Recipe:

Title_colour on colour

In the first experiment, I was working with the landscape to see if colours can affect viewer’s emotion when viewing the media. As the result wasn’t the same as I expected so in this experiment,  I am aiming to test how might different colours will test out colours on people. What I will do is to get a person with blank face in front of the camera, by changing different colours of cellophane paper and the backgrounds, I want to experiment if the colours influence the way audience to understand a media piece if the subject of the media piece is a person instead of a landscape.

Ingredients:

• A camera that allows me to do filming and photographing
• backgrounds with single colour
• All white clothes
• cellophane papers
• scissors to cut the cellophane paper
• rubber band

Methods:

1. Filming a person with different colour of cellophane papers
2. Do every colours with cellophane covered in front of the lens first, and then use scissors to cut a hole in the middle of the cellophane paper
3. Film another video with the cellophane paper around the lens but not covered
4. After shooting five colours of cellophane, look back to them, compare videos with and without the cellophane papers
5. Select and edit to a complete video
6. keep the rest of footages for reflection

Media:

Reflection:

According to the result of the last experiment, I have decided to let my ‘model’ wear all white for the shooting because the colour of  cellophane paper was a lot thicker than I thought it would be, for this experiment I am adding more colour on the background so I chose to use white to balance the colour. The white worked very well in this experiment, and I was very happy how I have moved from the first to the second experiment. I think this is a quite a big step towards my final project. To reflect on what I have done on the cellophane paper, so far I think colours can affect how people view a photograph or a video. People will have an innate interpretation to each colour even it might differ from cultural background or experiences, for example, blue can be a colour symbolizing sad and gloomy etc.  However, since the cellophane papers’ colour is very deep and a bit dark as well when they are covered in front of the camera, so the subject even she has a blank face which I have planned to let her act in a blank face because I want to see what does audience feel out of each colour. But the subject is now represented mysteriously in the video, I think it is because of the dark colour in the video, even though the full coloured background is vivid and bright.

What is cleared for now is colour can obviously influence the way we view a media piece, it might create the sense of a flashback scene or it might let the ‘actor’ looking grim or serious but colours do create emotions. The reason why colours can create different emotion I am guessing its because they will differ by other elements in the media piece as well, as the result, for the next experiment I will try to get rid of cellophane paper but use post-production which is filters to manipulate emotions. I think I will still ask a person to be in my video instead of photographs because human faces are more readable and understandable than a landscape or architecture. And I will also keep using all white clothing in the video because white can shows each colour very well.

Class discussion:

1. Are you making patterns to notice new things or are there patterns out there in the world that you are trying to notice? It’s actually the other way around, since I have decided to work on colour as my theme, I started to notice the colours in RMIT or in my daily life. I have tuned myself to discover the patterns in my daily life.
2. Are you glimpsing in or observing slowly? What are the differences? In my case, colours are very obvious even I am glimpsing, but when I am observing slowly, there are more and more colours being discovered throughout the process.
3. How is the medium (photography/ video/ sound) you’re using to notice shaping what is available to be noticed in the media?  As I am doing both video and photography, I feel like videography is more open to audience whereas a photograph is capturing the moment, so it’s more closed for imagination.
4. How is the particular technology you’re using (iPhone, DSLR, Zoom recorder) shaping what is available to be noticed?  The quality between iPhone and DSLR are very obvious, DSLR we can adjust the focal point, the shutter speed, etc., these can manipulate how the audience can notice throughout your media. For example, I have photographed a water bottle the focus is on the bottle, and the rest is being blurred then this is deliberately leading the audience to look at your focal point.
5. What does your media pay attention to?   Colors and emotions
6. Would you position what you are making as a documentary, nonfiction, experimental or somewhere in-between? I belive myself to be making a experimental more because there isn’t a storyline behind