Divergence

This was my final project of second year, it is about the divergence of the body and soul when you die. It is a metaphorical piece in which the soul is represented by the water. I came up with the concept of portraying the soul through water/liquids as water symbolises life, spirituality, ‘life-giving’, subconscious, transformation, calamity and many more. I chose to keep the rest of the composition fairly simply as there was plenty of movement and variety shown through the liquids/soul. After all, the body/face had to depict death so the more still, the better. The constant opening and shutting of eyes reinforces and reflects the notion of your eyes being the window to your soul and what could be the intense process of the body and soul diverging. The faces are greyscale as having them in colour would make them appear alive and well. The de-saturated palette also contrasts well with the blue liquids and provides the ‘soul’ with a luminosity. Once I had found a suitable ‘song’ to work with the visuals, I cut up, distorted and edited it myself. I also added a few subtle sound effects which were moulded from recording a kettle boil! While I wanted a trace of rhythm to my soundtrack (to work the visuals to), I wanted to keep the rest mainly as odd, unfamiliar ‘noises’ - nobody is familiar to the sort of sounds you would hear when dying. The idea of having my film play on the backdrop screen of a concert/gig was a context that appealed to me and was always in mind. So it was therefore important to keep the visuals quite abstract and decorative (but still conceptual). I edited the film to the soundtrack I had created to get the sense that it was designed to accompany music.

This unit was called 'Digital Revolution Career and Practise' and was designed to further our understanding of digital media by encouraging us to explore illustration through screen based visual communication. At the start of the unit, we were taught the basics of using Flash and After Effects. It can be easy when using new software to forget all creativity because of the concentration on experimenting with actions/effects/transformations, which is why I made an effort to stay focused on the visual expression. I was cautious not to let the final piece of this unit be an experimentation reel of every effect/action under the sun, but to use the software as a tool to enhance my film rather than the programme itself turning out to be the main characteristic.

Although I am quite happy with the visuals, looking back it is quite repetitive and I feel it would have been advantageous to use different parts of the body such as hands, feet, arms etc to symbolise the body instead of solely using the face. I did have these thoughts when producing the video but convinced myself simply using the face would be better. Will take this on board for my next project and will listen to my instincts!