Developing Ideas and Stop Motion

After 5 different ideas and 4 different storyboards we decided to create a short stop motion film based around the Greek myth of Atlas, who is sentenced by Zeus to carry the universe on his back for all eternity. The universe is an extremely large burden to be responsible for. So what would happen if Atlas failed to keep hold of it? We decided to put together this short film to show the catastrophic outcome of Atlas dropping it after so long, now no longer to bare it. 

Lea made a model of a celestial sphere to represent the universe, similar to, the sculptor, Lee Lawrie's bronze statue of Atlas in New York depicts. I was able to use a wire model for our Atlas character and we filmed two scenes. One on a white background and one on a sheet of black paper. I felt like we had to really rush our ideas and push ourselves to film as much as we could due to having to deal with other deadlines in the week but we got a lot done and now just need to edit a few things. I think next time we should aim to deal with a less complex idea which is basic enough to put together a satisfying short story that we can film nice and quickly. 

Mood Board Presentation and Start of Group Work

Today we brought all that we had collected to put together a mood board in hope of influencing ideas for our final piece. At first I was quite excited with what I had put together but after going around the room to see other people's work and talking as a class about other ideas, I felt quite annoyed with my ideas. They weren't really saying anything important. They were quite interesting and linked well but it really was just an idea of huge bugs taking over Brighton with someone having to come to the rescue and as a short animated story I felt this wasn't impressive. I decided to start over and go along with the theme of the Metamorphosis story and the idea of caring for a burden.

I understood to an extent the character, Greta's experience with having to look after her brother who changed in to something completely different that made everyone around feel uncomfortable. My grandma had alzheimer's for a few years before dying and it was hard to deal with mainly due to me being an awkward person as it is and trying to talk to someone who doesn't remember very well who you are with a very heavy Jamaican accent is why I felt incredibly useless and uncomfortable. I thought it was an important story to tell. However, although I wanted to work on it with a lot of my own control I knew the purpose of this project being to collaborate with others was important to follow through so I teamed up with Rosie and Lea who also wanted to present a similar idea.

Life Drawing

I found this day productive. Although I wasn't too happy with a bundle of my drawings it helped me get a bit more practice in of drawing from life as well as some ideas on how to work with a possible character and their changing in to an insect.

I feel like I should have experimented more with changing the form rather than keeping to what's right in front of me. Loosening up my style would have been better I think.

Metamorphosis Project Trip to Brighton

This trip to Brighton I found was really interesting and helped inspire a bundle of possible final piece ideas. I liked the Jan Svankmajer exhibit we went to and how each piece was put together well, almost like how people create a machine. They weren't randomly assembled but took into consideration what different pieces matched and complimented each other. Going around the town also helped with ideas such as the Pavillion, finding objects and interesting pebbles on the beach and a few buildings around the town. I feel like maybe I could've done a few more sketches around the buildings rather than photos but luckily I did a lot of sketches from the exhibition.

LBM Project 2 in Response to Artist Work

I chose to focus on the photographer, Elina Brotherus', series of photographs at the Photographer's Gallery. Unlike the other subjects of the Motherhood exhibit, the fact that she can't be a mother to a child grown from her own body I find is really important to show in the exhibition. My short animation I decided should deal with the issues and experiences' of women and fertility. I wanted to show 2 different sides of this issue. From a woman who wants to have one to a young girl who is in the middle of school and is just figuring out her life. Unfortunately their fertility works in the opposite way to how they'd want it to and hints to a them feeling like failures. Many would see the young girl making a mistake as irresponsible and dirty and the woman not filling out a natural part of life.

At first I thought of showing the women's different lives and the situation they're going through, side by side or cut to different perspectives for each scene but I was advised, in a conversation of group critiquing, that it may be too much and the at of actually waiting for the pregnancy test's result was simple and yet more powerful.

I did around 5 different storyboards before getting to work on some flip-books. I then photographed each image before piecing it together on the computer along with quite tense music I had recorded myself. After showing the end product I was advised to maybe put together the two images of these stories side by side so to hint to the idea the characters are in the same bathroom, in the neighbouring stalls. I also noticed that the size of the images' frame shifts because some images are cropped differently from others. So next time, I should consider the quality of the image rather than cropping the picture as well as thinking about how the cut scenes look to the audience.

Trip to London Galleries

Due to lack of time and a very strong interest in one of the exhibits, I was only able to go to 3 out of the 5 exhibits during our trip to the London galleries but i feel like I got a lot out of it which I passionately wanted to work with. Although Michael Landy's Saints Alive and the Lutz Backer exhibits were rather interesting, I feel like the Motherhood exhibit at the Photographer's gallery dealt with very personal and honest stories that were documented wonderfully.

The film 'The Selfish Giant' was also very wonderful in brutally presenting the real life of a working class environment and it's influence on children
but I found that one piece from this exhibit spoke to me more mainly due to my ability to understand it a bit more and it's impact on me. The story that truly grabbed me was Elina Brotherus' documentation of infertility.

A woman, who after trying so many times, couldn't get pregnant. It was the exact opposite of all the others and yet had, I thought, the strongest message of how people can desperately want to experience and be a part of Motherhood. Especially when it's traditionally expected for women to be mothers at some point in the future and are seen as strange for not achieving or wanting this, I can only imagine how hard it must be when someone, who feels ready and really wants to create life from themselves, cannot. Which is why I've chosen to create a piece of animation in response to this specific piece.

Radical Idea

For this one day project we were told to create a presentation persuading the audience to believe a radical idea we would create, in groups. Me and my group decided to persuade the idea that everyone has a doppelganger (an almost clone like version of ourselves) living in our world who now and than comes to check on ourselves. This is due to the idea that when we die, we sit back and look at our lives and go back to the parts we want to correct or influence ourselves to change from the bad decisions we make.
I found that our group's ideas flowed and bounced off each other really well, we looked at good sources of research and the short video clip we put together to explain our idea came out really well.
It would've been more exciting to get together a longer video clip but I still feel it all came out very well. I thought we wouldn't get our work done on time but I think, what the whole class also learnt was, if we worked equally hard in a good group of people, we could get things done if we tried hard enough. The fact it was a one day project really pushed us all to do something rather than leaving it till later and coming back to it in a state of panic.

First Project Development, Outcome and Assessment

                                       

For this project I felt quite confused with what I wanted to do and it's impact on my chosen pathway within the pathway of lens based. I want to be an animator, however, the few days of experimenting made me feel as if I should carry on going in to different medias' techniques which is why I also did a set of photos and concentrated on the quality of the visual being more than what it was really about. I feel that if I had thought more about the personal story, it's presentation to the audience, and not so purely on the visual elements, it could have been better. 

Feedback from tutors and class mates suggest that the short stop motion had a reason for the jump in the middle. Originally I had wanted the person to jump over hands on the piano but I found it difficult to compose this in to the film. Apart from that, I was told that it was a very original idea and I was very proud and happy to hear this. When creating the photos I felt that again, the stories and meaning behind them were misinterpreted and I could have worked  on them a bit better to portray the questionnaire answers of my friends and family. But again, I was complimented on my use of light and shadow in the first black and white image which I was rather proud of. However the word 'Proud' was thought of as an obvious way to stick in to the photo that my sister was proud of me although I meant for it to present the fact I am proud for my sister and she is unaware of it in her everyday life. 

All in all, I feel that the project could have gone better and next time I should focus a bit more on planning the importance of what the subjects stand for and their stories.