Our class visited the Brooklyn Historical Society, which I’m sure I have passed several times and didnt realize what it was.  We had the opportunity to view an audio installation piece dedicated to Brooklyn’s Vietnam Veterans.  Along with audio, this exhibition uses portraits and personal belongings or artifacts from the veterans.  The audio stories were triggered and heard through an overhead speaker after standing on the illustrations of foot prints.

It was interesting to hear each person tell their own stories.  The experience felt very intimate as we also looked at pictures and of the veterans during their younger days in the war.  We heard about their families, their experiences (whether heartbreaking or joyous) and most importantly, we had a face to go along with the story.  We often hear many stories of veterans from all over the country.  Many of them that sound similar. Many of them having experienced tragedy.  However, we seldom are able to put a face to a story. It was almost like we got to meet these people and listen to their stories inperson.  I envisioned their stories as they happened, I empathized with their feelings and as a result, I was left thinking about how their lives are affected even today. Veteran Anthony Wallace (portrait below) spoke of his efforts to contact the families of some fallen comrades.  He spoke of how grateful their families were, and how blessed they also felt that they were able to have someone that lived to tell them of their son’s final moments.

I think of the many families who have loved ones die or somehow cannot be accounted for.  This story in particular stayed with me because I recently for the first time in my life had to deal with my father potentially dying.  Although he is well and alive today, I remember how I wasn’t by his side when he became ill and how all I wanted to know were details on his condition.  These veterans, in my opinion, led extraordinary lives, yet some of them lead very normal lives today.  Without hearing the stories, of today’s preachers, parents and grandparents, we would never know any of their experiences.

Today, a friend and I visited the Tree Museum. Beautiful day to take a walk on the Grand Concourse and listen to some of the stories these trees have to tell.  Our first stop was in Joyce Kilner Park.  It was a little hard to find to find trees in this location that had the markers. We only managed to find one.  Once we got the number, it was easier to hear some other stories in other locations.  We also visited 170th street and listened to the story of 3 trees there.  One of the trees looked as though it had been cut down.  I found tree number 23 by the Joyce Kilner park interesting because of a hotel that used to exist there, I was surprised to hear that what was once known as the “social center of the bronx”, housing famous baseball teams and holding presidential conventions was almost turned into a welfare facility and is now a residence for senior citizens. Although many of the trees are clearly new and did not exist for a 100 years,  I felt like some of these trees were relative to how humans carry on stories for generations.  The stories about the Salvadorian vendor and the bee keeper, will be told 100 years later.  Below is a small visual map of a few of the trees that we found and their locations along with some other pictures.

Joyce Kilner Park #23

170th street #42

#23

For this animation piece, David and I wanted to play around a lot with layering and 3D.  We looked at some sites for inspiration and really liked a game entitled The Graveyard.  We found a beautiful picture of a forest and thought it would be interesting to play with cameras, null objects and animating on the X, Y and Z axis. We also placed a few lights in the scene.  Our piece is somewhat abstract where interpretation is left up to the viewer.  Below are pictures of our assets.  The bulk of our pre-production and production time was spent gathering, cutting up and tweaking our assets in photoshop.  We originally were going to try to manually control the camera with code to navigate the scene, but that will be part of a bigger project.  In our previous After Effects experience we always animated the entire scene at once.  That meant a lot of keyframes.  In class, we learned how to nest compositions, which made our workflow less messy and a little more efficient.

Voice Over- Emily Ryan