Transcription Project- Exhibitions

Part of the transcription project required us to visit a couple of exhibitions around London. Two of which that I found the most interesting were; 'Saints Alive' by Michael Landy, held at The National Gallery. And 'Black Beauty' By Lutz Bacher, held at the ICA museum. Both exhibitions stood out to me the most.

I found 'Black Beauty' to be quite a mysterious and ambiguous exhibition, this however just made the exhibition more intriguing. Two pieces that stood out to me the most was the broken mirror [1] and the horse [2]. 

[1]

[2]

For me the broken mirror had a couple of meanings, which came to mind when i first saw it. Instantly I thought of superstitions, (breaking a mirror will give you seven years bad luck). But when observing the black sand, I started to think of more darker things and thought that the smashed mirror could be representative of feelings: Anger, Depression, Upset. The horse on the other hand has a more comical childlike vibe about it, however the shadows it makes could also be linked to a more sinister meaning behind it. 

Saints Alive, however, was my favourite exhibition. I really liked how Landy had taken such classic pieces of artwork and had changed them into something modern and exciting. I think for some people, they may find religious artwork boring or cannot understand it. But by Landy changing these paintings into interactive sculptures, adds a more exciting approach to the artwork. A piece in particular that I liked was called 'Multi-Saint'[3] It reminded me of hybrid creatures, commonly seen in greek mythology. This was due to the fact that this statue was make up of different parts of different paintings. I would like to use this piece as a starting point for my transcription project. 

[3]

Transcription Project- Radical Ideas

As an introduction to the transcription project, we spent the day working on a little task set to us. The task consisted of each group to think of radical ideas and present them in a way that we thought would make the ideas believable. Once separated into our groups, which was a group that i had never worked with before. We all began brainstorming on different and exciting radical ideas that we could present to the class. After some discussion we eventually decided to present a radical idea on the O2. The main idea was that Aliens were in fact living underneath the O2 and the O2 itself was their spaceship.

We decided that the most interesting way to present this, was to make a short documentary. Which included interviewing some members of staff that worked in the O2. However when i was time to present our documentary the sound didn't work, which ruined the whole presentation. We then just had to explain our idea to the class. However everyone thought that it was a good idea and could be explored further.

Shape and Form Project

In the visual arts, shape is a flat enclosed area of an artwork created. Likewise, a form can refer to a three-dimensional composition or object. 

For this project I wanted to focus on the shape and form within landscapes. Focusing mainly on the shape of buildings as well as the shape of trees in landscapes. Following my research from the likes of Minor White, Ansel Adams and Bill Brandt. I went and done a number of shoots of both buildings and objects in nature. Through these shoots I was able to capture a number of interesting shape and forms.

Ansel Adams

Minor White

Bill Brandt

Final images

Summary of Rotation Period

On reflection now the rotation period is over, it has hit me how much I have learnt over the last 8 weeks. Although some stages have been more enjoyable than others, I feel that I have been able to take something from every stage and will use them in my future. Photography was the first stage and one that I enjoyed a lot, having done photography before I’ve had a lot of experience with it and was keen to begin. Since my operation in July I was determined to do a project on it and my experiences as it was very personal to me and I found that my photography project was the perfect opportunity to do this. I don’t mind working alone or with a group, depending on the project and I was very glad to be working alone for my photography project and I feel that I made it very personal and it was evident to see through my work. Animation was the next stage and definitely my least favourite, however I still got an insight into the world of animation and learnt new skills on programmes such a istopmotion. The downside of animation was being put into group at random as I ended up being with a group that wasn’t very willing to share their ideas or work well as a team. I found myself having to be the one starting discussions and having to make a lot of effort with people for them to respond to the work we were doing. Sound Design was a much better experience as we were able to choose our own groups and I was in a group with people that I knew I could work well with as well as enjoy the experience as well. Although I have had little experience with Sound Design before, I found the 2 weeks very informative and it made me appreciate the skill and hard work that sound designers put into films. This stage also gave me an opportunity to work in garage band more and build on my skills. The final stage and my favourite was Broadcasting, the stage that I had been looking forward to ever since I started Ravensbourne. Again staying in the same group that I was in for sound design, this made the experience much more enjoyable as I knew that we all worked well as a team. During my research I was able to analyse scenes in movies, which is something I enjoy doing very much. Following this I was able to use my knowledge of different camera angles, when making our film, as we wanted a wide variety of shots to make our piece interesting.  Overall this experience has been amazing and I cannot wait to start my new projects in the up and coming weeks, I will be choosing Broadcasting for my pathway as it is the career that I would love to go into.

Broadcasting- Crit

On friday was crit for broadcasting and everyone showed to the class the films that they had produced. Overall I am very pleased with the response that our film received from the class. We were told that the story worked very well as there were a couple of low points ( losing the cat and then thinking Jack had gotten on the train) and then a resolution ( realising Jack was on another platform), this made the story a lot more engaging for the audience. However it was said that were wasn't enough obstacles during the film for Helen to overcome, it was suggested that she should've had a bigger struggle in getting onto the platform. We could've got Helen getting suck behind a group of tourists, or her falling down that stairs that would've delayed her from getting the train even more. The class also suggested that we should've shown that Jack was in more of a rush and therefore didn't realise that he had picked up the cat bag. This was suggested as some people thought that he had stolen the cat box, instead of picking it up by mistake. Tom told us that the film had a lot of potential and would be suited to a rom-com. With more work we were told our film could be made into a feature film.

Our Film Sequence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI0AgxIjrNc

Broadcasting- Filming

For my research I wrote analysis's of certain chase scenes from films such as, 'Casino Royale', 'Lord of the rings', 'The Shining' and 'French Connection'. In doing so I focused on camera angles in all of the chase scenes. I noticed in my research that there was a lot of fast cuts between characters in the scene, this establishes the chase further. Other camera angle that I thought was effective as a point of view shot, in doing this the shot is of the behind of the person being chased, this not only establishes a chase more but also shows distance between the characters in the scene.

At the start of the second week we were ready to begin filming our sequence. We went into Starbucks in the O2, as we needed a coffee shop to start off our story. However shortly after we started filming we were approached by the O2 security who told us we couldn't film in Starbucks without permission. To get this we would have to email someone and it could take a couple of days to get permission to film. This put us all in a difficult situation as we couldn't afford to wait a couple of days to get permission. Instead we ventured to the train station and after asking the staff at Cafe Nero we were able to start filming. Overall I think this worked out for the best as Cafe Nero is situated in the station, which made the filming much more easier and would make the film flow better when put together. For our film, Helen and Jack were acting whilst Imogen and I were filming. I wanted to use my knowledge taken from my research about different camera angles, therefore we experimented a lot with different ways that we could film the sequence. One camera perspective that I think was filmed really well was the handheld, point of view of Helen chasing Jack. I also think that the shots of Helen running down the stairs were filmed well as they showed how long it took for her to run down the stairs, this was done by timing the same scene but from different angles from the top of the stairs. To film our sequence we used Jacks camcorder and Imogen's SLR camera, in using both of these we were able to film a lot more footage and from different angles without any mistakes being made ( objects moved, people getting in our shots).

Although the filming of our sequence took up a lot more time than we thought, I enjoyed it a great deal. My group worked extremely well together and weren't afraid to say whether we thought something didn't work or not. And our ideas bounced off each other. I also think that the fact that we had our own roles helped a lot as we were very organised and knew what we were all doing.




Photos from filming:

Broadcasting- Week 1

This week we started a new stage, Broadcasting. Broadcasting was the pathway that I was looking forward to the most so was extremely excited to get started on the project. Were told that our task was to produce a one minute chase sequence. We were told to pick groups to make our film sequence, my groups was the same as my sound design group. We all decided to work together again as we had worked so well and accomplished a lot during our 2 weeks of sound design. We started the week by watching chase sequences, from films such as 'french connection' and 'new york stories'. Out of the two films, 'New York stories' stood out for me the most because it wasn't an obvious chase sequence, unlike the car chase in 'french connection'. This gave me a completely different view of how our film could be, as it didn't have to be an obvious chase sequence, therefore giving the group a much wider range of storyline ideas to explore. 

After a group discussion it was decided to go with my story idea:

A person is sitting in a cafe and another person comes and sits next to them. The main character rushes off to catch a train. As they are walking through the train station they get the sense that someone is following them. Suddenly the other person from the cafe grabs hold of their bag. The main character then realises that they picked up the wrong bag in the cafe.

After a crit on friday and a discussion with the tutors, it was said that the story idea had a lot of potential but the idea of accidentally picking up someones bag had been done many times because and should be changed, the object should also be something that the audience can connect with more (emotional response). 

The final verdict of the group was that we would use a cat box instead of a bag. In doing so the audience could have a stronger connection with the story, as it focuses on the loss of a pet.