Experimenting With My GIF.

I began experimenting with changing the colours, I started off with a simple black and white toning. I had to use photoshop and open each photograph involved in the original coloured gif I created from the shoot and put them into black and white. I increased the contrast by 300 and brightness by 170 to achieve a very bold black and white rather than a dull and flat look like this which was how each photograph looked here and it didn't emphasise the white brightness of the white on her limbs which let her shape stand out which is needed for the movements to be clear to present the movements.

I saved each photograph with its new effective contrast and clicked on the window tab in photoshop and selected animation, I also went onto files, then scripts, then load files into stacks and selected these photographs. When the order is important (which it is for these photographs because the movements need to be in sync) I ordered them by numbering then 1-16 in their name so I could have each photograph in the right order when they appear as a layer in the layers box. I followed the same steps I have when creating all of my gifs I have made before which I have always found easy and simple, it also doesn't take long at all.

I kept the speed at 0.2 like before because it kept the panic there and also drew attention away from the background moving because of inaccurate framing when captured on camera. I saved the gif by saving to web and devices on the file drop down menu with a width of 300 which is enough to keep pretty much any picture from a digital camera sizing in place.

Here I kept the same file/gif open as before after I had saved it and simply changed the speed of all of the photographs to 0.4 to slow it down a bit. I felt the panic mood was gone by doing this but instead a possessed mental feeling was created because the slower speed allows us to see her smile at the end which looks evil rather than scared, this makes us scared rather than sympathising and feeling scared for her as an audience. If I create more gifs and have this speed/effect I would make sure the framing is perfect because it shows up much more here which ruins its realism of movement. Also saved with a width of 300 and to web and devices. 

Here I put the speed back to 0.2 using the same file opened but selected a few of the photographs in the animation slides to give a more synchronised effect because the first 10 photographs were captured at the shoot as purposely being in sync, but the other photographs were randomly taken and I fitted them into the gif by placing them where I thought would be accurate but by erasing them my gif looked much more in sync and showed a narrative of her uncurling from the corner and gradually moving closer towards us which creates a mood of tension. (All gifs saved to web and devices and a width of 300).

I now decided to see what my gifs would look like solarised.

Here I separately opened all of the black and white photographs used in the gif on photoshop. I solarised them by following these simple steps - 
- I clicked on the layers tab at the top and scrolled over new adjustment layer and clicked curves.

- Making sure the output and input in the box that appears is set to zero, I clicked on the little pencil icon next to it down the side, I drew an inverted V that should look something like this.

- I then went to layer, new adjustment layer and clicked curves again to create a second curves layer. This time I clicked on the editing points of moving the curves tool (above the pencil) and dragged the curve out of shape to look like this.

- This gave me this result, a solarised digital image.

- I did this to each of the images, because the lighting and contrast in them has already been edited and looks near enough the same, these curve adjusting steps will create similar shades of silver and grey in each photograph so that the tones don't randomly change whilst the gif is playing and look out of place.

Here I used all of the images rather than just the synced ones and had it on a speed of 0.4 seconds each slide for slow and scary effect.

Here I kept the speed the same but just used the photographs that were in sync which shortens the time of the gif and looks better (I know this from experimenting with this on the black and white gif. 
I feel that the solarising works really well because it lets her limbs stand out like the black and white one did but has a darker tone which relates to the dark theme, the silver colours look alien like which adds to the unusual style/theme of these photographs and makes her look inhuman. I will definitely experiment with solarising a gif with my future subject matter because of my success. To improve this particular gif I could erase the background because the silver/grey makes the meters stand out more. As successful as these gifs were I didn't enjoy making them because of the repetitive steps that are taken, although I felt it was worth it.

I opened each solarised file into photoshop separately and I used the eraser on a thick solid brush and an opacity of 100 to completely erase the backgrounds in the photographs leaving me with just her figure in complete darkness which make sit look more scary and doesn't give the viewer any distractions from her because she is the focus and all that is in the composition. It could be improved by the erasing being done more carefully so that the arms don't look odd and bumpy (too much flesh erased). This is a speed of 0.2 for panic but I thought that by making it faster (0.1, below) we could be distracted from the slightly wonky erasing because we will have less time to focus on it.

This solarised result was definitely worth creating because the darkness works much better than meters.