Juhi Mehta: Midterm Portfolio – #3 Captions of Tactile Graphics

Project Description:

My design theme was the connection between nature and a woman. With the video modality, the theme is expressed with lots of visuals and sound effects of nature and women.

For the remix of my tactile project, my goal was to create a video that described my version of the meaning behind my tactile graphic. When I look at my tactile graphic, I see a girl full of mystery, darkness, light, nature, and feminine energy. I wanted to capture that image of her in my head through relevant visuals of flowers, clouds, light/dark, and trees.

Documentation:

 

I opted for the sound effects of thunder, rain, and a woman laughing. The background song I chose was “Silver Springs” by Fleetwood Mac. I chose this song due to its meaning of a woman telling a man he will never forget her and that the memory of her will forever haunt him. I thought this was the perfect song to add for the description of my tactile graphic because of how haunting and mysterious the image is.

For my captions, I color coded them. My narration was black and white captions. The song’s instrumentals and background vocals were black and yellow captions that sat under my narrative captions:

Additionally, in this next scene of the woods, I created 3 caption layers:

Top – Sound effect

Middle – My narration

Bottom – Song lyrics

I also animated my captions (shaking, bobbing, etc.) to bring them to life along with this specific forest scene in which I added a flickering effect. I thought adding horror style effects would add to the haunting effect of the video.

Transcript:

When I look at her, I see her hair like luscious vines of a tree. I see her skin, smooth, but covered in shadows, adding an air of mystery to her. I see her gray tank top. Gray, like the way storm clouds look holding in all the rain. I see her holding a bouquet of flowers with her left hand, using them to hide her face. She wants to remain a mystery. So much so that she is positioned to the side, hiding her heart and her back, and only showing her left earring. She has to get to know you to see if she can trust you. In between the shadows, the part where she is showing the slightest bit of her face is the part that shows the most light. She is light, but she covers herself in shadows, like a castle protecting itself with closed gates. She is human. She is nature. She is darkness. She is light. She is pouring rain and bright, warm sunshine. She is your favorite memory that continues to haunt you. She is everything at once.

Reflection questions: 

What is lost and what is gained in this remix? What did you have to leave behind and what could you take with you?

In this remix, I had to leave behind the soft texture of what it feels like to touch this graphic. I don’t know if I was properly able to replicate the feeling of touching it into the remix video. I’m also not sure if my graphic conveys the story I am telling properly and if the video helps describe it better or not. On the other hand, I believe I gained a lot. I opened up a whole new way to describe this graphic. I believe I was able to create an immersive world that included sound and visuals and emotion. I feel like I was able to create a whole story. Now, we know the identity of the girl and what she is connected to. We know her character. It was my goal to create a story and bring this tactile graphic to life. I feel positive that I achieved that to some extent.