Project 3
You’re Wrong About — Youth Gangs
You’re Wrong About is a pop culture podcast hosted by Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall. The show explores misunderstood media events interrogating why and how the public got things wrong. This episode is about how in the ’90s the “youth gang epidemic” was blown way out of proportion as a part of the damaged “inner-city kids” rhetoric and how corrupt the gang units were because they were in charge of themselves and didn’t have to report to anyone else. The section of audio I selected highlighted the similarities between gang units and the gangs they were policing.
week 1 motion test
The first week was very early concept sketches and a very stagnant motion test. I was exploring the concept of the dictionary definition for their comparison of gang units and gangs, as well as how to portray the very conversational feel of the video and how I could visually represent the overlapping speech.
WEEK 2
For week two I had gotten down my ideas for about half of the clip, I was struggling with the second half and figured I’d just focus on the first half to get them fleshed out. Concept wise many of them were good ideas they just needed tweaking to make them more dramatic.
The first section was supposed to replicate the action of the one speaker throwing an idea to the other, it was recommended that I move the words closer together and make the arc more dramatic. I originally used the arc effect which didn’t allow for very easy manipulation so I was having a hard time fitting the words on the page while also lining it up so it actually looked like it was going from one word to the other. For galaxy brain I found a typeface that looked similar to a brain and found a distortion that gave it a galaxy-like feeling, I also illustrated a little galaxy to go behind it. as for the little conversation bits I was trying to create a feeling of back and forth before it got to the galaxy definition where I still hadn't figured out the overlapping/ interrupting.
Recommendations I got were to adjust my timing, tighten up some of my settings, work on placement (overlapping), pick a better typeface for mike, and get rid of my galaxy graphic.
WEEK 3
Week three I finally started sorting out ideas for the rest of the content, I was starting to add personality to the voices and the laughter and I had the overlapping pretty much sorted out. I tried a few things for the “where am I going?” section, one with a path that took it around the screen but it seemed too put together, I also had them fading on randomly but it’s such a short clip that the read time didn't do well that way, so I was still struggling with the execution of it but I had the general idea of it seeming unsure of itself. The next section is supposed to resemble a book because Mike is talking about the information in the books he read so I formatted it kind of like a book and had the word literature circled in red similarly to how you would while editing a paper and then Sarahs “really?” also popped on screen in the same red as if it was a comment someone was writing. I finished it with a page flipping transition. Since this piece is so conversational both speakers start sentences and then go back and rephrase what they're saying so once the page flipped mikes “again th-” is immediately there but I revered the typewriter motion to make it seem like someone was backspacing before restarting a sentence. I wanted to play around with the idea of gang being a tricky definition and refer back to the insinuation that the police/gang units could also be considered a gang so I created outlines of the words “police” and “gangs” and shape morphed the paths to quickly switch between the two. The section I struggled with the most was the difference between a gang and gang unit so I mimicked the action of the scales of justice but I wasn't feeling good about it. As for the outfits section, that is pretty self-explanatory but I just arranged the letter to look like a shirt and pants and mimicked the motions of putting them on.
WEEK4
I was touching things up for the presentation and I finally figured out I could use the path tool to create the exact arc I wanted for throw. I removed the illustration and tightened up my galaxy brain setting. I adjusted the gang unit definition to how I thought Breck wanted it but I was incorrect and ended up switching it back. I ended up stumbling on an effect called flo motion and when I was messing around with it created a floaty indecisive movement and the repetition in the background unintentionally created a question mark with I thought was very cool so that was mostly a happy accident. The second half stayed mostly the same until the final crit.
FINAL VIDEO
My final critiques fortunately were mostly final passes of detail work, I changed the gang unit setting back to how it was before and then did some more finessing to clean up the rag so it was in a tidier shape. It was recommended that I make the setting for literature more like the definition of gangs one so I sorted that out as well as I timed the really to come up only as Sarah said it rather than it coming on early. As for the scales of justice one, I cleaned up the setting more and aligned the timing so that when. each gang and gang unit were said it hit the top. I changed around some of the read times a bit more and did my best to align all the copy with the audio and for the final slide of mike laughing I made it fill up the screen so it could immediately change to the three seconds of slate.
