Artist Statement:
Sterling is a fictional narrative short film following Sterling a vibrant, independent teenage girl through a day in her life alone, snapshots of joy through her mundane life. Generally speaking, I am a photographer. I wanted to take the opportunity to challenge the medium I was comfortable in by incorporating movement, storyline, and cohesiveness. When shifting mediums I found that thinking of compositions came quite easily, I was translating still ideas into video although I did not anticipate all my shots ‘should’ be horizontal, to pivot I chose to include vertical triptychs as I planned to include other still images. I went into the process with no video editing experience so I ran into issues uploading my triptychs into Premiere Pro. I learned batch resizing in lightroom and the rest of the process went smoothly because I was able to learn to use the program as I went.
My piece strongly uses imagery to convey the energy behind the ideas, I curated the color palette and model to properly convey the aesthetic, styled the ensemble she wears in the film, and included scenes with chewing gum and Arizona within the film to convey imagery associated with her age. Compositionally I organized the film to have an observant perspective, curated through simple distant compositions. She is meant to be characterized, by clothing inspiration based on cartoon and video game styles. I wanted her to have a modern but timeless feel so I curated her vibe to convey that, specifically through her color palette. An aspect I would love to improve would be to add the animation aspect I brainstormed in my early stages. I would also add some shots for clarity in the storyline and possibly expand beyond a day. I think these aspects would grow my initial idea into something larger.
The ideas behind this work were very simple and came together through curating the aesthetic. I focused from a lens of romanticization of life and moments that capture a special allure, playing with familiarity and the idea of routine and overall joy in the familiar. Recently I have become more in tune with myself and my independence. Understanding my reliance on routine and predictability as well as how that arises ideas of loneliness within independence. I think this piece plays with the line between independent and lonely, something very mundane while simultaneously romanticized. I wanted the energy in this piece to be fun, through the imagery, music, personality, and editing I wanted to encapsulate some beauty in everyday life, focusing on the little familiar things. I highlighted small moments like opening a can, brushing teeth, and gum and emphasized the lighthearted and fun energy sterling has. Stylistically I think this piece emulates a lot of the same energy as my other work based on subject matter and process, this was intentional because I wanted to be familiar with subject matter as I was shifting mediums as an artist. I pulled a lot of visual inspiration from the film Edge of Seventeen directed by Kelly Freemon Craig. This made me want to explore film more and the different stories I would be able to tell through video and what I learned in this process. I have had some ideas about music videos and I think it would make me want to incorporate more sound. I also am thinking about how I can expand on what I've done by including animations and through the process of filming how it influenced the direction I wanted to go with them and how that could look more realistically.
