Wide Sargasso Sea Moving Image Tests

Over the past week I developed my Wide Sargasso Sea imagery by using projections and silhouettes to try and express a narrative that was easier to understand, I was really happy with the photos, they had exactly the kind of look and feel to them that I wanted to capture the inner turmoil of the girl in the book. I wasn't sure where to take them next though and John suggested I try some video work but through the shape of a little girl. I've been experimenting over the past 2 days using After Effects (never used it before eek!) and Photoshop to see what the images would play like through the shape of a person.

The images:
This is just a sequence of all of the images together that I quickly made using iMovie; all of the photos are portrait which means that they don't actually fit into the normal dimensions for video but I'm still going to try and make it work:

Wide Sargasso Sea experimentation from Emma Brown on Vimeo.

Test 1:
I did this quick test using the video above and a path on After Effects, the quality is really terrible though and I wasn't able to choose where the mask covered so it's in the same position on every photo which isn't something that I wanted.

Wide Sargasso Sea experimentation 1 from Emma Brown on Vimeo.

Test 2:
This was also using After Effects and this time I used the actual photos and inserted them as a sequence, the timing is something that I couldn't work out which is why it goes incredibly fast and then is just black at the end. This is obviously a HUGE problem and again I wasn't able to position the mask myself and it always ends up being too big. The photos are pixelated again so all in all not going too great.

Wide Sargasso Sea experimentation 3 from Emma Brown on Vimeo.

Test 4:
I managed to slow the time down on this one and the silhouette is stretched across the screen but this doesn't really improve things, the quality is terrible:

Wide Sargasso Sea experimentation 4 from Emma Brown on Vimeo.

Test 5:
After some unsuccessful attempts using After Effects I decided to just try out the mask on Photoshop; this meant that I could position it onto the photo wherever I wanted and I was able to introduce text into the images. I don't like the size of the text on this sequence it's way too small. I slowed it right down though and the photos seem to be a bit clearer.

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Wide Sargasso Sea experimentation 6 from Emma Brown on Vimeo.

Test 6:
I edited the text on this to make it larger and more spread out on some, the photos are going quicker but the text is a bit slow. I do like the images though, they look really good through the silhouette.

Wide Sargasso Sea experimentation 5 from Emma Brown on Vimeo.