prints.

This is the final version of my multi-screen project. I'm really glad that my idea went from simple fingerprints to something much more fascinating, and I think the final film does it justice.

I realise the audio is not perfect, but my main aim is to come back to this and actually extend it even further, making it into more of a film than an after effects experiment.

To my surprise, when playing around with opacity and blend modes, I noticed that  exclusion  created a sepia-like tint to most of the imagery. This was simply a happy accident in the editing process that actually ended up shaping the rest of the project. With forty-two videos on me, I decided to cut them all down to one second, speed them up and loop them. This was my original idea. However, when I came across the beautiful colours that the blend mode offered me, I decided that instead of a repetitive and unchanging loop, I wanted the fingerprints to interact more. 

So when it came to it, I actually layered two of the same videos on top of each other. The bottom layer was reversed whilst the top one was blended using exclusion. That's what gives the effect of movement in some of the shots, whilst others remain still (apparently my hands were shaking at different speeds when holding the camera.. heh). 

For the ending I actually layered the clips three times, the third layer also being blended with exclusion, creating a somewhat golden and blue haze. I found it fit in well with my ending shot of a golden fingerprint, and worked perfectly for my colour-scheme of yellow, white and blue.

Happy accidents when editing are the absolute highlight of my life. I didn't expect the visuals to actually look so mesmerising but now I can't picture the film being anything but what it is. It worked perfectly well with what I created in After Effects prior to that, and at the end the screens really seemed to interact with each other.

mana dzimtene.

 evaluation: 

I'm pleasantly surprised with the outcome. I was really excited to use archive footage, and to tell a story that people aren't really aware of. I enjoyed filming the visuals for my interpretation of my grandmother's stories as I had to get creative with it. I used a dictionary my grandmother used to have in 40s, and some photos I took with a film camera outside my home. I used a white flower and red inks, and a mirror for the Forest Brothers part, and footage I filmed earlier this year whilst it was snowing of an old Soviet Orthodox church.

I decided that in part two I would let the subtitles tell the real stories while I'd direct my speech at only Latvians as it's quite personal and talks about the recent years and how things seem to be getting worse again over time. I cite a few personal experiences within this part, but they are meant to bring Latvia's attention to these problems without alarming anyone else, hence the choice. I suppose in some way it's a trick as two audiences would get two very different things from that part of the film.

As for text and my voiceover, I managed to cut down its usage to have more breathing space which ended up being the perfect decision to make the film more free-flowing and easier to digest, whilst also allowing a beautiful interlude dedicated to The Baltic Way and its amazing story.

All in all, I'd say I'm proud of it because I think it represents my homeland perfectly without being too overwhelming, and giving a bit of ambiguity at the end - just as it feels like to everyone at home at the moment. I felt passionate about the subject matter, so I hope it came across, although I'm still unhappy with my voice as I feel it's below standard quality.

divi miljoni.

After the tutorial last Friday I realised there was still a lot I had to do. The busy narrative seemed to be too packed, leaving barely any breathing space for the people watching. I was also unhappy with my voice, so I re-recorded the whole script from beginning.

I also made the decision to get rid of one part. The new narrative was now: part one (the intro and my grandmother's stories), the baltic way and part two (the real stories). I found that having a sort of interlude allowed the film to be much easier to process. Previously I had packed it too full of information, almost making it into a short documentary instead of an experimental film. Thankfully I realised this early enough to change its structure.

For the titles I decided to go for white and yellow, which were the colours on the cover of the old English - Latvian dictionary I had. For the opening title, I made sure we could see the red, white, red through it as those are the colours of Latvia's flag.

For the subtitles I went for yellow, as where shots would be lighter white would be impossible to see and I wanted a consistency within the film.

The two shots above are actually my favourite ones as one is shot by me for the Forest Brothers story, and the other one is taken from the archives, and it happened unintentionally but I placed my white flower on a mirror and dripped some red ink on it, only to then realise that the archive featured a shot of red flowers on wet ground that reflected their image. I thought that was really quite powerful.

part two: latviešu valodā.

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 Atklāti sakot, man būtu žēl redzēt visu varoņu sejas, ja viņi būtu dzīvi un redzētu Latvijas pašreizējo grimšanu no patriotisma augstumiem uz valsti, kur jaunieši bez krievu valodas zināšanām nevar atrast darbu, kur visapkārt redzamas oranži melnas lentītes un citi skaļi atskaņo Padomju himnu, nejūtot nemazāko kauna izjūtu par savām rīcībām. It kā viņi nesaprastu Latvijas ciešanas un Latvijas zaudējumus, kamēr tajā deportēja patriotus.

 / 

 In all honesty I'd be sad to see the faces of all the heroes if they were alive and saw Latvia's current descent from the heights of patriotism to a country, where teenagers without the knowledge of Russian language can't find jobs, where orange-black ribbons are seen all around and others loudly play the Soviet anthem, not feeling any shame about their actions. As if they didn't understand Latvia's pain and Latvia's loss, whilst most of the patriots were deported.

fingerprints.

With my plan ready, all I had to do was create the fingerprints. At first I wasn't sure how I was going to get them but I thought light might play a part, so I decided to dip my fingers in some acrylic and press them on tracing paper. I did a few black ones before using charcoal on a new piece of paper and dipping my fingers in white acrylic to create a contrast. I also did one that was golden because I thought it could go well with my idea of black/white/gold colour-scheme.

Then some sunlight decided to make me aware of it and I had the idea to put the tracing paper against the window to get a natural-looking lightbox. To my surprise, through the macro-lens it looked absolutely stunning. At first I tried to use a tripod, but the angle my window was at proved to be difficult to reach without tilting the tripod in some weird angles, so I decided to just film it hand-held. I did use the tripod to stabalize it a little.

I also decided to try and shoot a little ending - I wrote some text on two new pieces of tracing paper, and filmed myself putting them in front of the lens.

This went so smoothly there's not much I can say about it except that I'm excited to work on the footage and see where it takes me!

lines.

From the start I knew I wanted text to play a part in this project, simply because I felt like it was a good tool for an interaction between the screens. Currently I have two parts that require text: one being this malfunctioning/meltdown of the system, and the other being the  hello?  slowly being typed on that links itself to the other screen.

The current plan requires six parts to the right screen, these being:

one - going through numbers

two - the world rotating

three - linear journey to picking out one out of many

four - loading and selecting

five - malfunctioning

six - showing a sense of awareness

one:

this part is important because together with the fingerprints on the left screen it symbolises a large amount of people/information, until finally it seems to narrow down something and ask for time to process this information. for this i wrote down a random eleven letter number and used character offset in order to generate numbers time*24.

two:

this part is my way of showing that the system is looking around the world - two simple circles, one moving around the other. i made the decision to make the other circle black, thereby fading away with the background. this was done using a null object and checkbox control.

three:

this part symbolises a kind of a journey/picking out a single item out of many (in this case it picks out an individual). i like the idea of it going a bit crazy and all over the place before fading into a single dot. it required using three polystars and trim paths keyframes.

four:

this part is important in terms of the system processing. even whilst loading it seems to be breaking down a little bit. this was done using a circle and a solid + stock footage + displacement map, as well as an alpha matte.

five:

this part is mostly text based and is a warning about the meltdown the system is experiencing, unable to understand what's wrong. similarly to the previous part it required stock footage and a displacement map to create this kind of glitch effect on the text.

six:

and finally, the last part was just a single word. it's meant to imply that the system is somewhat conscious and aware, and is trying to contact the other (human) side. this just uses a type on effect.

skice.

After visiting the archive, I acquired more than enough footage but I wasn't necessarily sure of how I wanted to shape the narrative. Me being me, instead of a storyboard I decided to create multiple draft edits. Soon enough I decided that the story was flowing better when it was in four parts: intro, the stories, the facts, the ending. As soon as I had decided that, I focused on arranging all the files into Premiere Pro bins as there were so many it got hard to keep up with them.

     /    

I did a rough edit before writing down the script for me to then record in Latvian and type in English. After multiple recordings, I got audio that I thought was okay - I was very self-conscious of my voice but I pushed that aside to keep moving forward.

     /    

Whilst editing, I decided to go off-script a little and record some more audio - this time I kept it Latvian-only, not translating it and directing it towards Latvians. I had had the idea to do this before so I thought I'd try it. It was also my way of fixing the problem of having a too voice-controlled film as at this point it was getting too overwhelming in terms of text.

our prints and your numbers.

     

For some unknown reason, I can't think of anything else that could possibly symbolise humans as much as fingerprints. Perhaps it comes from watching the series The Alienist, which is actually one of my inspirations for this project in terms of style, in which the birth of forensic science is discussed

The opening sequence of the series has dark and moody atmosphere, and I adore the deconstruction of buildings, grain and scratches shown within it. It has a heavy feeling to it in terms of colour but the deconstruction carries a sense of lightness and beauty despite its actual weight of steel and workforce.

To push this idea further, I was also inspired by the ending of ID from LaTurbo Avedon. To me those fingerprints looked like little islands, which got me thinking about how I could use differently acquired fingerprints to portray more people.

With that in mind, my idea is to create a balance between imperfect individuality and a perfect digital force. By that I mean I want the left side to showcase a number of detailed fingerprints and the right side to respond to the left by acknowledging the prints and attempting to discover a person, leading to an interaction between the two.

I'm not sure if it makes sense in words yet but my mind's running free so I'm excited to try and see what I can create.

Fingerprint:

[n] \ˈfiŋ-gər-ˌprint \

 the impression of a fingertip on any surface; also : an ink impression of the lines upon the fingertip taken for the purpose of identification. human fingerprints are detailed, nearly unique, difficult to alter, and durable over the life of an individual, making them suitable as long-term markers of human identity.