"Revolution is about the need to re-evolve political, economic, 

social justice, and power back into the hands of people.." - Booby Seale

These are all my final pieces except Haiti, and as you can see, my hands feature a prominent role in all of them. (Also in the Haitian one as the stitching is a clear sign of human hands.)

I did this for a number of reasons. 

The first one is possibly that revolutions are all about the hands of ordinary people. It's never royalty that fight, no, it's the people. Everyone average can have their hand involved in a revolution if they dare. But it's not only that. It's also about the context of me recreating these flags. I am a boy in the 21st century who is creating flags of importance, over a hundrer years after they were first made. 

Does that not connect me to these events? I think so. I think that the more connected we feel to these events that changed history so drastically, the more we can learn from them. 

When I read about the Cuban flag, and then recreated it, I pictured the Cuban dawn, and now whenever I see a dawn I immediately think of the Cuban revolution, and what they fought for. 

Same with French! Look around, maybe you'll randomly see three people walking next to each other wearing red, white, and blue. Then think of how bravely they fought to gain equality, and liberty. 

 That's why I wanted my hands in the work. They are what connects me to these fantastical happening, and they remind me that although I was never there, I can absolutely still bear those memories with me, and learn from them. 

I had a look at an artist who uses hands in his artwork in truly amazing ways. His name is Guido Daniele.

I tried using his work as an inspiration for how to integrate my hands into my work, but I found it a bit to professional. But I did realise that I could blend in my hands in casual way that you might not notice at first. And example of this my France image, where I use my hands to frame the picture, but it is out of focus so that they don't take away from the picture.

-TJ

"this post was not made the day before the deadline"

Welcome back to the thrilling finale of my five digital stills project! As we know this project is all about revolutions, what the flags of the revolutions mean, and how far they have gotten today. 

Cuban Revolution: 

Now, the story behind the Cuban flag is quite amazing. Apparently freedom fighter Narciso López woke up one morning to the most beautiful dawn sky. He could see a red triangle of the clouds announcing the dawn. In the middle of the red he could see the morning star Venus shining. And to finish it all off, two clouds had broken off and sliced the sky into three parts of blue. 

Another story says they took their inspiration from

an American flag, but lets go with the myth.

This seemed almost too good to be true, and of course I had to use this story as the base for this picture. My only problem was how. I thought about painting, but I had already decided to use paint for my American, and Soviet pictures. Considering an event such as the one López explained isn't just gonna show up because I need it for my project, I had to try to recreate it. 

This is my final product: 

And to be completely honest, I'm not all that happy with how it turned out. It sort of works, and the mix of image and material fits my style, but all in all I feel like the final outcome didn't quite reach the finish line I had made for myself. If I had more time I might've changed what revolution to focus on, or tried to do more in after effects, instead of using practical effects. 

Soviet Revolution: 

Not gonna lie. I'm quite happy with this one. The idea is simple - this revolution was all about the peoples rights, and their flag represented this though the hammer and sikle. 

I wanted to make a piece that comments on how those rights are working out today. It's not a secret that there have been multiple homophobic laws passed in Russia over the last years, and same sex couples are not only shunned, but harassed and killed. So I wanted to recreate their flag with something that symbolises the gay agenda. What better symbol than the literal male insignia? I got to work, and this my progress: 

1. Get that precious cardboard. 

2. Paint it red. (Make it a rough coat though, I want this to have a gritty look as well)

3. Make the insignia. 

4. Take the picture. 

5. Put it through the edit, and voila: 

I'm really please with this one because I feel like it send a message subtly, and look kinda cool at the same time. 

In my next post I will talk about why I have chosen to feature my hands in all the pictures. 

-TJ

"Revolutions force nations to change"

My second idea is the one I went with. 

This is what I thought: It’s not only I who have grown up. The world has as well, and what events, what happenings have brought us to where we are today? And the answer is of course a lot. There are so many variables that it’s almost impossible to pin down 5 instances, but in the end I chose to focus on revolutions. Revolutions force nations to change, often for the better, and they are clear markers for change in the world.

I discussed this with Leah during our tutorial yesterday, and we both found it difficult to portray revolutions in five pictures. I was thinking about maybe recreating pictures from the revolutions, like this painting from the French revolutions: 

But we both decided that would be too difficult, and not necessarily original enough for my project. 

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I then happened to mention that the french flags colours symbolise freedom, and that that is because of the French revolutions. Leah then mentioned that after the Haitian revolution, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, took the French tri-colour, and ripped out the white part to symbolise the removal of white power in Haiti. This is when we thought of the idea that the story behind flags might be an interesting idea for my project. I decided to research other revolutions, other flags, and meanings behind them. I also had a look at the work of Alighierio Boetti. His work with flags is quite fascinating, and I will definitely use him as an inspiration. 

"bringing the world into the world"

The French Revolution: 

So as I said earlier in this post, the French tri-colour represents freedom, which is why so many countries today use the colours red, blue, and white in their flags. This is also represented in the revolution, which was all about liberty, equality, and fraternity. So I decided to create a picture of three people in the French colours hanging out to symbolise this equality. This picture also has a part to play in my picture for the Haitian revolutions though. 

The Haitian Revolution: 

Now, when I created the picture for the French revolution I already had a plan for what I wanted to do with the Haitian picture based of the story behind their flag. So, I will take the picture for the French revolution and rip out the white part, before sowing the two halfs together, thus representing the history behind the flag. 

(I was not able to put a picture of my Haitian picture on my blog because I did not have time after the stitching)

The American Revolution: 

Now there is a lot of wrong with America - no doubt. But their revolution were for a good cause, and it’s definitely something we can learn from. Standing up for your rights, and telling those in power that enough is enough, is a memory we should all use in todays society. But I did have a bit of a struggle coming up with an idea for this picture, after all, this revolution happened for a lot of the same reasons as the French one. Then I stumbled upon a haiku about the flag. Although the author is unknown, the haiku still has a lot of power: 

"American flag 

Is red with blood, blue with tears,

And white with privilege."

And I thought that this would be a great foundation for the commentary I wanted to make about the effect of the American revolution, how far they have come. The process of making it was quite interesting, so I want to go through it step for step.

1. Get cardboard from whatever back alley you can find.
2. Spray paint it white for a nice background

3. Dye some water with blue colour to make tears













4. Cut out the stars to float in the tears











5. And finally, make some bloody, red stripes:



After that all I had to do was put it through the edit to make it look grittier, and I ended up with something I was rather pleased with :)

In the next post I'll explain my ideas, and work flow for the Soviet Revolution, and the Cuban. 

-TJ

"now when they ask me about my age, they say how many, I say twenty." 

Memories fascinate me. And lately I have been thinking a lot about how my memories have shaped me, and why I have become who I am. I made a spoken word poem about it that I posted on my YouTube channel. It’s all about turning 20, moving away from Norway, and starting university. Have a look at it here:

Now my initial idea for this project was to take pictures from my childhood, and then recreate those pictures with my grown up self. A lot like what these people have done: 

I quickly dismissed this idea though, after having a conversation with Leah about it. 

My second idea was way better though! Sit tight. 

Oh God, do I feel sorry for whoever hires me as their editor

What particularly interested me about this lesson was the ability to track a certain character or person in a film, and cut them out of the film. It's all called Keying, and you have to use the Keylight effect. You find that in a window on the right hand side of the program. What you do to do this is: 

1. Create a new composition. 

2. Drag the desired clip to that composition (Should be of high quality! Preferably 1080p!)

3. Make sure you double click on you footage, so that it is selected. 

4. Select the Roto-Brush.

(Okay, I was sure I made a screenshot of all of this, but they are all of a sudden not on my hard drive anymore. How rude.) 

5. Use this tutorial on youtube: 

by username MyQualityVideo's

And after all this work, you might be able to make something amazing like this! 

Oh well, it was a lot of fun, and I'm sure I will use this effect in my future projects! 

-TJ

"not to be confused with a migraine, 

which I've found it is something completely different"

Migration

"Make an experimental film about migration." Well, okay, I'll be right on that ! 

Oxford Dictionary defines migration as three things: 

 a) Seasonal movement of animals from one region to another. 

 b) Movement of people to a new area or country in order to find work, or better living conditions. 

 c) Movement from one part of something to another.

Especially the third one opens up this task to an almost infinite amount of possibilities. Anything can move from one part of something to another, if that "something" is the universe! But alas, I can't make a film about everything in the universe - I don't think my poor hard drive could handle such a project. But where do I start researching such a vast topic? Well, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking off migration is the great migration to America during the colonial era. (It still goes on today, but the we generally think of this era when mentioning the words migration and America)

Video by National Geographic 

But I'm not really sure how I can use this, nothing springs to mind at least. But the idea of massive amounts of people moving fascinates me, so I would love to make something about that. Now that I think about it another story of people moving out of necessity comes to mind - the Biblical story of Moses. 

We have all heard the story at some point, and we have also probably seen the cartoon about it too, i know I have. It's an epic tale of a disgraced prince who saves his people, and performs astonishing things like parting the ocean. All with the help of God. Historians believe that a massive escape from Egypt did happen, although the parting of the ocean bit, might have been edited a bit over time. (It is theorised that the Red Seas water level was lowered due to a drought in the area, and that's how they were able to cross it.)

Again, I'm not sure what to do with this. I don't feel like this has any connection to me as an individual, considering I'm not religious, and also of very little North African decent. (Who would've guessed eh.) I want something grand, that I can feel a connection to. 

Then it hit me! The greatest migration of all time! The event that has been happening for longer than the oldest human alive, and is still going on today! The great movement of human kind! Evolution. 

That's it! That's my topic! It's grand, it's brought me to where I am today! It fascinates me beyond compare! Perfect. 

But how can I portray trillions of years in under two minutes?

I've wanted to do something minimalistic for a while now, so I looked into a couple of different artists that specialise in that area. Some of them really struck my fancy, and although they might not be what I looked for in this project, I've made a mental note to use them in later projects. (This includes artists such as Carl Andre, and Donald Judd. I especially liked Carl Andres elements series.)

"Trabum" by Carl Andre

I actually got my first idea while writing down my shopping list last week. While crudely writing down eggs, milk, and müsli on my post-its, I remembered how I used to make short stories at the bottom of post-its in my youth. Drawing small stickmen that move ever so slightly with every post-it and then flicking through them to reveal the story. I imagined using this technique to show evolutions story much like how they do it in the opening of a certain French cartoon I used to watch.

"Il était une fois... I'homme!" by Albert Barillé (1978)

That probably proves how much evolution fascinates me, the fact that I still remember the opening of a cartoon I haven't watched in probably 11-12 years. 

Well, I did this, but wasn't very happy with the results. It was difficult to capture every post-it on film, keeping a certain pace while filming, and making the story detailed enough. I think I went into this attempt with too much hubris, and thus underestimated the task at hand. 

Be warned, very rough edit.

I haven't scrapped this idea completely, and I do want to come back to it, but for now, I don't find this good enough. While working on this I had a different idea though. I pictured intercutting the video of my post-it story with images or video of apes. They are of course supposed to symbolise what we come from, but also question how far we've really come. I really wanted to use that astounding opening from "2001: A Space Odyssey" (An absolute masterpiece, and one of my favourite films! Truly some of Kubricks best work!) with the monkey and "Also sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss playing for the duration of it. To mirror the epicness of this piece, I would like to use very mundane clips of a person waking up, thus hopefully creating the symbolism I wanted. 

As you can see, I only used the music over the clips of me waking up. I did this to create a certain anti-climactic sensation, compared to the suspense one usually feels during that scene. I also made the video black and white to further bring forth my message about doubting how far human kind really has come. We used to be so free, and isn't everything now slightly more grey? 

To be honest, I don't think so. I think life is what you make it. We can still go out and enjoy whatever life offers us, we don't have to sit behind a desk all day. If we're not happy where we are, we can always move, and in the end, isn't that what migration is all about? 

-TJ

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Soruces:

Oxford Dictionaries. "migration"
oxforddictionaries.com.
(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/migration) [24th January 2016]

National Geographic. "What "Lady Liberty" and Ellis Island mean today." 
video.nationalgeographic.com. 26th December 2013
(http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/liberty-ellis-island-vin) [26th January 2016]

BBC. "Moses."
bbc.co.uk. 6th July 2009.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism/history/moses_1.shtml) [26th January 2016]

Guggenheim. "Carl Andre."
guggenheim.org.
(http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/5374) [30th January 2016]

"so this is new"

Experimental film. Experimental film. Experimental film.

To be honest, I thought experimental film would be easy. But actually trying to make something different? Man, that's a toughie! I've been turning my brain, and my groups brain inside out for two days now. In the end we actually decided to split up and do individual projects, but I definitely think that the brainstorming was healthy for all of us :) 

For my idea I wanted to try something that I personally haven't tried before, therefore at least making it an experience for me. But what to do ey

But then BAM, like a dream it hit me! (I actually did dream it, funny story.) What if I do POV? That I film from my perspective! I liked the idea, so I did some research, and this is what I found:

"The Stampede" by Biting Elbows

That looks simply amazing and i definitely want to try this :D 

After watching a couple of videos on youtube about how to film POV, it seems its a much harder task than I originally intended haha, but oh well, let's make a head rig!

The head rig consisted of a bandana and my camera snuggling in it like a new born, right under my chin. The finished product was alright, but I see a lot of potential in working more with POV, and experimental film :)

-TJ