ALEXIS XAVIA
Miscellaneous Work
As well as films I also enjoy photography and other creative projects such as sound design. Below are some past works of photography and sound design.
01
Carrying Shoes into the Unknown
For my year 12 theatre studies monologue, I created a sound design and a set design for one of Alice's monologues in Carrying Shoes into the Unknown by Rosemary Johns. My set design was a chair with a corrugated plastic sheet with the following designs on either side. The actor would be able to move the chair and engage with the corrugated plastic sheet. The rug side was able to fold in on the actor to emphasise that Alice felt suffocated and restricted.
I wanted to emphasise her ignorance of the country she is in. To do this I took a typical Iranian rug and manipulated the design to look distorted, illustrating her distorted belief of what this holiday would be for her. I turned it into a vector to create a mosaic design combining rugs and mosaics to once again illustrate her lack of knowledge and understanding.
The other side of the corrugated plastic sheet had this distorted fur design with a painted red claw mark in the middle. This distortion was to illustrate Alice's fear and confusion as she knows nothing about the country she is in. Throughout the monologue there is the imagery of animals, this design was to emphasise that imagery.
Along with the set designs, I created a soundscape. This soundscape highlights the imagery of animals and further shows Alice's fear and her distorted beliefs. The monologue starts with a scream illustrating Alice's fear. The increasing heartbeat shows Alice's fear by having the audience hear her panicked heart. The Iranian music playing is distorted once again, showing Alice's ignorance. All the sounds blend together to create a panicked over-stimulated soundscape. The monologue is set in an airport, to establish this setting, I have added announcements you may hear in an airport once again distorted to show her fear. As she leaves the airport, I have changed the background to be a cityscape. In the monologue, a person spits on her, this is reflected in the sound design. The monologue changes in setting and tone halfway through this are reflected in the scream and the breath released in the middle of the sound design. At this point in the monologue, the animal imagery becomes more obvious, to illustrate this, I have made the second half of the soundscape highly animalistic.
02
Expressive Lighting
This was a portfolio I had created with the prompt "Exploring light". We had to include certain types of shots including macro, streetscape, motion, monochrome, interior, portrait and nightscape. I had choosen to focus on expressive lighting, with each of the photos I choose to express something with the lighting, such as sadness, energy and sadness.
This is a macro shot of my mini Christmas tree. I decided to use a blue light LED on the tree as a way of contrasting what the tree represents. While Christmas is often a happy time of year, I wanted to use blue light to express the sadness some people can feel at this time of year.
For this shot I wanted a contrast between shadow and light. My idea with this shot was being in the dark around the light. I liked that the street was empty but the cars leave remnants of people around, I feel like that furthers the idea of being in shadow despite the light.
My idea behind this photo was danger at night and in the dark. I wanted to reflect this danger through a red light and a dark background with little detail. I like the framing and the lack of detail on the right of the frame. This lack of detail further illustrates the danger.
This is a macro shot of my mini Christmas tree. I decided to use a blue light LED on the tree as a way of contrasting what the tree represents. While Christmas is often a happy time of year, I wanted to use blue light to express the sadness some people can feel at this time of year.