Third Assignment - U C What I C

Our third assignment was to tell a story using 8 or less pictures with a surprise ending/twist in the plot. It seemed like an easy task, with lots of inspiration to draw from Ch8 shows right?

No!

I thought of some ideas, but they were going to be hard to execute because I would require certain types of models for the pictures, whom I won't be able to get. For instance, I wanted to have a story that involved a child, but realised that I didn't know anyone in that age group.

Finally, I looked at my sister's stuffed rats and a story started forming in my mind.

First set of pictures

The story goes like this:

It is late at night, no one seems to be awake. Suddenly, we see a rat's head poking out from behind a door. Then we see a line of rats seemingly scurrying somewhere. Next we see two rats at the fridge, trying to open it. In the following picture, we see a rat carrying a slice of cake. Then we see another two rats stacked on each other trying to reach a switch. In the next picture, there's a mountain of rats and they are tinted in blue light. In the final picture, we realise that they were actually sneaking out to watch tv, Tom and Jerry cartoon to be exact. My sister suggested that using more rats could create more shock value to the picture, thereby increasing the magnitude of the twist at the end.

Comments were that the lighting in the pictures don't seem to be consistent with the time. I really did take the pictures at around 1am in the morning, but it was too dark and I used a desk lamp to create some light. This caused some pictures to look too bright. Also, in some pictures, I used the ceiling light instead of the desk lamp, therefore the lights were also not consistent in each picture. Another comment was that it was not very obvious that it was 1am in the morning, which was also because of the lighting. A classmate's suggestion was to use a digital device to tell the time instead.

For this set of pictures, I wasn't very happy with the results. There were alot of mistakes, such as my camera setting, lighting and the quality of the prints. I didn't realise that my pictures were actually too dark for print, and also forgot that taking pictures in the dark would increase the noise level and produce a grainy effect. The digital noise was very bad in the first picture especially, and showed up really evidently in the prints. Most of the pictures were very dark when printed too, and couldn't highlight the focus of the pictures. Another thing was that I didn't really feel confident about the twist. I felt that the twist wasn't that impactful and interesting enough.

So after the tutorial, I consulted Jing and asked her about my story. She also felt that the twist wasn't really good enough and helped me rearrange my story. I also asked her regarding the noise in the pictures, and she agreed that it was quite bad. I had thought initially that maybe printing matte finish might help a little, but she told me that glossy finish would better show off the colours.

So after hearing the comments and suggestions, I took another set of pictures and edited some of the current ones I took. I changed a few pictures into grayscale so that some differences in the lighting won't be too obvious. Also, I want to use the lack of colours to convey a sense of foreboding, as grayscale signifies bleakness, gloominess. The pictures also progress from the lack of colours to a picture that has colours, albeit dull, and finally, a brightly-coloured picture to end the story, to express the progression of the plot, and to emphasise the twist in the story. The order of the pictures are also changed, which I feel shows the twist better compared to my first set of pictures.

The next step for me would be to try printing the pictures and hope that they won't turn out too dark and also that the noise are more or less eliminated.

Second set of pictures

This assignment really taught me about camera settings, as it's the first time I faced the problem of noise in pictures. My father also explained to me the different ISO settings to reduce noise and about angles to take pictures from. Different angles can really present things differently, and create a different mood/effect. I also better understood the golden points in taking pictures, that sometimes having the picture directly in the middle don't really look flattering and tried applying it in my photos.