Visualising a Conversation
The Brief
How does one visualise a conversation?
This was a question posed to us when we got our very first assignment. We were tasked to create an image or visual based on a conversation that we have recorded (secretly) outside of class.
My first question was, what do we even record? We were encouraged to do a 'fly-of-the-wall' recording. Basically, record whatever we wanted.
4 of us, Sophia, Dinara, Tiffany and I head out of campus and first went to the nearby Pret A Manger. Since it was our break time, we decided to have some food there too. Whilst there we recorded some random conversations, one of which was a conversation between 2 old men. This conversation did not make the cut as their accents were really strong. Basically, the whole conversation was incoherent and we could not make out what they were saying.
Discussion with the team
After that, we moved on to the shopping center across and walked around for a bit. We stumbled upon an Indian store and Sophia decided to get some food since she was still hungry. During that short interaction between her and the Indian store owner, Dinara and I walked around the mall for a little bit and recorded some random noises too (still did not make the cut). Turns out, Sophia managed to record her conversation between her and the store owner.
The Halal store where we recorded the conversation
Choosing a recording for our project
We then headed back to class to listen to all of our recordings and after much deliberation, we ended up with Sophia's recording - her conversation between her and the Indian store owner. It was the best
one out of all the recordings that we had. Sophia then wrote down some notes on what was said in the recording. It was really hard to decipher but we managed to hear a small part of the conversation.
Sophia writing down what she hears from the recording
The main theme of the conversation: Ordering takeaway
After listening to the recording multiple times, our team cut down a 1-minute recording to 30 seconds long. The initial parts of the recording were really muffled and we could not hear anything. It was just background noise.
Some key points that we wanted to highlight in our recording were how the Indian store owner was explaining that one of his customers eats a lot and that he usually gives him more. The conversation progressed to him asking Sophia whether she wants a takeaway. This was how we derived to our main theme of the project.
"Creativity arises from our ability to see things from many different angles."
(Smith, 2008, p. 19)
One of the artists that played a huge part in this project was Keri Smith. In her book, she talks about how to be an explorer of the world, finding the unordinary in the ordinary and just absorbing and collecting as much information. As a creative, it's all about finding connections within what we have collected over our lifetime.
Visualising how ordering takeout would look like, we decided to cook curry and make a stop-motion video based on that. It was the one thing that really connected with how we thought take-out would look like.
Inspiration
Kinetic typography was our main inspiration. During class, our teacher showed us some examples of kinetic typography.
Screenshot (BBC Radio 4 “The Today Programme - Zadie Smith”, 2013)
It fit our idea perfectly because we wanted to emphasise the conversation at the Indian store through words created by curry.
Process
We started by going to the nearby supermarket and bought butter-chicken curry and potatoes.
Going to the supermarket to get our supplies for the video
Tiffany and I cooked sweet potatoes, mashed it up and mixed with the curry to create a thicker consistency so that it was easier for us to create the words out of the curry.
Cooking the sweet potato and curry
Sophia started drawing out rough storyboards of how we wanted to film our video.
Filming the video
It was a strenuous process as we were using our iPhones to take every single frame. However, after taking turns with each other being the cameraman, we finally finished taking all the necessary frames and hooked up the pictures to iMovie.
Dinara took charge of editing the video. She placed all the images together and tried to make it as cohesive as possible whilst matching the conversation in the recording.
In the end, we managed to complete our video and made it into a short 30-second stop-motion video about curry and takeaway.
Visualising a conversation through food.
Feedback
On the day of the presentation, we showed our video to the class and they were quite pleased as our team went on a different approach to do this project. Unlike other teams who worked digitally and use paper and pen for their stop motion videos, we cooked the actual curry to create the typography. However, some feedback that was given to us was that we could have made it more professional by having the proper equipment and also using props that resonate with the Indian that we were going for. Therefore, we plan to book and use the copy stand studio to make our video quality better.
Self Reflection
My whole experience with this project was rather ambiguous at first as our team really just went with the flow while doing this project. Since it was our first real assignment, I was a little wary when doing it. Even though now that it is completed, I'm still not sure whether it is good enough. However, after seeing the reactions from Alexandra and the class, I guess it reciprocated well.
I liked June's team's video as the way they interpreted their recording was very unique. They used a recording of when they were taking the lift going up to class. There were some students gossiping about another student and also there were background noises of machines entering the lift. They used those noises and made them into animal characters which I thought was a unique way of visualising mundane sounds that we hear every day in the lift into actual characters.
That being said, our team would continue to improve the quality of our video and add more elaborate stop motion frames, making our video look more seamless and dynamic.
2nd iteration
After relooking at our feedback, our team decided to up the quality of our video. We booked the copy studio so that we can get higher quality images. Tiffany cooked some curry and we went back to the same Indian restaurant to get more curry so that we can mix it together to get a thicker consistency.
Sophia went back to her room to get a rug so that it fits the 'Indian' aesthetic that we were going for in our video.
Using the copy stand to create our video
The photoshoot went pretty smoothly. Our team decided to add more 'dynamic' effect on our video by adding taking more stop frames, making our movements more meticulous.
Our Final Outcome
My experience with creating this video was quite fun as our team already had an idea of what we wanted to do at the start. In the beginning, it was kind of hard to execute our video because we did not have the equipment that could make our video look more professional.
I personally was a little sceptical whether we would pull it off but after showing the class our 1st iteration and had positive feedback from Alexandra, I was delighted.
I am quite happy with how the final video came out and the way Dinara edited the transitions for this video just made the stop-motion look more seamless.
Bibliography
BBC Radio 4 “The Today Programme - Zadie Smith” (2013) [Screenshot].
Available at: https://vimeo.com/61168730 (Accessed: 7 October 2019).
Smith, K. (2008). How to be an explorer of the world: portable life museum. New York: Penguin Books, p. 19.
How does one visualise a conversation?
This was a question posed to us when we got our very first assignment. We were tasked to create an image or visual based on a conversation that we have recorded (secretly) outside of class.
My first question was, what do we even record? We were encouraged to do a 'fly-of-the-wall' recording. Basically, record whatever we wanted.
4 of us, Sophia, Dinara, Tiffany and I head out of campus and first went to the nearby Pret A Manger. Since it was our break time, we decided to have some food there too. Whilst there we recorded some random conversations, one of which was a conversation between 2 old men. This conversation did not make the cut as their accents were really strong. Basically, the whole conversation was incoherent and we could not make out what they were saying.
Discussion with the team
After that, we moved on to the shopping center across and walked around for a bit. We stumbled upon an Indian store and Sophia decided to get some food since she was still hungry. During that short interaction between her and the Indian store owner, Dinara and I walked around the mall for a little bit and recorded some random noises too (still did not make the cut). Turns out, Sophia managed to record her conversation between her and the store owner.
The Halal store where we recorded the conversation
Choosing a recording for our project
We then headed back to class to listen to all of our recordings and after much deliberation, we ended up with Sophia's recording - her conversation between her and the Indian store owner. It was the best
one out of all the recordings that we had. Sophia then wrote down some notes on what was said in the recording. It was really hard to decipher but we managed to hear a small part of the conversation.
Sophia writing down what she hears from the recording
The main theme of the conversation: Ordering takeaway
After listening to the recording multiple times, our team cut down a 1-minute recording to 30 seconds long. The initial parts of the recording were really muffled and we could not hear anything. It was just background noise.
Some key points that we wanted to highlight in our recording were how the Indian store owner was explaining that one of his customers eats a lot and that he usually gives him more. The conversation progressed to him asking Sophia whether she wants a takeaway. This was how we derived to our main theme of the project.
"Creativity arises from our ability to see things from many different angles."
(Smith, 2008, p. 19)
One of the artists that played a huge part in this project was Keri Smith. In her book, she talks about how to be an explorer of the world, finding the unordinary in the ordinary and just absorbing and collecting as much information. As a creative, it's all about finding connections within what we have collected over our lifetime.
Visualising how ordering takeout would look like, we decided to cook curry and make a stop-motion video based on that. It was the one thing that really connected with how we thought take-out would look like.
Inspiration
Kinetic typography was our main inspiration. During class, our teacher showed us some examples of kinetic typography.
Screenshot (BBC Radio 4 “The Today Programme - Zadie Smith”, 2013)
It fit our idea perfectly because we wanted to emphasise the conversation at the Indian store through words created by curry.
Process
We started by going to the nearby supermarket and bought butter-chicken curry and potatoes.
Going to the supermarket to get our supplies for the video
Tiffany and I cooked sweet potatoes, mashed it up and mixed with the curry to create a thicker consistency so that it was easier for us to create the words out of the curry.
Cooking the sweet potato and curry
Sophia started drawing out rough storyboards of how we wanted to film our video.
Filming the video
It was a strenuous process as we were using our iPhones to take every single frame. However, after taking turns with each other being the cameraman, we finally finished taking all the necessary frames and hooked up the pictures to iMovie.
Dinara took charge of editing the video. She placed all the images together and tried to make it as cohesive as possible whilst matching the conversation in the recording.
In the end, we managed to complete our video and made it into a short 30-second stop-motion video about curry and takeaway.
Visualising a conversation through food.
Feedback
On the day of the presentation, we showed our video to the class and they were quite pleased as our team went on a different approach to do this project. Unlike other teams who worked digitally and use paper and pen for their stop motion videos, we cooked the actual curry to create the typography. However, some feedback that was given to us was that we could have made it more professional by having the proper equipment and also using props that resonate with the Indian that we were going for. Therefore, we plan to book and use the copy stand studio to make our video quality better.
Self Reflection
My whole experience with this project was rather ambiguous at first as our team really just went with the flow while doing this project. Since it was our first real assignment, I was a little wary when doing it. Even though now that it is completed, I'm still not sure whether it is good enough. However, after seeing the reactions from Alexandra and the class, I guess it reciprocated well.
I liked June's team's video as the way they interpreted their recording was very unique. They used a recording of when they were taking the lift going up to class. There were some students gossiping about another student and also there were background noises of machines entering the lift. They used those noises and made them into animal characters which I thought was a unique way of visualising mundane sounds that we hear every day in the lift into actual characters.
That being said, our team would continue to improve the quality of our video and add more elaborate stop motion frames, making our video look more seamless and dynamic.
2nd iteration
After relooking at our feedback, our team decided to up the quality of our video. We booked the copy studio so that we can get higher quality images. Tiffany cooked some curry and we went back to the same Indian restaurant to get more curry so that we can mix it together to get a thicker consistency.
Sophia went back to her room to get a rug so that it fits the 'Indian' aesthetic that we were going for in our video.
Using the copy stand to create our video
The photoshoot went pretty smoothly. Our team decided to add more 'dynamic' effect on our video by adding taking more stop frames, making our movements more meticulous.
Our Final Outcome
My experience with creating this video was quite fun as our team already had an idea of what we wanted to do at the start. In the beginning, it was kind of hard to execute our video because we did not have the equipment that could make our video look more professional.
I personally was a little sceptical whether we would pull it off but after showing the class our 1st iteration and had positive feedback from Alexandra, I was delighted.
I am quite happy with how the final video came out and the way Dinara edited the transitions for this video just made the stop-motion look more seamless.
Bibliography
BBC Radio 4 “The Today Programme - Zadie Smith” (2013) [Screenshot].
Available at: https://vimeo.com/61168730 (Accessed: 7 October 2019).
Smith, K. (2008). How to be an explorer of the world: portable life museum. New York: Penguin Books, p. 19.
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