2 Locks to 6 Locks and lots of learning in the meantime!

"6 Locks" Still

In preparation for documenting my upcoming performance/project experiment, with the goal of creating a stop motion video with stills taken from that night, I've been practicing.

I'm slowly teaching myself how to use iMovie for this project.
As I posted last time, the first stop motion video that I made is called 2 Locks, and is a quick documentation of how I get in and out of my apartment.

This time, I've gone a little bit further, and included Jeanika in my experimenting! Together, we documented the arduous task of going from inside her apartment, to the Program House, where she is working on the interior space. That's through six locks people.

So behold, 6 Locks.

I have increased the time of each frame, from 0:03 seconds each in 2 Locks, to 0:05 seconds in 6 Locks. There is a discernible difference in my opinion, but it is still fast enough to really feel the movements.

Right now, the process is not overly complicated. Thank you Apple, for streamlining your programs! Uploading photos into iPhoto allows for easy access by roll in iMovie. Adding photographs to a movie project is done by clicking on "Media" and then selecting the stills by roll. So far, I've been able to add each roll, which places them in chronological order by title. The most editing that I have done to each movie is deleting a few stills that are too repetitive, or pieces that are too distracting. For example, while Jeanika is crossing the street, she paused, and a large black truck hurtled by, showing up significantly in just one frame. This was a large distracting black flash in the final product, so I deleted the frame. I've also been playing around with the duration of each image, seeing whether or not I liked to focus on each lock for example, by keeping one frame, or a build up to the lock frame, slightly longer than the others. It didn't look right, and ruined the continuity of the motion, so I left well enough alone, and so far each frame is shown for an equal amount of time, with the exception of one frame in "6 Locks." In "6 Locks," the last frame is held for twice as long as the rest.

Unfortunately, one of the issues that I'm having currently, in posting videos to Youtube, is that it cuts out the last five frames or so, essentially deleting the closing shots that I took. This is annoying, and I am hoping to upload the videos to Flickr (I had forgotten that a Pro account allows for video uploading until I uploaded the stills in this post!) and see if that hosting site allows for the full video.

The videos uploaded to Flickr are: "2 Locks" and "6 Locks" (Flickr shows the whole video! See the last few shots at the end of each one on Flickr!)

The quality of the posted videos is another kink I have to work through. I learned how to convert iMovie projects into QuickTime compatible files via this youtube video, and following these directions leads to a small viewing size, which pixelates and distorts with any magnification. However, when I attempted to leave the quality as I view it on my screen, youtube kindly informed me that it would take around 8,945 minutes (give or take) to upload. I quickly cancelled that for the sake of time and the browser speed of the rest of my Safari tabs, and uploaded the smaller version instead.

I've also been contacting the various artists and friends that I've met (and some I haven't met!) since coming to Trinidad to ask (beg?) for help in one part of my final project. It's this performance/project. I'm inexperienced with a number of aspects of this project, so I'm enlisting in all the help I can get! I've gotten kind words already, lots of help from Sean Leonard who has kindly scheduled me into the space for some of this coming Saturday, and all of this coming Sunday.

On my agenda yet is fabric shopping or scavenging, and paint evaluation and potentially shopping. In Jeanika's explorations of the program house, she found around 6 half gallon containers of the body paint that I was planning on using. While they are not the colors I had in mind (black and white), I'm willing to use red and blue in order to save money. However, I haven't checked on the quality and quantity left over yet, and am hoping to find full pristine paint, rather than dried out dredges! Additionally, she had found a large amount of fabric, and I'm hoping that a second go-through will yield some extra white sheets!

"6 Locks" Still

That's all for now, but I'm very happy with the progress that I'm making!

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