If I tell you, I'll have to kill you.

Click here to see my final piece.

Artist Statement

For this project, I decided to make a teaser for the television and book series Pretty Little Liars. The reason I chose this specific show was because I wanted to incorporate fire in one way & thought of a way this could work for Pretty Little Liars.

Call me a pyromaniac, but I think fire is beautiful. It automatically catches my eye whenever I come across it—be this from a candle or a bonfire. And as I cleaned my room one weekend, I came across the Barbie covered Pretty Little Liars novel.

Within seconds I had an idea.

With an $8 Barbie doll from the nearest Toys R Us, some lighter fluid, a match and the cliché saying “If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you”  my idea was set in stone.

Pretty Little Liars is all about secrets and death. Even though that sounds like a rather odd concept,  it worked well for this piece.

So I bought the Barbie, lit her on fire, took some pictures and worked with what I had. I learned that I should always go in with a story board or specific idea of what I want to occur—whereas burning is rather hard to assume the outcome, many other things will benefit from step-to-step planning.

I found that working with trial & error, dragging and dropping and little edits is what got me to where I was.  When you first drag something into After Effects, the size of the image, depending on composition size, is normally quite large— And I kind of liked the way this looked. I played with size of image to capture the most grotesque burning Barbie scenes. I cut my image amount from almost 40 pictures to about 10.

I worked with the program Audacity to cut and alter sound to fit my piece. Instead of making one solid continuous track I imported separate files and dragged and drop them into the perfect spot. Although I did not know how exactly to use sound in After Effects, a little Googling and asking around really helped me.

Another thing I benefitted from was tutorials. It’s really cool how many other people are trying to do the same thing you are & have posted online to teach the world.

Overall, I went in with one solid idea. I prepared what I needed, did a little research and ended with a piece I actually really like! It was my first time using after effects, and I was definitely intimidated at first—but It’s rewarding to produce a piece that I am genuinely proud of.  For all of you out there that are too scared to use a new program, try a new food, or cut your hair in a crazy new way, I suggest you do it! Unless you try, you won’t know what you’re good at—or what you like. Creating this teaser in After effects was definitely a huge learning experience for me and after this project I am quite excited to continue using the program.