February 12th

SDA REFLECTION: 

I loved how the first portion of the video turned out, but am considering revising the ending a bit. I didn't particularly like how the clothes were shown. Especially since these clips were filmed in somewhat of a rush and without a strict plan, there are things I would want to fix with the angles. Apart from that, I think the final video presentation did a good job in establishing both the meaning behind the clothing set and pulling the strings of peoples' hearts. I think the decision to include clips from me as a toddler worked well to develop the pathos of the video, while the logos and ethos came later from the news clips. Overall, the SDA gave me a new direction with my EMC project for this year- activism through art. Going foward, I hope to continue blending public issues into my videos and artwork in order to create more of an impact. I started off the year wondering how to get people to care, but, now, I see that they must because public issues like gun violence affect us all. We can no longer ignore such things. 

NEW IDEAS: 

Since my last journal update, I have added fashion design to my class list because I have a new interest in doing things with clothes (as seen in my SDA). I do not think that I want to do another SDA that is related to clothing, but it is something I'm keeping on the back of my mind if I ever do get another clothes-related idea. There are many other ways for people to advocate in art, so I plan to split my February SDA into two parts.

Part One: Advocacy

I must first decide on a topic to focus on for the month. While I have a good level of interest in gun violence, and there is Advocacy Day coming up in March, I could branch off of it and go in the general direction of public health or violence as a whole, which encompasses not only gun violence, but numerous national and international concerns. 

Potential Topics (still have to decide): 

• stress/mental health

• healthcare access

• chronic diseases (obesity)

• food insecurity

• gun violence (already done, but still an option since there is more to explore)

Part Two: The Art

There are, again, many ways to use art to convey a message. As I do not have much time for the upcoming SDA, I want to focus on pairing an art that may be easier to make with a more impactful video describing the meaning. I plan to tell a story as a voiceover to a video of me doing a small sketchbook sketch related to the topic I'm talking about (likely from the above list of ideas). This will allow me to focus on impact without it being too art-intensive because, as a mentioned with the addition of fashion design to my class list, art classes are already taking up a lot of my more focused art-time and I don't want to burn myself out.

REUSING AN IDEA:

Sticking with the new direction of public health, I could bring back one of my past ideas of making a video about my painting Udayam and talk about the need to slow down and take a deep breath, which relates to stress and mental health. This would mean the art is already done and I could just focus on the video making aspect.