Inspiration

I was partially inspired by an unlikely source, Daft Punk. stating that for their new album they were looking back at past music styles and putting a new fresh twist on them. I liked this notion this is why i decided to look at VHS. i could take this format and create something new from it.

Distorted imagery

A thing i associated with VHS is the distorted imagery you always seem to got, the noise it made, the way it would mess up the image on screen, he warped lines and fuzziness, all of these things and more make up part of the nostalgic memory I have for VHS tapes.

There is an audience

http://news.en.softonic.com/youtube-celebrates-vhs-with-the-tape-button

It's 57 years since the invention of the video tape, and YouTube is celebrating in strange style, by adding a 'tape mode'.

It's not on all YouTube videos, so you may have to look around to find one that works. The small VHS like icon next to the caption control transforms the image into an exaggerated version of watching a VHS video.

My concept - Format of Life

I feel like us a human being can linked to the development of new technologies and the fall of outdated ones like VHS. From birth we are considered to be getting greater by gaining knowledge, wisdom and understanding. However the one factor that stops us from becoming a sort of ‘winning format’ is that of our deterioration of health as we continue to grow older. The older generation could be seen as ‘living dead formats’ as it were. They hold vast amounts of information but due to their ‘incompatible’ nature with everyday modern society they are slowly lost in the depths of the modern life that grows around us.

So what can play the information they hold? Because people remember a specific technology through their memories. I propose to use a specific dead format in a creative way to encourage nostalgic feelings from their past.

The project may not have a final physical tangible structure that has a place because it is the audience that will experience the outcome through their own individual nostalgia experiences.

Lost generation - Nostalgic feeling will be lost

When my 5 year old Niece was very young, her mum would put on a VHS copy of sleeping beauty, however very soon after, my sister replaced DVD player and got new copies of all the disney films. This just got me thinking, my niece is going to grow up not knowing and not experiencing VHS tape, she's not going to experience of holding a tape cassette, placing it in the VHS, having to put up with the distorted visuals, the degrading colour and picture quality. All of these things that i have a nostalgic feeling too, will be lost on my niece.

For these reasons I now know I want to create something using VHS tapes in some way

VHS

Whilst thinking in my room I noticed how on my old T.V., the screen picture had slightly warped in shape at the side. This reminded me of VHS tapes, which i feel hold a lot of nostalgic value too because it was the format i grew up watching as a child.

 For me it was the last thing before the digital age struck us, before i was inside on the computer all day I was playing outside and everyone was free from the technological stresses of today.

The triggers that VHS have; the sound of putting in a tape, the distorted visuals etc all of these I think I could play off.

What to do next - Nostalgia for me

After doing all this experimenting i feel now i need to concentrate on something that i find nostalgic. From the research i have done i feel i need to do something that I've personally experienced through my lifetime, something i've experienced whilst growing up. Something that would senses as well would be key as well.

My Infographic

So this is my infographic, i felt that putting all this information together will show the bare essentials as to what makes this bag special to my mum.

planning on what information to display

list of things i could include in my inforgraphic

Wanted to roughly plan how i wanted my infographic to look, whether it be portrait or land scape, imagery that will be used etc

working out distance

Manchester to menorca: 981 miles 1579 km

Manchester to Algarve Portugal: 1170 miles/ 1883 km

Manchester to volos Greece: 1531 miles / 2464 km

Manchester to Fethiye turkey: 1985 miles/ 3196 km

Manchester to Olu Deniz  1531 miles/ 2464 km

Manchester to kalkan, Turkey – 1926 miles/ 3101 km

Manchester to florida – 4328 miles / 6964 km

Manchester to turkey: 1901 miles, 3060 km

Manchester to Cyprus: 2132 miles/ 3432 km

Manchester to California - 5296 miles/ 8523 km

Manchester to Corfu – 1412 miles/ 2273 km

38939km

Looking at Infographics

I want to display information about the bag in an Infographic, so i looked at some example so how best i could display my information.

My mum's holiday bag

So as i've found out Nostalgia can also be in the form of an object. My mum has an old bag that she always takes on holiday with her, even though its battered and looking worse for where. I wanted to provide at least some insight as to why she keeps it, is it the nostalgic memories she has with it, for instance where the bag has been? what it holds etc

Nostalgia Inducement

The user is able to induce powerful emotional feelings to someone or on themselves to yearn for the past, often in idealized form. Induce memories by bringing up the past of pleasant remembrances, and regrets such as anguish and remorse. Often triggered by something reminding the individual of an event or item from their past. The resulting emotion can vary from happiness to sorrow. The user can induce nostalgia through verbal speech or by physical touch.

• Déjà-vu - replaying a specific memory can trigger nostalgia.
• Fear Nostalgia - fearing a certain someone or something can trigger nostalgia.
• Love Nostalgia - the lost of loved ones from our past can trigger nostalgia.
• Musical Nostalgia - music form our past can trigger nostalgia.
• Object Nostalgia - touching or smelling an object from our past triggers nostalgia.
• Pain Nostalgia - feeling pain from the past can trigger nostalgia.
• Youth Nostalgia - the memories of a person's childhood.

Thoughts and understandings

From all of these talks i feel i have gained a better understanding of what nostalgia is. The idea of triggers; smells, sounds and visual and the fact they are individual to everybody. I found this really fascinating and the notion it be a fleeting moment that initiates a past memory.

Final typography piece

So this is what i came up with. It was nice and i found creating this came quite naturally in the sense that i didn't really plan on creating one, it just seem to right thing to do in response to all the audio footage i had collected.

Sections of typographic animations

Heres a couple of clips to shows just some of the scenes i am working on. I thought i would have the two people talking distinguished by having their words in different colours, my dad being in black my mum in white, it just means you know who is saying what, especially when they talk over one another.

I also decided to have some of the words on simple white backgrounds, for me these are the bits that stand out, that put across key points.

Working in After Effects

Having each word on a different layer, making them 3D layer so i could animate them, altering the x,y & z axises 

Creating Null objects so i could parent multiple layers and have them all move at the same time. Furthermore I added the audio from the recording so i could match when the words should appear on screen at the right time.

Playing with movement of the text, to try and keep it interesting, got to be careful, making sure it can read easily and people can follow it along.

I wanted to keep the little pauses or mistakes the speakers make like the 'erms' and 'ahh' i think it just make it so much more interesting, looks more spontaneous and so nothing is lost from the conversation.

example typographic animation

I wanted to create a typographic animation piece to accompany the audio, just to give some visual interest and highlight particular things said.