Project One: Montage

Artist Statement

"You are unique. Just like everybody else."

For my project, I took this quote to heart, in the sense that I wanted to showcase that a smile is as unique in comparison to someone else's. Every person utilizes similar mechanisms to smile- a straight face, push back the mouth, raise cheeks; more commonly, we say "cheese," hence the title of my movie. 

I got the idea while putting together my picture albums to decorate the walls of my dorm. I realized that in everyone of my pictures, my smile was usually exactly the same. Then I continued to regarded the rest of my friends, and they're smiles as well seemed like a mirrored image, especially when you cover up the upper part of the face [nose, eyes]. I believe this is because of the notion that we "smile with our eyes," and without viewing them, we lose a lot of information about each person, and how they truly feel behind the smile. 

To create the movie, I took a single shot of me and 8 of my friends. Then I broke down the picture into individual shots of each person portrayed in the photo. I took away the background color, to add more harmony, and began to slowly play them to the beat of "The Blue Umbrella," an instrumental soundtrack to the Pixar short of the same name. The timing of the pictures are set to go along with the tempo of the song. Then, after a beat [to initial simply the start of a change in rhythm], I speed up the timing of the photos, to the point that they flash across the screen, increasing this speed after certain intervals. The loss of color in the background, and the lack of time to process the image, are both factors in trying to confuse the viewer and have he/she guessing which smile belongs to which person. I  also inserted pictures of my friends at different levels of zoom, in between the shots of just their smiles for confusion, as well as distraction- the switch from a photo having a lot of detail to one with less, catches the eye and teases it to start seeing things that aren't there. The speeding up in music also links to a sense of urgency in the procession- like I'm building up to something, only to find there's nothing special there. I had clear pictures at first but then I chose to have them a little more blurred, to further create the look of images flashing before you, and of the person's identity being that much more unknown.

This is truly a montage as much to my idea to that of my friends and our times together- when watching they said they couldn't help feeling sentimental, and I feel the music as well as the swiftness, and simplicity of the video add to that- I hope you smile when you watch it too :].