talk feminism. Had I alienated myself with my  following question (how come SAP only has one woman on their executive board and how is SAP encouraging gender diversity), I don’t think I would have been as interesting to so many people.
4. Be beautiful. Not only was everyone at this conference intelligent and accomplished, but they were beautiful too. Most of the men were tall and gorgeous, and the women were slender and well-polished. I don’t think that this was a coincidence. As much as I don’t want to believe it, personal appearance, in my experience, may have a direct correlation with success.
5. Make passion into your business, not the other way around. There is no way to achieve happiness if you do not love your job; of your average week you spend 35% of total awake hours at work. I refuse to throw that time away! Also, of the CEOs that I talked to, a majority of them were more successful when focusing on their passions. If business becomes one’s passion, be prepared to lose friends, family time, and personal life.
6. Invest, in yourself, in businesses, and in other people. Unlike many people in the business world, I view my goal in life to continue living a happy life, not getting rich. Invest in what makes you happy. However, in order to make these personal investments, it’s best to have some capital to do so. Venture capital, as I had known previously and as this conference has proven, is a phenomenal way to make money. Finally, invest in other people, which includes…
7. Check In. Networking can only go so far. Checking in is a great way to maintain relationships and all the effort one puts into networking. Send holiday cards, write on people’s Facebook walls, do not let them forget you!
8. Liberal arts doesn’t matter as much as we think it does. I found this to be a sad truth of the business world. Most of my successful colleagues were business and finance majors; even the economics majors had some troubles finding a job for next year. That being said, knowing how to think can help network and stand out.
9. Brand Matters. Your personal brand that is. If people are naturally attracted to you, figure out why and capitalize on those traits. Go as far as picking out “your colors.” You want to do everything you can to convince people to have warm feelings towards you.
10. You can talk to anyone. Without realizing it, I met people who make far more than $5 million a year, people from Ivy Leagues around the US and equivalents from around the world, and celebrities. It was no harder to talk to them than it was to talk to fellow Scotties. As of now, any inferiority complex that I may have had is now gone. People are people, not to be idolized, and not to be forgotten.

Proposal for How to End the Year

The end of the year project is going to be a lot of fun I think. First I want to finish my short film by the end of Thanksgiving break, preferably before then. Though I’ve made a lot of progress, I’ve thought of new ideas and now have a genuine vision for how I want my movie to look.

For a final project, I want to explore Naka’s work, which I have previously listed in “Interesting Finds.” I love his use of the sublime; it really reminds me of the kind of imagery that Wordsworth tries to convey in his poetry. I would love to do something fantastical like the imagery he uses with his stag and whale, but make it my own. I will start this project by hunting down the scenery that I’m most interested in–Atlanta in the fall doesn’t make this difficult. Then I will work with Mia and Nell to break down how he makes his animals. I may end up having to hand-draw them. Either way, I will definitely learn by doing, which has, in the past, been the most effective way of learning for me.

Depending on how difficult it is to make one image, I would prefer to have a series, but would be contented with one final piece as well.

 

Scratching the video project… again

So I decided to go in another direction with Auggie and MJ. I like this movie better, but I still don’t feel like it’s “done.” As of now I don’t know what else to do with it… I’m letting it rest for a day. All said, I think it’s significantly better than the first video.

Finally done editing my video

I am officially never going into video editing. There is so much that I could say to critique this video (it feels like two parts, it’s unoriginal, it doesn’t have any real point), which makes it so difficult to turn into class tomorrow. I have spent about 16 hours on these two minutes of film, and even now I think it’s crap. Part of the problem is that I scrapped my original storyboard idea (with good reason), so I filmed without purpose, leaving me with some unusable scraps of film. Lesson learned: have a concept before shooting!

Anyways, no super heros, crying kids, corniness, and a soundtrack. Here goes:

 

You Know You’re a Designer When…

(Blatantly stolen from http://youreadesignerwhen.tumblr.com/. More there if you want more!)

Storyboard Critique

I came out of my critique today feeling a little shaky. I had written a story for A, but in doing so removed the abstractness that the assignment was shooting for (and making this movie a whole lot harder on me as well). Here were some suggestions that I got:

• Do not have A act, just have him do
• Create a sense of smallness artificially, be it through set or through movie manipulation
• Use an adult’s voice to mask A’s
• Interview A to have him talk about being a superhero, how big he is, and everything else that the film focuses on
• Ask A to “act like a superhero.” Interpret at will

I really loved all of these suggestions. It takes a lot of the burden off filming, but creates a lot more editing work. We will see how Sunday goes!

Storyboard

Well, I wrote out the storyboard for my project, but then Corel crashed and I lost all of them. Boo! So I’m going to rewrite them on here and then draw it again tomorrow.

My design idea is living big as someone small.

Hopefully this kid I babysit for will be willing to do this!

– A flexing in front of mirror, in pajamas
– A getting dressed in superhero gear
– A eating cereal
– A leaving the house
– A walking up sidewalk, trying to wave at strangers
– A giving money to a homeless man
– Zoom in on homeless man’s soft smile
– A continues to walk
– Quick zoom in on A
– Sees man run away with a woman’s purse
– Woman shrieking
– A catches up with perp
– A points finger, looks very angry
– Perp slouches
– Perp walks back to woman
– Perp gives woman back her purse
– Woman gives A a hug
– Zoom in on A, who has lipstick smeared on his forehead
– Big grin
– Walks away flexing, like the beginning
– The end