Ashton Rocks Brigati
Artist Profile
Additional Details
As a student based in Monterey, I’ve worked in many different areas on a variety of projects, and am always looking for exciting new opportunities that force me to think outside the box. I love applying my creativity and pushing the boundaries of what I’m capable of doing.
Please take the opportunity to browse through my site, have a look at my projects, and explore my resume. If you’d like to learn more about my inspirations, interests, or past projects, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
Artist Portfolio
Check out my artist portfolio. Each of these projects has contributed to my personal and professional development, and I have enjoyed each role tremendously. My projects follow a central theme exploring the ideas of life and death and the duality of them.
Because of Eachother
My most recent documentary tells my story. It is a deeply personal and experimental piece. Brought together by me, my co-editor, and another friend of mine for animations we worked on this project for over 400 hours. It tells my life story in a conversation with my mother and ultimately examines a microcosm story in context of a macro issue of foster care in the US, teenagers. This project not only aesthetically and stylistically represents my work but represents me as a person.
This project features three different types of animation. Digital animation, stop motion animation, and scanned stop motion. The integration of all three in the genre of documentary is an effort to push the boundaries of the genre and keep people curious.
Bleecher Music Video
As part of my freelance editing work I create music visuals for artists under Broke Records label. Working with Broke Records I am able to integrate my stop motion style with different artists. This video was a short for Bleecher an up and coming hyperpop artist. First I consulted his musical style then incorporated my own editing techniques to create this.
Mixed Media Animation Piece
This was an experimental process piece to stylistically create scanned stop motion. I started with a rough premise idea and created a digital edit using Premiere Pro. Then I took it into Photoshop and took out every third frame. I aligned all the remaining frames into 9 images on one paper. I then printed them out and drew on every frame. Next, I scanned them and imported them in. I had to then manually make each one a frame and crop them in Premiere. The result is this. I then used this process in Because of Each other and many other projects. This process defined early on in my creative career how I can use my resources to push visual boundaries.
Time is Through
Starting with the sound of a clock ticking I quickly storyboarded a visual representation of what it felt to be dreaming. I rushed to record and unfortunately it turned out horribly however, I kept working on the concept. I got a hold of a tripod and tried again to make it feel as though I could manipulate the idea of time for viewers watching and show them the inside of dreams. After taking it to post and making a quick soundtrack and color grading the piece was ready. This film premiered at a Film Festival at CSUMB.
Chirp
A Cricket's Chirp is an experimental exploration of the death and stardom of, you guessed it, a dead cricket. The making of this project the finding of a dead cricket at work and a flashlight. I had fun experimenting with lighting and the different effects I could make within the limitations of my materials. In post-production I found a sample of a cricket chirping online and started my sound designing process in a music software. Splicing and detuning I eventually made a melodic reprise of what I felt was a cricket's life story in a language we couldn't understand.
Death of a Dream
Like a lot of my projects this one started with sound. I had been listening to a CD I had picked up earlier called sixth in senses by xbxrx and really liked the message of the song Regret in particular. Going back to classic punk roots with Dead Kennedys and the Ramones the song had anti-war ideas in it and the album was against our government's policies towards war. I found a video to be the star of my video, a pro-war propaganda video about nuclear weapons that the United States had made to inform citizens that nuclear weapons weren't bad and that they should bomb Japan. They presented it in such a nice and packaged manor I knew I just had to contrast it with the onslaught of media that we saw around the time that xbxrx was around. I wanted to show the direct results of all those deaths was MTV and Britney Spears with no consquences to the United States.
Mrs. No Name
Mrs. No Name is a project that is close to my heart.
I had been inspired by a student film from Stanford called Hotel 22 and decided to make my own observational documentary feeling that it was an intimate way to make the audience feel closer to the people on screen. As my first film that I ever created I used a Black Magic Pocket Camera and a Zoom H6 with a boom and went over to my friends for their band practice. The premise was simple, capture the creative process in music. In post I had hours of footage to sort through most unusable and the audio was a complete mess. I worked tirelessly for about six months editing the piece together from the sound to the color. Honestly, it never felt complete. Every time I would go to edit, I would see things to improve upon or have new ideas, I discovered how excruciating it can be to have an idea and not be able to bring it to life. Through much struggle I got the film to a point where it satisfied me. When finished it premiered at a Film Festival at CSUMB.