During the last critique I presented a new work entitled ‘middle finger’ this GIF file was of footage of my hand that I edited in order to create the desired effect I wanted for the artwork, however, during this editing process I ran into some issues with the dimensions of the artwork which resulted in the artworks composition being compromised (Fig 1) where there appeared to be too much extra space on either side of the actual video clip . This was something that had originally always bothered me and I mentioned this during the crit. This issue was caused primarily due to Instagram’s video parameters whereby firstly, the GIF must be rendered into a MP4 file and secondly, that it needs to be 1080 X 1080 pp ( a square format) for it to meet the apps sizing requirements. This video clip was filmed off my cell phone in a portrait format and so the clip was narrow in its width and long in its length,as on my iphone 6 plus the dimensions of a video or image taken/filmed on the phone are 1920x1080 pp, when I rendered the video according to Instagram’s dimensions it caused the video to be distorted.

And so, as I was unsure how to fix this issue of the extra space, I decided to just ignore it and upload the file to my Instagram page anyway. It wasn’t long until someone had commented on the work saying that the composition of the work was problematic to them too (Fig 2). It was now apparent that the sizing I had ignored was something that I needed to corrected and the artwork reworked.

 Unfortunately, I did not know how to crop a video on Photoshop and therefore, I went on Google and looked for a way to do this, after a while of playing with video I was able to edit it but still stay within the dimensions that Instagram asks for , this resulted in the GIF having two large black bars on either side of it filling up the excess space (Fig 3) I did not like this and felt it took away from the artwork and made it look a bit harsh and so I needed to keep working on solving this issue and find another way . 

After another short Google search I was able to find a list of free apps that could crop videos. I then went on and downloaded an app on my iPhone called Cropper where I then went and imported the video file and I cropped it and I reuploaded it onto Instagram, the artwork was now reworked to the way that I was happy with and I decided that it was now finished (Fig 4) .Finally, I then went on and archived the previous post of the artwork and called it a day.

As I have posted a screen grab of a comment from a member of public on this blog post it is important to state that as my artist Instagram page is a public account anyone can comment freely on posts and anyone is able to view these comments. The Instagram page that posted on my account was too a public account and therefore, this then would allow me to post the comment freely on this blog post and in the public domain.