COMMUNITY
Motion Design, November 2020
For this project we were given this prompt: Develop a vignette or vignettes that features a non-linear narrative and whose message is based on a vision of community. How you choose to interpret ‘community’ is up to you. We should chose to either do one 3 minute video or three 1 minute videos.
I began by deciding how I would interpret community. I looked up a bunch of synonyms, and the ones that resonated with me were zone, locale, area, and neighborhood. I immediately knew I wanted to focus on Providence. Because the city is smaller than a city like Boston, I feel the community is so much more tight-knit and unique. I also have grown up here and have loved it for years, and jumped at the opportunity to showcase this awesome city to my fellow classmates.
I started wanting to do a 3 minute video, filled with different action shots of the city during different events and at different locations. I also wanted to incorporate digital animated text to the video. After ruminating on this idea, though, I realized there wasn’t anything that non-linear about this approach. Also, simply showing shots of the city with no specific meaning felt a bit boring and devoid of intent.
So, I decided to dig deeper and get more specific. I started thinking about the specific things that make Providence the amazing community it is. I landed on 3 of my favorite things about the city: art, music, and (of course) coffee. I decided I would make three 1 minute videos instead, to keep it interesting and dynamic, and to give each of the three categories its own space to unfold. Also, in terms of a non-linear approach, I decided to delve into AR. I had worked with the app Artivive to create an AR digital layer onto some posters before, but it was assigned when COVID first became an issue and we were all remote, and so amidst the upheaval I didn’t get to explore it quite as I wanted to.
I started by taking some preliminary shots with my phone to get a feel for what I wanted to do:
I also started taking pictures of things that could work as the spot for the AR element; things that you could point your phone at that wouldn’t move and had enough contrast.
However, I ultimately decided that I wanted to create 3 posters to use with the AR, partly because it would be an easier process to control in terms of making sure the posters would work with the AR, and also because I enjoyed the idea of letting the community in on what I was doing, so I wanted posters that I could leave up with instructions on how to view the AR layer.
FINAL OUTPUTS
These are the final posters I decided to use. I wanted them to be gritty and unique and imperfect, just like PVD. I collaged pictures together on each poster that were all taken in Providence. The first poster shows pictures of different street art as well as a piece of neon artwork that I saw on display in the RISD museum. The second poster showcases the inside of The Nitro Bar, a coffee shop on the west side of the city that I actually ended up filming most of the community through coffee video at. The third poster shows three different pictures from concerts that I attended in Providence. The design of these posters then informed how I created the videos. To piggyback off of the vibe of these I decided to add some 8mm film effects to the final videos, making them feel a little more like home movies. I also added different elements from these posters into the videos; the text as well as parts of the pictures.
My favorite part about filming the videos is that my ideas about Providence and the tight-knit community were reenforced more than once while I was filming. People walking by would ask me what I was doing, ask me if I was an artist, and compliment my work. My favorite encounter, though, happened when filming Community Through Coffee. I went to The Nitro Bar and asked one of the baristas if I could tape one of my posters in their window to take some pictures and do some filming. Not only did he let me do that, he also then gave me a free coffee and face mask. It was just the perfect example of community; local businesses supporting local artists, and everyone being nice to each other and embracing each other. It made me incredibly happy that I had decided to focus on my city for this project :)
