Tressa McIff Blogs

Projects Art Movement The very first project I did this semester was a research and presentation project over an art or design movement.  I did my research over Russian Constructivism.  This project took about a month and a half.  The first part of this project, the research, was really fun and easy for me.  However, once we got into the actual graphic design aspect, I started to face some issues.  I had a hard time coming up with my own ideas and not just copying other artists' work.  However, I was able to learn a lot about my own style and what I feel comfortable with, while also learning about past artistic movements.  I was told that my presentation was very well done and had great content and slides.  The only thing that I did to change my project was adding my poster sketches to Behance.  Overall, I actually really enjoyed this project.  I love learning new things, especially about history.  I thought Constructivism was ...

(Video hopefully to come soon) The title of my short film is "Extracurriculars."  This film is about two friends who are sick and tired of school and simply need a break from their responsibilities.  In order to escape their after school activities for a while, they decide to take advantage of their nearly empty school.  The tagline for this film would be "Just a short break." First, we had to do pre-production.  This included writing film treatments, scripts, making story boards, and finding actors.  This was the first time any of us had done film treatments or scripts, and we were very confused.  The whole writing process took way longer than it should have because we had no idea what we were supposed to be doing or how to write a film treatment or script.  One everyone wrote individuals film treatments and scripts, we got into groups and decided which one to make into a short film.  My group originally chose Tim's idea called "Boy."...

I read an article all about marks and symbols. It first talked about the six different marks. These are symbols, pictographs, letter marks, logos, combination marks, and trademarks. Most of are different marketing techniques used by companies. They are all just a little different, but I think the two most important marks are symbols and logos. A symbol is a mark without any type used to identify a company or institution. Logos, on the other hand, are a word or words in type used for the same purpose as symbols. When you put these these two marks together, you get a combination mark, which is just a combination of typography and an image. Combination marks are still used for the same purpose as logos and symbols. Companies could choose to use any of these three marks to promote their brand; it's really just up to the individual company. The article later went on to talk more about symbols specifically. It explained eleven traits of good symbols. Thes...

For this project, my group chose to replicate the Napoleon Dynamite  trailer. This was a fairly simple trailer, but it still incorporated a lot of key elements of filmmaking. The lighting was pretty easy, but I struggled a lot with audio. We didn't get audio in one scene, so we had to do voiceovers for the audio that we missed. Most of the angles used were easy, so we were able to get most of them shot correctly. The whole process started with selecting the trailer that we were going to recreate, then creating a storyboard and script. We also had to create a production schedule and find actors. Most of this pre-production process went smoothly, until it came to finding a main actor. We originally had one actor, but another group was using him for their video, so we had to find someone different. We then found another actor and filmed about half of the scenes with him. However, he got grounded and was not allowed to finish filming with us. At this point, we were very close to the...

Videos I watched a few videos to start learning about typography. Although they weren't always the most exciting, I did learn a lot that I didn't even realize I needed to know. I learned about how critical fonts can be in getting a message across and how they are often the first impression that a consumer gets of a product. I then started to learn a lot about the technical side of typography. I learned that bracketed serifs are curved whereas unbracketed serifs are sharper. I learned what type families are and how you can properly use them to their full potential. I learned that kerning is the adjustment of space between two letters, and tracking is the overall amount of space applied within a body of text. I also learned that leading is the space between lines of text and that it is typically two points greater than the font size. Finally, I learned about expressive typography and how you can really use typography as its own art form. The biggest thing I took a...

The song that my group chose for our music video was "Thunder" by Imagine Dragons.  We wanted to portray a theme of not fitting in/wanting something more than other people expect from you. Honestly, this whole process was a complete mess.  We first had to decide the song, which none of us could agree on.  We ended up picking "Thunder", which was the main song that most of us didn't even want.  We then had to storyboard and film scape our whole video.  One other group member and I were in charge of the film scape while the other two group members were in charge of the story board.  We talked a lot between the groups to make sure that we had the same ideas in both of our outlines. Next, we had to find an actor.  This is when our project started to really fall apart.  We were trying to film at the same time as a large play was going on, so most people in the theater department couldn't be in our video.  We were then stuck with whoever we kn...

This was the first time I've ever watched an award show and I actually really enjoyed it. It was really cool seeing all those celebrities join together and support each other. However, I was a little disappointed by the winners. I've only seen a few of the movies and TV shows that were nominated and most of them didn't win anything. One winner that I was happy about was "This is Me" for Best Original Song. I watched The Greatest Showman  the day before The Golden Globes and loves it, so I was really hoping that it would win at least one award. Although I'm sad that it didn't win in the Best Musical or Comedy Motion Picture category, I think Lady Bird  was a good choice and I'm excited to be able to watch it. I was pretty happy that The Handmaid's Tale  won so many awards. I've watched that whole show and I agree that it's really well made and tells a really interesting story. There were also a lot of winning movies and TV shows that I ha...