CommTech 11: Projects

Graphic Design: Poster

When I was deciding what to do, I considered what was relevant but somewhat forgotten. The answer? Ukraine. By this point, the war had raged on for about a year, so news stations had relegated the issue to political meetings.

I used the official Pantone colours that were released by the company in support of Ukraine. I decided to use yellow as the background and blue as the foreground because if I did it the other way around, that would be IKEA's colour scheme. And I'm not going to infringe on a popular brand lest my poster become associated with it.

See rough work

Photography: Portraits

As Mr. Layton once said, "Portaits can capture emotion." Or something like that. When Bagavan and I were planning, we just went with whatever came to mind. In hindsight, quite a few of our photos were kinda depressing, and I think that reflects our states of mind to some degree.

There were lots of failed shots that went into this project, but each failed shot taught us a new lesson which we applied to subsequent shots. I also have gained a newfound appreciation for the functionality a dedicated camera provides.

See rough work

A gal drilling into a piece of plastic (for robotics)

Closeup of a guy's face with a Photoshopped tear running down his face

Wide shot of a guy hunched over in anguish, sitting at a door

A guy hunched over in frustration in front of his laptop, with several people in the background

A person's eye, framed by a Photoshopped ring light

A guy standing in front of a row of lockers, framed by the hole in a school chair

A guy leaning against a tree with a busy cafeteria in the background

A guy standing in a field, staring off to the plaza across the street from him

Jacky Guo (me) gazing slightly upwards under a strong warm light

Bagavan Marakathalingasivam (my partner) in a thinking pose

Film: Scene Recreation

This is a purposely terrible reaction of a scene from The Office, S1 E1 (timestamps: 13:55–14:33, 14:50–16:10). We were considering the issue with actors, since we didn't have enough people to film everyone all at once. Luckily, we managed to procure an extra person (Chloe) and our teacher (Mr. Layton) to play the remaining roles.

Since we had very low-budget props, I decided in post-production to make the audio "low-budget" as well. To accomplish this, I found a MIDI cover of the theme from The Office and changed the instruments and tuning to make it sound like it was played by 6th graders.

See rough work