Bike vs traffic

In this clip I took the motions of the cars as they moved down the street and tried to combine the layers of the different traffic with the motions of a man biking down the street. I took clips of the man from different positions as he moved towards the camera. I mixed them in with the various flows of traffic. I wish I could have layered them together to create more of a bike in traffic effect. I think this clip portrays the ideas I was going for even though the resources are limited.

Rain dance

I took some of the footage of the plant seed floating around in the puddle and decided a would create a new dance for the seed. I edited the clips and rearranged them to create a new direction of motion. I began with the original movement of the seed and began to take different clips from different positions of the seed. I sent the seed in its original direction, then made it flip back over and re-flip again. As it moved across from right to left I decided it should go back, and so reversed its order. I decided I felt that the seed should dance throughout the clip, so I took out some of the space and only allowed the seed to dance out of view for brief moments.

Dancing in the puddle

Down along Lincoln Memorial Drive there was an overpass for walking. The overpass has a building it is attached to with a roof ledge that was dripping the melting snow into the snowbank. This was right near where I caught the traffic footatge. It was about 2:50 pm here. Where the water was landing it had formed a puddle, which still had water dripping into it. There was a leaf in the puddle and the way the water was making the water move was causing the leaf to dance around in the puddle. The actions of both the water and the leaf created an interesting and active scene.

A creek in the snow

On the day that I went for my walk there was a lot of snow melting and water flowing. At about 1:15 pm I came across a snowbank near Murray St. and Locust Ave. The street around it was sloped towards it and the water from the road was flowing into it. The water had melted a natural path through the snow and formed a natural river. The water flowing through it was running fairly quickly and was a few inches deep. The snow bank's "river walls" were almost seven inches high, and the path was still very narrow and distinct. I was surprised that the snow hadn't melted away more widely around the water flow, but the water had cut a narrow and deep path through it.

The natural flow

This image was captured standing on a walkway that overpasses Lincoln Memorial drive. It was about 2:45 pm on Monday, March 11th. As I was watching the traffic the way the traffic flowed caught my attention. It seemed that the traffic flows in both lanes seemed to cross each other at a point just passed the overpass. I also liked the way the traffic streams were flowing inversely to each other. The aspect I was trying to capture here was the motions of the flows of traffic as they cruised fluidly passed each other and around the opposite curves of the road. I also wanted to capture the effect of the various oncoming cars as they sort of "appeared" as they approached and rounded the corner just ahead of the overpass.

Ripple Creek

As I was walking along on March 11th at about 3:45 pm I came across a puddle of water on the sidewalk that was fairly large. The puddle was in an open area and the wind was blowing over it quite steadily, causing a ripple effect that varied with the strength of the breeze. The texture was interesting because it seemed to be constant and only would calm slightly as the breeze settled. I felt this texture would work well as a transition piece or to help break away from an idea. It seems like it would be very versatile and is both detailed and ambiguous, so it could be used as more than just ripples in water.

What to shoot

As I walked I needed some ideas for what types of things to film. I decided to look for things in nature that had a pattern or repetition, or some kind of matrix of things that made a natural isolated pattern. I thought it might be interesting to notice some of the things in nature that either have been put there in repetition or create a repetition or pattern on their own. I also thought it would be interesting to try to find natural sites where things have combined to make a sort of collage. Another idea I used to capture ideas came from the fact that it was a beautiful and warm day. I figured there would be a lot of melting snow, which turns into water. So for my other focus I decided to shoot various scenes involving water in some way. I thought this might give me plenty of opportunity on a day like this and I figured there might be some interesting formations or actions to see from the melting water, and it would be unique to the type of day and situation to gather some once in a lifetime (or season) events.