Street Sense: A Short – Amouri

Hi my name is Amouri, and my project was to create a short animated documentary inspecting the careers of street artists.

From an early age, I’ve loved telling stories, whether writing short pieces or doodling whole universes I was always determined to tell tales whether fictional or non-fictional. I’ve also always been fascinated by animation; the way hundreds of mini pictures compile to one full motion. This translates into my project. Over the course of the six weeks designated to the senior project, I created this short animated film, a documentary looking into the lives of three street artists: their livelihoods, their struggles, their experiences. Through this project, I’m trying to show that street art has a larger impact on one of the top cities in the world than just being background noise or a sight to see. Though a way simpler way of presenting information, the video format was inspired by (yet quite different from) VOX media’s youtube videos; informational but also intriguing to watch.

At the beginning of the six weeks I got right to it, I created a script, outlined what I’d need to do, and began working. I scheduled interviews with three artists: a drummer, a poet, and a graffiti artist. I learned a lot about each creator, getting to know them and their experiences, and I was truly enriched by the narratives they shared. After conducting the interviews they were condensed to around six minutes, and formatted to make a flowing story. Research was carried out to understand the history and culture of street art both in new york city and globally. Through this project, I used a small electronic drawing tablet, Adobe Animate, and my imagination to make these stories come to life. There are hundreds of individual drawings, all intertwining to make the final piece. I wanted to shed light on such a large part of NYC culture, to appreciate the unappreciated. Here is Street Sense

Here are two shots of the creation of the film. The two programs utilized are Premiere pro as well as Adobe Animate (for the animation and video editing components) and Logic Pro X was used to compile the audio clips.