Here is a keyed version of the masked face footage. This was acheived using a 'Track Matte Key' on a green layer with the cutout screenshot made earlier as the Matte. This simply means that the coloured area on the screenshot will be replaced with green. This can then be taken out using a colour key, and the green means that no pigments in the face will be taken out when it is keyed. I will then add this to the explosion footage to create the video which I will project onto my painting.

Video Installation - Face

For my installation I am going to project a video of my face onto a painting, so I had to create this footage. I started by filming myself pretending to be in a war zone in a first person mode of address to the camera. I then captured this onto the computer. That was the easy part. I then had to cut out my face from my head, on the footage which I had captured. To do this I had to use a screenshot from the footage, which is shown here.




I had to create a mask for the footage so I blocked out the background in photoshop and made the face transparent footage could be seen underneath. This will allow for the footage to be cut down to the transparent size, using the grey areas as a mask.

Video Effects - Explosions

Here is an example of a clip which I will use in my final piece. I plan to do a war scene, focusing on a soldier in the foreground. It will all be painted except for the soldier's face and some new elements which I will place behind him. I have aquired this free stock footasge and keyed it in premiere to remove the background. I plan to play these in my war scene, along with sound effects, to create the atmosphere of war.

Researching Video Installation - Related Artists

Bill Viola is an American contemporary video artist and often uses slow motion in his work to make a dramatic effect. He creates installations which envelop the viewer in an environment as he uses visuals and sound. He uses universal human experiences in his work, such as life and death, which mean that his videos can communicate to a large audience.

I am interested in using sound in my work as it can create a completely different environment and should make my work stand out more than silence would.

Video Installation

I plan to incorporate an aspect of video in my final piece. I plan to project a video onto a painting which I will do. I will paint a portrait of a soldier, but not paint the features on the face. I will then film my face and project it onto the featureless face so that the image moves slightly, like blinking and looking slightly in each direction.

Soldiers Feedback 1.

Really love this work Dan well done. I like the idea of the soldier at the hop farm can you develop this?

More Playing With Colour

This is a quick play with rubbing out different parts of an image. Here I have rubbed out parts of a picture in zig zags and also just rubbed out in half.

I have also had a go at matching this image up with another which I took of some war veterans. I picked one which had a similar face shape and tried to match it so that it looked like it was the same person only aged.

Colour Test

This is an attempt at colour manipulation, getting inspiration from the girl in the red coat image. I have used one of my photos here of a tank commander to experiment with colouring parts of the photo. To do this I first applied the filters to make the photo look old, these being black and white filters and noise to blur the image. I then put a copy of the original photo under this layer and began to rub out the black and white. I experimented by rubbing out different parts of the image and this was the combination which I thought looked best. His face is rubbed out which focuses the audience on it, but also some of the background is which lets the audience identify what the background is (green and brown being associated with trees).

Playing with Colour - Inspiration

This image is from the film Schindlers' List and depicts a girl in a red coat. The shot is very effective as the background image is in black and white, but parts of the foreground are in colour, most vividly, the girls red coat which makes her stand out in the image.

Photo Manipulation - Matching

This is the manipulated image where I have made it look old.I have made it black and white and also put up the contrast. The level of black is also higher, as is the level of white. I have also added noise to the photo to blur it and give it an old look.

Photo Manipulation

I took this photo at the War and Peace Show and it is a copy of a photo by Don McCullin called 'Shell Shocked Soldier' (1968). I intend to match this photo to the quality of the original.

Final Rendition

This is the final image which has been modified a little more. I decided that the soldiers' face looked too clean and not like he'd been in a war so I dirtied it up. This was done using the dodge and burn tool again. His lower face had this done and so did his helmet. The final thing done to the image was the scratches which go all over the image. This was done by making an image with scratch brushes and then making it opaque and putting it over the soldier. This completes the digital colouring and gives the photo an old look.

Second Colouring

Here is a second rendition of the image which has had other things done to it. Firstly, the background. I added a texture to the background, which was dirt that I took a photo of, that added some more tones to the image. Because this is partially opaque the colour can still be seen behind. I then darkened the background by raising the contrast and added a shadow behind the head. On top of all this I then used a scratchy brush to add the visible scratches. I then added a filter to the whole image. The filter has desaturated the image to make it look like an old photo.

First Colouring

This is the result of the intial clouring of the soldier. I used different layers to put in different colours, as shown in the screenshot here. I filled in each section by selecting the area on the pen drawing layer and then moving to a different layer. Then by colouring on this with the brush tool it would colour inside the lines, making it quick and easy to fill the whole thing. I added a lighting effect to the background to create a more 3 dimesional image. To make the soldier match this I used the dodge tool to lighten parts of him and the burn tool to darken other parts. This means there is less flat colour and more depth to the image.

Line Drawing

Here is a quick line drawing of a soldier which I intend to colour in photoshop. The drawing was drawn in pen and scanned into the computer. I will use photoshop to create layers and colour him in.

Proposal

Brief

In this unit I intend to study soldiers and war, specifically looking at the effects of war on soldiers and how soldiers are represented. On this blog I intend to showcase all of the digital work which I produce and material which I find which is relevant to my topic