PROJECT IN PRACTICE
Every element used throughout the project and portfolio was used to symbolise the concept of karma. I had to work with multiple software to make the necessary elements for the final project video and portfolio. Following are the things I did from scratch to build the project.
Portfolio
As I have mentioned in the project progression session, I wanted the portfolio colour theme to be black and white because Yin Yang is the oriental understanding of karma (KARMA – The Yin and Yang of it, 2015) and the symbol of Yin and Yang is black and white (below is the link to the article) https://chaitanyaiimc.wordpress.com/2015/10/11/karma-the-yin-and-yang-of-it/
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Moreover, I used the colour red to grab the viewers attention to the most important things in the portfolio.
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I wanted to use the symbol of Yin and Yang as my Portfolio background to give the viewer the feeling of looking through research related to karma. Therefore, I used Adobe Premiere Pro to develop the PNG version of the symbol to loop and rotate with a white background. I used the animated version as the background of the portfolio with a low opacity black background to add more of the black element to the portfolio.
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Symbol of Yin and Yang
Final animation
Making of the animation
Final animation look on the portfolio background
I also added another symbol to showcase the concept "what goes around comes around" in some of the page headings. I animated it using the animation options provided in Wix to rotate and loop the symbol as the viewer opens the page.
Animation of the symbol used in the headings
Participants Videos
Due to the travel restrictions of Covid19, I was not able to interview the participants myself. Therefore, I had to request the participants to video themselves telling their story. I wanted the project video to look as simple as possible in order to make the viewer focused on the participant's stories. Therefore, I requested all the participants to do their videos in the following manner,
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Landscape video of not more than 2 minutes
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Record the video in a white or very light coloured background
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Wear a plain coloured top
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Sit on the left-hand side of the video (reason below)
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Moreover, I requested the participants to give a message at the end of the story. The message they gave was used as a typed quote and added to the empty side of the screen at the end of their story.
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Plain white background and plain coloured top
Quote at the end of the video
Exhibition
Due to the restrictions of Covid19, we were requested to do a digital exhibition of our project instead of a physical one. I wanted to give the viewer the feeling of viewing the exhibition physically as well therefore, I divided the exhibition into two parts,
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Physical exhibition
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Virtual exhibition
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I used multiple software to create the pieces of the exhibition. However, some features that I wanted to use for the exhibition wasn't supported by the software therefore, I used some special features in Wix.
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Used 3D Carousel feature to have a circulated gallery that could be viewed in a rotation
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Placed images on top of a background I made on InDesign so that the images could be viewed on click
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Animated the quote to rotate so that it would give more meaning to the quote
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Animated a PNG person to move into the frame when the viewer scrolls the first time
1. 3D Carousal feature
2. Dropped in images
3. Animated quote
4. Animated PNG
Softwares
Project Video
Adobe Premiere Pro was used to edit the project video. Special transition effects were used in between some of the video clips. As the videos were done by the participants themselves, the colours of the videos were not the same. Therefore, I tried my best to balance the colours of the videos using the colour grading option. Special texts were added in some places. Moreover, the sound balancing was a big challenge as the sound levels were different and some videos had background noises in them. I was unable to reduce the background noises but I managed to add a text in each video excusing the background noises.
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Installation Images
The images with the quotes in the exhibition were made using Adobe Illustrator. The images were made using a white background to drag the viewers' attention to the quote and the symbol around the photo that portrays the meaning of "what goes around comes around"
Physical Installation Exhibit
Adobe InDesign was used to edit the installation exhibit. I wanted the images to zoom when they are clicked on the website but it was not possible with this software. Therefore, I removed the images and used Adobe Illustrator to edit the background image which I used in the website.
Karma Logo and PNG
Adobe Illustrator was used in creating the logo that is used on the home page and project video. The PNG of the bench in the exhibition was also made using the same software. I didn't know how to make PNG's using Adode Illustrator therefore, I used the below linked tutorial to learn how to create PNG.
