Time: Composition – Linear Narrative (Video)
This project proved to be quite difficult for me, as I have never extensively edited videos or worked with manipulating sound before. I further made this harder on myself as I decided that I wanted to make an animation. I sampled artwork from Japanese erotic horror artist Toshio Saeki; specifically from his Onikage collection (hence why I titled the video under the same name). I digitally coloured in the lineart featured in this collection, and they came out as follows:
The video was divided into four segments, respectively titled “死亡 / Death,” “愛好 / Love,” “殺して / Killing,” and “お仕置き / Punishment.”
Animation / Movement
The first scene was made by creating separate .png files from my original .psd file and putting them into Adobe After Effects. AAE was fun to work with; I animated the separate layers to create sequences of motion to put into Adobe Premiere Pro.
For the second sequence, I created individual .png files which I would just put into APP and adjust the speed for, for a traditional animation method. The individual files depicted a sliding door opening and closing, with the main character blinking in between.
The third sequence focused primarily on background animation, which was a pair of hands throwing an eclipsed sun back and forth like a ball. I traced each individual slide off of screenshots of a video I took of my hands, tossing a pot of eyeliner back and forth.
Finally, for the fourth sequence I used AAE for layer animation. Like the method I used for the first sequence, I exported this animation into a .mov file and put it into Premiere Pro to add sounds and zoom effects.
Sound
I sampled audio from the following sources:
Linear Progression / Storyline
The storyline follows a girl who falls to her death by the hands of a demon, turning into a ghost after the fall. She had fallen into a fault in the earth leading to a surreal world – a Japanese folklore/horror inspired limbo. She lands in a room to see a traditional bride and groom playing dangerously with a sword; the camera zooms into her point of view and the door closes on the scene. Now a ghost, she ends up on a path in the purgatory and is approached by a boy who begins to crawl up to her. This third scene depicts this as she hits him in the head with a hammer (through her own ghostly hand) as a pair of ghostly hands tosses the moon back and forth in the background horizon. The fourth part of the video, now in a more distorted environment with telephone poles and wires looming the background as she pokes the boy with a bamboo stick. The video ends with a zoom into her smirk.
I did not intend for a developed storyline, so the ultimate storyline is up to the viewer. The assignment was to show a clear visual progression, and the description above is my own interpretation of the transition between Saeki’s plausibly relatable scenes.