How to Gift Wrap
Before beginning to wrap gifts, always make sure you have the basic materials on you. For example, hand scissors, scotch tape, glue stick, paper cutter, and ball of wrapping twine in various colors!
- Prep your workspace
-everything should be ready at hand
-clean surface, clean hands; don’t put on lotion or anything on your hands that will make your hands slippery or leave stains - Have the appropriate tools
-2 types of scissors: for paper & for ribbon
-different types of tape, embellishments - Use a medium grade paper
-too thin → tears easily, actual gift box tears through the paper
-too thick → unnecessary, bulky wrap
-medium grade with glossy finish → creates nice, sharp creases; the glossy finish creates a more “special” effect - Consider doing a practice run
-tip: buy gift wrap during the “end-of-the-year” sale to use as practice gift wrap for next time. It’s better if you practice with ribbon too! - Carefully measure your paper
-think about how you can use the most of your gift wrap paper without wasting unnecessary parts that you could have used
1. wrap packages with the longest side the box facing the cut edge of the paper whenever possible
2. then, before making the cut, pull the paper up the sides of the gift box to measure the sides: you want just enough paper on either side so they slightly overlap in the middle
3. if not sure how much paper exactly, it’s always better to cut too much rather than too little because you can always trim the paper after - Place your package top down and NEVER put tape on the actual gift package
1. put your package top down on the gift wrap
2. pull one edge of the paper beyond the edge of the gift, and fold it to hide the cut edge
3. grab the other side of the paper and pull it under the side with the folded edge
4. align the folded edge with the end of the package and tape
5. next, rotate the box to one of the open sides and fold the short sides down to create long flaps
6. repeat on the other side
7. using your finger and your thumb, crease the edges of your wrapped package
*watch DuLaney on Jimmy Kimmel walk through gift wrapping* - In case you run out of paper, make it seem like you MEANT to run out
-“belly band” technique → use when there’s not enough paper or you cut wrong and mess up
-when doing the belly band, make sure the gift is wrapped top side up, so the belly band can become the centerpiece
-other option is wide ribbon or attaching a card to the side where a slice of the package is exposed
8. When wrapping cylinders, PLEATING is key
-for circular gifts: bon bon method, pleating method
-bon-bon → scrunching up the sides and tying the ends so it looks like a huge candy package
-pleating → look up videos online
9. Add embellishments
-ribbon, lace, notes, flowers, etc,
-upgrade by having the embellishment be the “hint” to your object (like how for our packaging project we had to make sure our package reflected the object it was carrying in some type of way)
-examples: bookmark for books, writing instruments for journals, herb plants or dried flowers that match the scent of fragrances or lotions
10. Embrace unusual shapes
-use a gift bag: even with the bag, it’d be better to wrap the gift bag and not the gift so it doesn’t look like you just put the object in the bag last minute
-you can literally wrap around the object to make it really obvious what the gift is
11. Use dull scissors to curl ribbon
-sharp scissors can cut your hand, so ALWAYS dull
-do it only once! overdoing it will make it worse
-cut the ribbon almost twice as long as you want it because curling the ribbon will make it really short
12. But don’t think that curling ribbon is your only option!!!
-think of other options than curling: tying, knotting, braiding, criss-cross
13. Don’t cut your ribbon off the roll until your bow is done
-just better this way, similar to cutting a bit more of the gift wrap instead of having it too short
importance of gift wrapping: you put some individual time and effort to put it together and make something special for someone
To start off the project, we spent one class looking at videos of tutorials and was assigned to read McCloud’s “Understanding Comics”. The videos that we watched were not only entertaining but provided context about how sensitive humans are to movement, sound, point of view, time, and vision. I have included the notes about each video and my own notes/summary after reading McCloud’s “Understanding Comics”.
October 23: class notes & storyboard critique
things I should think about…
1. Have someone try to do the task
-can they do it? where do they stumble?
2. Notation to self
3. Practice task to see nuances
4. Watch people perform the task
-what do their hands do? what are their expressions?
5. What are they looking at? How do the orient objects to themselves?
6. Upgrade the quality & performance
-teach them hard, useful, not very well known types of gift wrapping
7. Does the sequence make sense?
-anything missing? redundant? wrong place?
8. Framing of shots; what’s in the shot?
9. Pay attention to transitions
10. Surprising, “out of the box” ideas
-MAYA (Most Advanced Yet Acceptable); would it be appropriate for this project? if so, how can I make it still tutorial, step-by-step, simplified yet complex?
11. Point of view
-what’s effective? what’s appropriate?
12. Visual composition (lighting)
13. CANNOT have a gradual transition of zooming in; instead, you can have two separate clips where one is zoomed out, one is zoomed in, then combine together
And During today’s class, I realized that I need to change my gift wrapping object into wrapping something that people actually struggle with, such as circular objects or irregular shapes. When filming, I need to make my lighting reflect specific parts of the video and have detailed shots of certain steps such as tying the ribbon or folding part of the gift wrap. I should go back to the steps that I wrote down when I researched how to be an expert at gift wrapping and use those techniques/tips that I wrote down.
10/24/18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjlBcF09sZg&feature=youtu.be
Tonight I made my first attempt at filming my video. I found that it was so much harder than I expected it to be because there were so many things to consider such as lighting, angle, sound, the portrayal of the hands, etc. One major problem after my first attempt was my video is upside down. The tutorial part is upside down so it seems confusing for the viewer to follow the steps.
When filming the video, I tried taking it in two different ways: one where I record the whole thing in one take and another where I divided the steps into separate scenes and cut them together. Respectively, the first video became too long and boring; it was hard to make it shorter because the video was in one long shot. The second video became more interesting because the sounds in each step of the shot created “natural music” and I got to choose to balance the duration of the different shots.
I think my next step in this project is to take out unnecessary/ repetitive parts of the video and focus on the main; CLOSURE! To help me do this, I can take a relook at the comic strip provided for me in the beginning of the project so I can review up to how much I can take out for the steps to still make sense. Additionally, I want to try making the video like a “stop-motion” style. If each step is only about 5 seconds long, that gives me 12 scenes to shoot which will help me to organize only the necessary steps and make transitioning easier. Transitioning is another aspect that I have to think about, because that will make the video more interesting and clearer in terms of steps.
I think I’m going to look at some “how to make tutorial videos” videos so I can get help with setting up the camera in the right angle. I found that if I positioned the camera above me looking down, my body came more apparent in the video rather than my hands. Maybe I can try sitting down while wrapping the gift or finding a way to reposition the camera and myself so that my hands and steps are more focused.
October 30:
After today’s peer review, I got to look at the origami videos and get feedback about my video from people that aren’t in my group. This was beneficial because I received feedback from people that do not know how to gift wrap. Their feedback was honest, clear, and helpful.
Organized notes from their feedback:
-distracting elements: background, lighting, floor, hand accessories
-wrapping seems untrustworthy/unprofessional compared to the taping
-wrapping the paper on top of the table washes the colors out for the video
-I establish and identify the materials, but the background makes it confusing for the overall composition of the video
-there are unnecessary cuts and scenes (especially in the last 8 seconds)
-cleanliness of the folding and creasing is trustworthy
-consider the ribbon choices: the length, speed, process, showing measurements)
-consistent framing
-sometimes out of focus
November 1:
Between Tuesday and today, I filmed another attempt for the gift-wrapping. This time, I included scenes from different angles and managed the time better. My very first video was 3:48 minutes long, but the second one that I filmed was 1:53. I managed to shorten my second video to 1:41, which is a huge improvement from the first video. The main thing that I need to figure out is the lighting; there is one part of the scene where the lighting is so good but the remainder of the video’s lighting makes it too yellow and doesn’t work. However, I feel like this second video works better because I took out some unnecessary and repetitive steps. I tried to think about the closure aspect that we learned through the comic strip, and how viewers don’t need to see every step for them to understand the whole process. I think my next step in filming is to try to shorten the beginning steps as much as possible (the parts that are more obvious) and spend time explaining the folds and ribbon-ing process. Doing so could help me get the video to close to 60 seconds.
gift wrap attempt 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSPnw0xnil8&feature=youtu.be
gift wrap attempt 2 (shortened): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOIwTGTonCE&feature=youtu.be
Honestly, I feel like I’m stuck at this point because I can’t find ways to make the video shorter. I am going to watch more tutorial videos of people gift wrapping (going back to the very first step of the project) to see if I have unnecessary steps of gift wrapping.
November 5:
Throughout the weekend, I tried to fix the lighting situation by filming in different areas on campus that would also provide me a quiet place to film. I tried filming in the Hunt Library study rooms, but now I tried filming in the Tepper building on the first floor at night. The lighting definitely was clearer and brighter, but the sound quality worsened because it picked up a lot of the background noise and a sound that made the whole video buzz (?) probably from the heater. To solve my problem on time limit, I decided to use a sticker bow tie for the decoration and not the ribbon. This definitely helped me to control my time because I got the video very close to the time limit. I am planning on filming one last time tomorrow night at Hunt Library study rooms so that I can get a video that focuses on less background noise. I feel like I can fix the lighting depending on where and how I set my camera. Although it took me many attempts at shooting the video, I know exactly which steps I need to include in my video and how I’m going to shoot those shots.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD43Z-2g8S0&feature=youtu.be
November 6:
Today in class, I talked to Stacie about the size and resolution about my video. I also showed her my video I made over the weekend that I filmed at Tepper. The sound was definitely a problem and she gave me feedback about confusing signal cues that I use when I point to an area to fold, whereas in other scenes I only used the pointing visual cue when telling the viewer to tape. I filmed one last time today at a Hunt study room and the lighting came out clearer than the second video attempts I made. The sound helped too, but I liked some of the scenes from the third video (Tepper) because some of the signals were clearer. However, I believe that overall my last and final video has a good balance between incorporating all of the essential parts that I needed. Nothing stands out too much as a flaw and I believe the tutorial is easy to follow. This last video was easy to shoot because I could look at past videos that I made to see exactly which angle I wanted to record each step.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfFPt34rRKo&feature=youtu.be
During this project, I learned so many things especially because filming and videos were a new part of art that I never had experience with in the past. To begin with, I realized that I am sensitive to movement, sound, and light the most when viewing films. Even if I was not, I learned to be more sensitive as I made my video because one slight shift or a darker hue in one scene can affect the viewer’s understanding of the content of my video by a lot. In addition, the concept of closure from McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” was very interesting to me because the author talked about how humans have the ability to make sense of sequences that don’t have each and every step included in comics. This concept helped me when I was making my video because I could predict what the viewer can infer and make sense of even if I didn’t put steps of me putting on the tape or folding on the other side as a repeat. The brain has the function to infer and make sense of things even when everything is not provided. To expand on this, I learned that additional and redundant are very different things. Additional steps may clarify what is confusing or provide a new step that is necessary, but redundant steps are unnecessary as it only consumes time and can lead to more confusion. Through this project, I was able to explore different ways of filming and incorporating different angles and point of views to clarify a step. I tried making videos that were like stop-motion and even tried filming the whole process of gift wrapping in one shot. Of course some filming styles were more effective than others, but I personally enjoyed mixing different styles to make my video easier to understand and for it to be more effective. I personally enjoyed filming and making this project because I got to try a completely new type of art. Also, this project seemed to have more of a sense of order and independence to me. By sense of order, I am referring to parts where I could plan out my own schedule on when to film, how to film, what to include, what not to include. This sense of order gave me a bit more of freedom and independence compared to other projects because in the past, I was worried about falling behind compared to other classmates (such as the Intersection project where we had due dates for the white-on-white or tonal layers). It was also interesting to see how other people that had the same tasks as me approached the project because each member in gift-wrapping used a different way to wrap the gift. For non-gift-wrappers, on the other hand, they helped me to see my video in a new perspective because the amount of times I saw my own video affected me to not be able to see my work critically. When I compare my first clips that I shot with the final production I made, I can see how much I learned about filming and gift wrapping.
Link to playlist of all the videos I made: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-wt0cWNhnJ-JkqXJNorrY1hPQUmdmuHv