Research Video: Street Art
Part 1: Research
For this project, I was assigned to create a video inspired by any artist or movement of my choice that I could relate back to my own previous work. After looking at my portfolio, I traced a common theme that tied almost everything together: street art.
My love for street art all began when I watched Exit Through the Gift Shop for History of Graphic Design. After learning about artists such as Shepard Fairey, Borf, and others, I fell in love with the concept of breaking boundaries for the sake of creation. These artists so fearlessly applied their monikers and designs in the most daring of public locations. More often than not, their work was anonymous to the public but recognized in an underground creative community who constantly wanted to outdo their counterparts. The raw imagination that was produced out of this early street art greatly inspired me.
Although street art began as an illegal form of expression, to me, it is no longer necessarily confined to just spray paint and wheat paste. I believe that street art now represents the gutsy mindset that isn’t scared of breaking rules, whether it be in photography, illustration, animation, collage, cinematography, or design. It is the intangible feeling of doing something exceedingly revolutionary that many will follow for years to come. I wanted to capture this spirit of pure inventiveness in my research to show that street art can be public, ethereal, graphic, and fantastical.
I created multiple storyboards to help guide me in making this video, as I knew that I wanted to include a variety artists to help visualize this story. In making these storyboards, I realized that in order to relate graffiti to my own portfolio, I also had to include designers whose work was similarly inspired by street art. Because of this, I did a lot of research to discover up and coming artists whose work was breaking boundaries in their field, such as Nydia Hartono, Emon Toufanian, and Connor Harrington.
After creating these storyboards, I began compiling found clips from the internet of their work. I knew that I wanted to make a very fast video following a quick beat that would introduce the artist’s work in an urgent yet interesting manner.
In my first draft of the video, I initially chose House of Pain’s Jump Around to serve as the backtrack for the introduction. However, after receiving a critique in class, I agreed that the song was too recognizable and ended up taking away from the content of the actual video. After rethinking the music, I went with a much less recognizable beat from an unreleased Kanye West mix that was also a lot easier for me to time with the visuals.
After I had the music set up, it was relatively enjoyable for me to compile all of my clips into Premiere Pro. Another common aspect of street art is collage, which I ended up implementing in the final video by cutting all kinds of content to fit together into one cohesive piece. The final result is a mishmash of painting, design, and photography, with some work derived from original street artists and others from new artists. I mixed my own work in the video, as well, to show that I can see my own work aligning with the other artists’ creations.
Overall, I had a lot of fun making this video. It exposed me to new kinds of work and forced me to delve back into my video making skills, which always challenges me. I look forward to seeing where my inspiration from street art takes me in the future.
