Week 12 | Film

Our introductory week to film started off with a very lengthy presentation about the topic itself, film.

Our task was to create a short 1 minute film in groups that focused on storytelling. my impressions at first were very sceptical, a 1 minute film didn't seem achievable especially with such importance upon storytelling. It meant having a fully developed story, preferably a beginning, middle and end, within the space of 60 seconds. It seemed tough but after watching a couple of examples it seemed like it could be done.

We got divided into groups and set the task of coming up with a moral premise for our short films.
The Moral Premise sets up the expectation for the viewer. The Premise of your film is a statement or proposition that infers or follows as a conclusion. The moral premise usually consists of an attitude and a value, some examples are:

• Selfishness leads to personal progress
• Ignorance leads to social imbalance
• Forgiveness leads to psychological freedom.

 This was something that we really struggled with, we found it difficult to differentiate between an attitude and a value and then put the two together. As a class we started to look at a couple of short films, it was mainly to see what we can produce and communicate in such a short time frame. One film we had a look at was called 'Black Hole'.

The film was based around an office worker working his visibly boring nine-till-five job who comes across a small bit of fortune, a black hole. The 'Black Hole' allows the protagonist to access things he wouldn't otherwise be able to, he can use the black hole as a portal, allowing him to go through things. Now we instantly knew where this was going, the protagonist was starting to show signs of greed as the film progressed, starting small with stealing from the vending machine to much more serious things like opening the managers office with his new power.

After being absent for a day, my group had come up with an idea and a plan for our short film so we spent the day creating storyboards and deciding upon scenes, camera angles, props and all that jazz.

It was a different experience to say the least. Up until now I had spent all of my time over the various projects working on my own so it was definitely strange having to work together to get things done. However despite this we did have a solid plan of action, we knew what scenes we wanted to shoot and even begun shooting that day to be ahead of the game.

We spent a good amount of time making sure we had the correct angles in place. Our opening scene starts out with an over-the-shoulder shot that has the camera focusing on my mobile phone, it took a lot of time getting the right camera angle. Our plan for the weekend was to meet on Sunday morning and begin shooting.

The filming was the worst part of the project, but that was all down to the weather. It was so cold and we had decided to shoot right next to the river Thames which was a decision we would come to regret. Despite the weather we actually did pretty well with the filming. It was mainly Me and Izzy who were the actors so we were always busy. In terms of teamwork I'd say everyone had their fair share of the work even if it was critiquing how well the shots were. I mean that is where everyone was vital, in deciding how well the shots went. Overall I'd say we were really organised, we knew what scenes we wanted to shoot and the best way to go about them. There were occasions where we opted to re-shoot a different way but to me that just showed how much we wanted the film to be successful, especially with the weather. We literally had to end the shoot early because our fingers were all numb.

Photography Final Evaluation

Photography Final Evaluation

The requirement for this project was to create a series of photographic stills that explore documentary photography. My first impression was a positive one, I really enjoy photography and I had been waiting for this project since the course started. Though the only outstanding thing that I had a problem with was the 'Documentary' part of the title. To me any form of photography is documentary photography but I felt as if they purposefully put that in the title because we were focusing on something very specific. I was right. Our brief required us to document a person, someone other than ourselves. That was a big problem. Whilst we were being briefed a lot of us were panicking, thinking of people we could possibly document and it turned out that a large portion of us had nobody.

Despite that we still had to continue with the project. I started to research some photographers that work with documentary photography and stumbled upon one called Kitra Cahana, an american photographer. The research seemed to come very easily, I found a lot of her projects and instantly fell in love with her work. They were all so vivid and expressive and best of all they were true images of peoples lives. It felt great to get back into analysing photographs and with her work the ideas came quick and fast. I also researched Duane Michals who is more well known than Kitra Cahana and he was actually one of the artists in the project brief. I mainly chose to research and respond to him as a large portion of his photography and work use narrative, something very essential to our project. His work was amazing and the fact it directly linked to our brief was ever so better. It gave me a chance, ahead of everyone who didnt choose to research Duane Michals, to look into different types of narrative.

The only issue I had with responding to my artists was my lack of a subject. I had nobody to photograph, nobody to document in the same way that they did. That was my only limiting factor in this project and so my first steps were to figure out what to do... To try and combat my problem I brought a camera with me during a day out with some friends and took some quick photographs without anyone knowing as the people I was with didn't want me to take pictures of them. That was my way around, sneaky photographs. Amazingly I did manage to find some good pictures I took and luckily they seemed to fit into a lovely little series.These were for a response to Duane Michals. I found it easier to respond to him first instead of Kitra Cahana as she tended to document people unknown to her whereas Duane Michals was simply about narrative and story. I managed to overcome my obstacle by working around the rules. I didn't have permission to take the photographs but I took them anyway.

A lot of the feedback for my response was very positive, in fact it was much more positive than I had expected. It seemed that my work didn't accurately represent my struggle with the project. Despite not presenting a finished series of images like everyone else had it didn't seem like I struggled finding someone to document. One piece of feedback was that "It doesn't look like you didn't know what you were doing, but it doesn't look planned either. It seems unexpected, photos taken in the heat of the moment". That was really pleasing to see because that person had figured out exactly what had happened and they hadn't criticised me for it.

This project is really hard to pull any strengths from. If I were to say anything it would have to be problem solving. I had a major problem and I still do. I am still without a final series of images for the project but I feel that without my small level of problem solving during my artist research and response I would have nothing to show for the two weeks of photography. 

Week 11 | Photography

The second week was all about editing and selecting the right images from our contact sheets but seeing as I didn't have the images it was difficult to complete that task.

Instead of focusing on my images I tried to fill out my book with research and pages of photography research so it 'seemed' like i had done some work. One photographer I focused on was Duane Michals. Michals is a photographer who is known to use sequences in his work, these sequences tend to create a narrative in which a story can be interpreted.

This was a piece that I analysed, its a very notable piece mainly because of who it was made for. The piece in question is called 'Dr Heisenberg's Magic Mirror of Uncertainty' which he created for Vogue Magazine.

The subject is seen staring into the mirror in an innocent attempt to see her reflection, only to be surprised by what she sees. Her reflection is seems morphed beyond human proportions, becoming unnatural and borderline monstrous. What is striking is the fact that there doesn't seem to be anything remotely wrong with the mirror, usually a crack or a bend would create such a distortion, yet the mirror seems in perfect condition. This then leaves you to wonder if it is the woman creating these reflections. The reflections arent accurate and therefore hint at a more metaphorical meaning, perhaps the many faces the subject has, seeing as, in a few she has one or more faces however abstract they may be. Could she be discovering herself?

Duane Michal's use of narrative was a very prominent aspect of the photography topic of our course. A large part of our brief was to create a series of images that tell a story and of course what is a story without a narrative?

I did actually try to respond to him, which may be a surprise... I managed to take a number of photographs whilst out with some friends.

After annotating my contact sheet I had to try and link a couple so that it would at least seem like there was a narrative to it. A lot of them were just quick snaps but when I took them I made sure to take a few shots in quick succession so that, if by chance, I would capture some motions and movements that could suggest certain things.

The four images I ended up choosing were in fact the first four photographs I took during my day out. They weren't of anything special but a pair of feet. Two of the images have a large amount of motion blur considering the size of the frame. The composition across the series of images was also very similar which makes it a lot easier for the images to be linked. What I most liked about the four images is how they do not seem to represent much yet they hold a lot of potential for interpretation. Is this a positive series or a negative series? Is the subject dancing? Is the subject running? If so, running from what? There are a lot of questions that need answers when it comes to figuring out what this series depicts.

I made sure to include my editing process in my book, this has always been something I've aimed to do as it shows my ability to use editing software such as Adobe Photoshop. It also helps to evidence how I got from the raw files to and edited series.

Week 10 | Photography

Photography

The Lives of Others.

Our new project is photography and our brief was based around the lives of other people. Upon hearing the brief I was a little sceptical, mainly due to the fact that, although I enjoy photography, I'm not that fond of photographing other people. 

The first week of the project revolved around studying the history of photography, we started right at the beginning with the history of the first lens. It was a small piece of glass that allowed for magnification. It was quite fascinating to learn how and when photography started.

    Besides that, our brief required us to document another person and so researching documentary photography was very key in getting to grips with this type of photography. I started to explore a range of documentary photographers and found one called Kitra Cahana.

Cahana is a female documentary photographer from America who has done some amazing projects exploring real world situations, crisis's and even just groups of people that she finds interesting. There was one project of hers which I became very interested in is her work with Nomads. The photographs she took were amazing, they were effective at capturing the adventure and mystery behind a lifestyle we aren't so familiar with.


These are a couple of my favorite:

This image depicts what must be a nomad inside of a train. The subject looks like a young male who looks rather worn out, tire and generally quite knackered. He is relaxing and enjoying a cigarette whilst the train travels. The atmosphere of the photograph is a very mellow one, this is largely due to the dark blue overtone that dominates the setting and feelings the photograph evokes, feelings of cold and wet. The flame on the cigarette is the only thing that is showing any sort of warmth and the nomad is the one cigarette, it could simply tell us that this particular nomad enjoys smoking or it could also suggest his constant search for warmth in the cold bitterness of the world. He has encapsulated himself within the belly of the carriage, again this could be for warmth, possibly protection or is he hiding? Hiding from authority, from certain people or hiding from responsibility. The cigarette is often associated with rebuking and rebellion against authority, an authority the nomad is possibly battling.

This is also one of my favorites, the photograph shows four young nomads enjoying themselves at a train station singing songs whilst they are either waiting for a train or planning to camp out on the platform overnight. Next to the group stand a couple who are noticeably less 'nomadic'. They are dressed differently as they clearly live different lives. Whilst the two bystanders live a generic, western, middle class life, the group of nomads live a far more complex life of survival, adventure and discovery. The two groups are physically separated by the space between them as well as the support beam in the frame. They are also socially separated. The use of the support beam between them, however accidental is may have been, has helped at enforcing the idea that these are two different types of people who share different values, goals and aspirations. It is interesting to note that the nomads are having fun and enjoyinh their time together whilst the two bystanders look eagerly over at them, almost enviously. Their behaviors differ. Cahana has used framing to capture the idea that although we are fundamentally the same, aspects of people's lives, culture and identity are different.

Documenting our Partners

After we got paired up we were tasked with creating a portrait that represented the individual we were documenting. It seemed like a brief introductory into documentary photography and this seemed like a good way to do it. My partner was Nicola, she claimed she was fun and enthusiastic and she wasn't afraid of the camera lens. That was great because I didn't have to worry about hiding her face or obscuring it in a way that she was happy with, that was better for me. I can be a bit more free with how I want to document her.

I wanted to be creative and because she said she is fun I didn't want a straight up portrait as that wouldn't exactly reflect her nature. I started to take photographs using extreme angles and using mirrors to my advantage so that the portrait would look interesting and exciting. Despite this it was difficult to have a variety of different shots, all of them turned out roughly the same as if they could have been in a series.

After a lot of failed shot attempts and failed ideas we went to the bathroom so that I could get a clean shot of her in the mirror. She said she was fun and generally a happy person, cheerful if you will so I asked her to stare at herself in the mirror and something amazing happened.. She started laughing simply because she was looking in the mirror which was brilliant for me and i definitely didn't pass up the opportunity to capture it

They were alright images, I felt they appropriately expressed the type of person she told me she was but I wasn't very happy with them. They were good but they were't quite Carling. I think the reason I didn't like them so much was because I didn't feel they were adventurous enough. 

Because of this I couldn't settle on this image and therefore took another couple of images whilst we were waiting for everyone to get back. However these images were taken without her knowledge.

This is the photograph I decided to use for Nicola. It wasn't staged which was the best thing about it, it was natural, it was Nicola in her most raw form.