Migration

During this project, I decided to focus on my great-grandfather’s life story which ultimately led him and his family to the United States. From growing up in Scotland to fighting in WW1, then working in Germany; many significant events drove his migration to New Jersey.

In terms of visualization, I wanted to put together a sequence of mainly primary images, maps, and letters from my great-grandfather’s life that would display his journey. However, I needed to create an animation that would be more interesting and keep the viewer captivated. I added elaborate transitions, dissolves, and animations of grenades, cars driving, and tanks in battle in order to make the animation more realistic and interesting.

Adobe After Effects was very helpful while creating motion within my work. This software allowed me to bring my idea to life by combining different images, texts, music, and my final composition. The grain effect was particularly helpful in setting the mood and informing the viewer of the time period that my great-grandfather migrated in. The animations, opacity functions, and movement functions were all extremely helpful while transitioning between different images that represent key events in my great-grandfather’s journey.

I feel my strength in this project is my use of lots of personal documents and pictures. I also believe that my final composition at the end of the animation does a good job of representing and capturing all of the important elements from my great-grandfather’s migration. I like how this composition is at the end of the video as it essentially summarizes his journey. I tried to create the final composition essentially as a collage with multiple elements. I added the Scottish flag to the image's background with a filter that made it look older and dirty. I added a portrait of the King who wrote a letter to my great-grandfather for his courage and heroism in WWI. In the bottom left corner, I included a close-up portrait of Jack Neill with a low opacity. This is a small detail, but if the viewer really digests and analyzes the work, then they will be able to notice it. I also included a newspaper column on the left side of the screen and a map of Berlin, Germany on the right. I used the brush tool to create a smooth transition from the photo of the soldiers in front of the plane to the map and article. I also felt as if I supplied the viewer with enough interesting information and documents. This kept the viewer on their toes, and interested to see what would happen next.