Story Boarding

Storyboard Considerations & Commentary

Here are the storyboards we used for our initial filming/idea. Not the most fantastic drawings, but I wanted to sort of see what types of shots might work for each part of our film so did some sketches... we ended up grabbing so much more camera footage than just what is shown here. And this was good at it gave us a lot to work with once we began editing! We had planned to do two videos at first, a 'before and after' our challenge kind of thing. But we were convinced that it would flow better in one epic movie, so went with that in the end instead.

In the first page, we were trying to find ways to show busyness, monotonous, mundane boring life in the city.Shots of traffic, industrial stuff, fences for b-roll. The main protagonist (which ended up being me lol) is basically seen to be dealing with all this overwhelming world around them, looking uninspired, unhappy, and like something is missing.

In the second lot of storyboard, we introduce the 'creativity' into this protagonists life. More upbeat music will be used, creative/artistic shots, an interview of someone who has done the challenge and how it benefited them, more dreamy-like / beautifully filmed b-rolls. What interesting and fun ways can we show life is better with these moments of random creativity. :)

sound links and exmaples

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcj3AYnnmgk



 https://soundcloud.com/steven-templar/group-2001-ambient-1-radio

Video Inspiration & Research

Here I will begin discussing and pulling apart a few videos I enjoy, most likely music videos as I tend to follow alot of musicians and have some favorite videos which come to mind... :) I will be looking at techniques used as well as narrative, mood etc.

This video is really evocative to me and suits the music well. You get an almost ethereal vibe from the editing which mostly uses a lot of soft fade from scene-to-scene rather than any sharp cuts. Several different scenes are overlaid in parts to create an eerie, ghost like vibe. The filters on the video, glow of lighting and use of symmetrical balance all conjure up an element of magic and they give Grimes and almost elf-like quality throughout this video. Some parts (like the candle being blown out) are even shown in reverse, and this is during a part where the vocals of the song have also been reversed. The plot in the video depicts young adult (mostly unclothed) people in a forest among leaves, dirt.. it's a really primitive feeling. It's fitting of the primal beat which thumps throughout the song. What I get from this video, is that she is depicting the animalistic and carnal nature of humans. There is a very naturalistic almost shaman like feeling, and different elements are represented, earth, fire, air. In the end of the video, glowing egg-like objects are seen hidden in the forest..like magical seeds. The meaning of the video is a little ambiguous but that was clearly the intention, an element of mystery.

Not a huge fan of this chick by any means, but this song is quite catchy, and the video is a really good example of a video with a clear and strong narrative and how video can be emphasized by the music.They play with dept of field a lot in this video, often with things backing up the story/scene in the foreground to help further set the aesthetic. They also use a lot of panning shots displaying the lovely mansion/scenery the video is shot in (this video benefits a lot from the landscape layout), and close ups are used frequently to display the mood of the characters throughout the video/song. The use of character in a video is really important in setting a narrative and that is why I wanted us to use that in our video. Anyways, when the beat of the music picks up, the rate of cuts in the video increases. These are all solid cuts, no fades and this works because of those beats. The timing of the cuts or action within the scene appears to more often than not match up exactly with the beat of the song and it's really effective. The camera work goes from being stable to being shakey/handheld once arguments begin in the video, and the lighting and color also becomes darker to reflect the mood change. Abstract scenes are used nicely later in the video, she toys with an apple and the guy is shown simultaneously feeling pain as if it were him she was digging her claws into.

inspiration

Screenshots for Inspiration from various clips

Stats & FAQS

• Only 25% of people believe they are living up to their potential to be creative, and more than 75% of people feel that their countries are not living up to their collective potential to be creative.
• Six in 10 people felt that being creative is valuable to their country's economy, while in the U.S. that number was seven in 10. France was the country with the lowest number of people thinking creativity is very important to its economy -- 13%.

• Nearly two-thirds of all surveyed believe that being creative is valuable to society. In all regions, more than half said they believe that creative impulses increase during times of economic uncertainty or downturns.
• More than half of all the respondents said that the educational system stifles creativity.

http://adage.com/article/news/study-75-living-creative-potential/234302/

The study reveals some interesting statistics. Around 80 percent of respondents said they thought creativity is “critical to economic growth.” More than 60 percent of them also said creativity is important to society.

However, just 25 percent of respondents said they are currently living up to their creative potential.

What enables those lucky 25 percent to live up to their potential and be creative? For the 5,000 adults around the world in Adobe’s survey, age and gender have almost nothing to do with it. Rather, it all comes down to environmental factors: location, education, and work.

Japan and the U.S. are the first- and second-most creative countries, respectively, among a global audience. While Japanese in the survey didn’t see themselves as particularly creative, they earned high marks from their peers in other countries.

Another major factor in creativity is education: not whether you had a “good” or “expensive” or “public” education, but whether you were encouraged to develop your creativity starting at an early age and continuing throughout your school years.

“The truth is that everyone has great capacities but not everyone develops them. One of the problems is that too often our educational systems don’t enable students to develop their natural creative powers. Instead, they promote uniformity and standardization. The result is that we’re draining people of their creative possibilities and, as this study reveals, producing a workforce that’s conditioned to prioritize conformity over creativity.”

The Adobe State of Create survey was conducted by research firm StrategyOne among a group of 5,000 adults, 1,000 each in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan. The firm conducted the survey between March 30 to April 9, 2012.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/23/adobe-creativity-study/

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” - Albert Einstein 

Creativity Research / Part 1

To further understand the nature of the importance of creativity, I got a few books out on the subject and read through, noting down many of the key concepts which stuck out to me. I shall highlight the key points which really stress it's importance, or point out other very interesting info on the subject...

• Our culture is obsessed with creativity. Hundreds of institutions and corporations instruct their scientists and executives to attend workshops on "creative problem-solving." Practically all boards of education stress the importance of giving students time for "creative self-expression" during the school day.
• Creativity is associated with a wide range of human endeavors, from science, business, and education to everyday life and the arts.
• Can we really compare a salesman or a cook to Einstein or Picasso? (...) Research on the cognitive processes are remarkably similar in all these diverse cases.
• Creativity is a process that results in some sort of outcome (an action or a product) that posesses at least two qualities: it must be unique and it must have value.
• The extraordinarily creative person has no extra, super-normal mental abilities. What this individual does posess, however, is a different motivational makeup. He or she seems to be more driven to work hard, to not give up when the going gets tough.
• All creative outcomes involve a marriage or fusion of previously unrelated ideas, planes of thought, or, to use a term favored by many creativity experts, contexts.
• The most common misconception about being creative is that we must feel inspired first. But research has shown that feeling inspired is no guarantee that we will do well. (...) Creativity, Bernard Shaw reputedly said, is "ninety per cent perspiration, ten per cent inspiration".
• Many individuals have reported how their involvement in the arts, either as participants or audience members, helped overcome behavioral problems.
• Twentieth-century writer Graham Greene makes a more sweeping statement:
  "Sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human situation."
• Practically all studies involving the two most researched art therapies, poetry and painting, show both the patients and their writing or art work becoming more positive in outlook during the course of therapy.
• Creative capacity was frequently the last realistic organized activity to be compromised by an illness, and on recovery was like the first to begin to return.
• There is an unexpected relationship between universal creativity and post-secondary education.

References:
Swede, G. (1993). Creativity A New Psychology. Toronto, Ontario: Wall & Emerson.
Corrigan, A. (2010). Creativity fostering, measuring and contexts. New York: Nova Science.

)NEW IDEA) CREATIVE CHALLENGE

So we looked at recyling bottles and making uses of them through diy projects but we felt the  idea couldnt be developed very far so decided to change our idea to a creative challenge.

Action

This challenge involves producing a product such as a drawing photo or craft each day for a certain number of days.

Impact

more creative

less stressed because youve taken time for a leisure activity

more slef expressive

skills improve 

problem solving improves

a form of stress relief 

creative freedom

a chance to try out different meduims of creativity youre not used to 

more confident 

reach youre full creative potential 

 stimulates neural activity 

Inspiration

https://vimeo.com/113678638

Inspiration
The pulls and shift of focus on the paint brushes and gouche palltte

Fleshing out our concept.

This was an extended explanation of our concept that I wrote up...

Lani and I had several extensive brainstorming sessions over Facebook lol. Mostly me having random inspirations in the middle of the night and bothering her with them haha.

Basically whenever we come up with an idea or a strike of inspiration we would use Facebook messenger as a way to note down these ideas and discuss them. Below are some of the ideas I came up with relating to our concept

"We aim to help people nurture their creativity by proposing a challenge: 15 minutes a day spent creatively for 15 days, in order to gain knowledge, skill and a greater sense of self."

"the purpose is to stimulate creativity, it's as simple as that"

"art is the gateway to the soul"

15 day, 21 day, 30 day - increased level of difficulty challenges?

"make every day of your life a work of art"

no environment or setting can stifle our creativity.

We want to show that, despite the busyness of life and life as a student being so hectic that it is important to stimulate your creativity, and how easy it is to do that during your day even it's a small 15 minute session.

Potential dialogue/narrative? :

Person 1 (reminiscing over last assignments): .. I felt like I was dying. And then we had one less day to do it due to a public holiday, and I was literally unconscious on the floor.  -nodding-

(Person 1 narrates over various footage): As a student, sometimes it feels nearly impossible to get a moment to yourself. A moment where you can just, y'know, take a breather in your day and get your thoughts or feelings out there. Away from the pressure of assignments, and constant buzz of social media and other interruptions. That's my favorite thing about the 15 day Creative Challenge. Not only am I nourishing the skills I have, but it's an excuse to take yourself away from it all for a moment. It's just me and my drawing book. :)

15 x 15 Creative Challenge, 15 Minutes. 15 Days. Infinite ways to create. 

"It's more than just a physical thing. We want to encourage a creative environment "

playing with pull focus

Brainstorming / Ideas

Week 1/Brainstorming 

In the first class we paired up into our groups and looked at a few ideas. I find it quite hard to come up with ideas on the spot with the pressure on, so we agreed to wait until the following class to 'settle' on a choice. When I have a bit of time to my self later in the day, my thoughts are more varied and I can come up with more ideas. These were written out in an organised list format stating the action and then the potential benefits for doing said action. I have attached my notes for this process work.

Our first idea we went over was the concept of using bottles in creative ways in an effort to reduce the bottle waste from students. (all student are alcoholics so this kinda does make sense..) but, although we researched this, and there were some nice looking 'creations' people came up with, it didn't really feel like something I could get behind or feel enthusiastic over. A lot of it just came across as well, tacky...

I did like the carpool and clothing swap concepts and do feel like they could have been contenders for a topic that would be meaningful and worth doing. Very student-life inspired. They were a bit open ended though, in that you might need to set up a website, app or something along those lines to get the most effectiveness out of them. I really liked the paper recycling thing (as cliche as it is) but this idea wouldn't work for this assignment as we were told that we will be doing majority of our work on blogs, which kind of negates the point of that idea.

The last idea was kind of a spur of the moment one: promoting a creative challenge to people / fellow students to participate in. It is an idea that is done in various forms within art communities online, and something that I would be proud to promote. Thankfully Lani liked it too, it was an idea we were both really enthusiastic and willing to get behind as it was relevant to us as design students, and something that could benefit us as designers. It also is something that compliments our skill sets, I love illustration and Lani loves photography, so the creative output and visual material we will be able to work into our site and video media should mean we have a lot to work with. :) Hopefully!

Initial Idea

Recycled Bottles
This was our initial idea in which we started thinking about how we could use bottles and reuse/ upcyle them into DIY projects