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MAJOR PROJECT: PRESENTATION PLAN

In the beginning of the setting up of the gallery, I had originally planned to use a big space and corner off the far right corner to create the room and allow people to flow freely in and out. However, after technical issues, another student now has taken this place and I have to work around other spaces to attempt to make my work aesthetically pleasing and flow within the space. There are two places that are possible for me to use and I have made rough sketches to show these.

Idea one:

The white lines represent the black out material that I will have to convert my space into a room. The work will be projected onto a white wall surrounded by black walls to ensure the best visibility of the piece. This would be placed on the left hand side of the gallery, the first isle you come to as you enter the downstairs space.

Idea two:

My second idea is to build a room exactly the same as my previous idea however in a different position in the space. This idea would mean I use up some of the space in the middle section of the downstairs area, however it would ensure that viewers and visitors are able to move freely around all partitions.

Idea three:

My third and final idea involved using the majority of the middle space in the downstairs area. I would finish the partitions towards the back wall of the gallery when you walk into the downstairs room. This idea would mean using both walls of the already installed partition and covering them with black material. As you can see in the image, I would be using the majority of the middle space and sectioning this off somewhere between half way and three quarters of the space (roughly 3-8 meters).

Hopefully one of these ideas can be successfully achieved and still have my desired aesthetic outcome. In order to have a higher quality projector, I am hiring one out from a company for the duration of the exhibition. This will also ensure that some elements of my desired presentation can be achieved.

#majorProject

VIDEO DEVELOPMENT: MAJOR PROJECT

FINAL EDIT - internet quality.

Here is my final edit uploaded for internet purposes. Now I need to focus on where I want to project the piece and to what size. I know roughly what size that is, which is no bigger than 3m as I wish to have the figures slightly larger than life size. Although I didn’t aim for an intimate pieces (in some aspects) I want the area of the work to feel rather intimate and as an invasion of our privacy (due to looking at public and private displays of affection).

I believe I’ve managed to colour correct the majority of the clips to an extent, although it could have been slightly better but I just couldn’t seem to come to grips with matching each frame.

#majorProject

VIDEO DEVELOPMENT: MAJOR PROJECT

Above - Ready for exporting!! MAJOR STRESS!!!!!

I am unable to export my file correctly, after exporting to find it interlaces, then de-interlacing and re-exporting and still having interlacing problems!

Above you can see from a youtube upload, after exporting at the following settings my video was still interlaced. This was a problem I had faced and stressed over for a number of days and couldn’t get my head around the problem after googling and you-toubing tutorials I still couldn’t seem to fix it.

It was only until after I met with Adam to discuss this issue that he informed me I was exporting at 1080i (where the i stands for interlaced so my video would always be interlaced!). We managed to solve the issue (that led me to believe my Adobe Premier was faulty as I could not find the correct settings!!) by changing the format it saved as from a quicktime file to a H.264 and find the preset of 1080p at 29.97frames per second.

#majorProject

VIDEO DEVELOPMENT: MAJOR PROJECT

Following the story board I had previously designed allow me to recall other gestures that we perform as a couple. Although the clips are unscripted and much more of an instinctive performance, it helped in terms of content to plan the clips before hand without knowing what Shane would do.

#majorProject

VIDEO DEVELOPMENT:MAJOR PROJECT

Above - test video, checking focus and lighting.

Reshooting for hopefully the last time! This time using more even light source, and different settings (1080p, 50fps, ALL I).

After editing my last shoot, I decided to use the same lighting for both subjects (rather than having to sacrifice one LED light for less powerful on camera LED’s. I’m really pleased with the clips pre-edit so hopefully I can conquer Adobe Premier Pro once and for all to ensure I export my clips correctly and obtain the right aesthetics!

(More to come)

#majorProject

ARTIST RESEARCH: READING MATERIAL

PEOPLE WATCHING - THE DESMOND MORRIS GUIDE TO BODY LANGUAGE

Summary of the first two chapters.

After reading the first two chapters of this book, I have already learnt a number of things about actions and gestures of the human body, and what they could be translated to ect (Morris, 2002. p.xvi).

The first thing that stood out to me was Morris’ point that are are all people watchers to some extent. In his book he said:

“We occasionally make a mental note of a particular posture and wonder how it can have originated, but we seldom do anything about about it. We say things like ‘so-and-so makes me uneasy, I don’t know why he just does’ or Wasn’t she behaving strangely last night?’ or ‘I always feel completely relaxed with those two - it’s something about their manner.’ And there we leave the matter. But the serious people watcher wants to know why these feelings were aroused. He wants to know how we come to act the way we do. This means carrying out long hours of fieldwork and looking at people in a new way” (Morris, 2002. p.xv).

I believe this particular theory stood out to me so quickly, because I felt a connection with my project - me looking at my partner’s behaviour and reactions to private and public affection - and found myself fitting in with Morris’ description of a “serious people watcher” because I want to know why Shane acts differently in different surroundings, he will quite happily hold my hand and cuddle me in the comfort of our own home, but as soon as we venture outside and into a public place, the affection stops. Especially when we are around university. When we first got into a relationship, Shane would never hold my hand within a certain distance of university, and would make up excuses saying that his hand was itchy, or “hold on” and look at his phone then never go back to holding my hand. At first I didn’t catch on to it, but as I took note of it happening it began happening more frequently and in more than one area. However, almost three years on, we will occasionally hold hands up to the university buildings and only once has he kissed me “goodbye” for a 10 hour day.

Morris also discusses postures of the body within the first two chapters of his book. He says that:

“Most of the postures we adopt and the movements we make we have made thousands of times before. Most of them are performed unconsciously, spontaneously and without self-analysis. In many cases they are so familiar, so much taken for granted that we do not even know how we do them” (Morris, 2002. p.2).

This to me makes me wonder if the lack of affection is something that has been forwarded on to Shane, perhaps he has never truly witnessed public affection and been told it is okay, thus feels uncomfortable to act in such a way?

In the second chapter of the book, titled Gesture, Morris gives some what of a description as to what gesture is:

Most people tend to limit their use of the term ‘gesture’ to the primary form - the hand-wave type - but this misses an important point. What matters with gesturing is not what signals we thing we are sending out, but what signals are being received” (Morris, 2002. p.21).

This in turn had me thinking of how outsiders would read our relationship, with me wanting to show affection and not knowing if I come across as needy and desperate for love, and Shane not giving affection which may show outsiders he doesn’t truly love me, and is not passionate about our relationship.

This is as far as I have read, more to come in another post once I have read more!!

#majorProject #ArtistResearch

PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: EMAIL TEMPLATES

Over the summer I hope to obtain an internship or perhaps a permanent job within the agency field of photography. This has been an aim for quite the time in my degree and is supported by my continuous participation of the South Bank Collective. Recently I have began sending out emails to both those advertising and those not advertising for internship/vacant positions.

Above you can see an email which is a little less personal as I have not previously researched into shoot group (something I need to work on when applying for jobs!!!)

However, where possible I do try to be rather personal to the respondent and with Natasha and her mentorship I found it rather easy to connect with her through email as she is a major influence on my final major project and made sure I mentioned this within the email. With agency’s it tends to be a little more difficult to be personal, however where possible I inform the respondent that I have previously had a connection with their artist (perhaps they came to talk to us, or I have researched into their work for my major project and can honestly connect with it rather than researching into the artists’ purposefully for the email opportunity). I am yet to have a response, but as I only began this process on Thursday, and sent the majority of emails out on Friday, I’m still optimistic. However over the weekend I am going to ensure I email agency’s in the early stages of development to give myself more of a chance, as with only slight experience in the field, I still believe I need more to be able to get into an agency such as We Folk, and Webber (although I have emailed them on the off chance they are interested!)

#workexperience #workexpresearch

MAJOR PROJECT: STORY BOARDS

Here you can see very rough sketches of what I plan to film next, and I have assumed Shane’s reactions when put in the situations I will put him in. I’ve done this both for myself so I know what I need to film and I am prepared with a number of gestures to perform when I reshoot. Also so that I can see what might work as a close up throughout the recording and what wouldn’t. I can do this simply by framing the sketch to see what works and what doesn’t.

#majorProject

ARTIST RESEARCH: JAY MAISEL

“The importance of “Gesture” in photography.

In this video, Photographer Jay Maisel discusses the importance of Gesture in photography. Maisel suggests that the dictionary definition is wrong, gesture is also the quality of a table leg, the way a tree looks, the way you stand. From his description I have taken a completely different outlook on what gesture is, although I am looking at the way a person stands and presents themselves, I’ve never thought of water having gesture in a way that it could ripple, or wave etc.

One picture he took where gentleman in Rome was selling slides sat in a certain way. After taking the photograph he realised behind him was a wall that was 500 years old and that wall had gesture. But not only the wall, all the things he was selling had gesture. And thats what he looks for.

#ArtistResearch #majorProject

MAJOR PROJECT

Reshooting:

Another cause for reshooting my videos are that I’m not entirely sure I have the settings at the best setting.

I previously used the setting of:

1280 - 50 Frames Per Second - IPB

I am under the impression that 50 frames are only necessary when planning on filming in slow motion, which I no longer plan on doing. I need to research more into IPB but having spoken to someone within the filming industry, I believe these settings are only appropriate to save file space. Therefore I would probably be better off using “ALL I” which allocates more file space to each clip, but does not make up information in-between frames.

New suggested settings:

After speaking to the individual, I believe more appropriate settings would be:

1920 - 25 Frames Per Second - ALL I

However, I am going to research more into these settings to ensure they are appropriate for the filming I want to create.

#majorProject

MAJOR PROJECT - SEQUENCE AND COLOUR MATCHING

Above you can see a screen shot of in-process in editing. As I’ve never really used premier before, I had to cover the majority of the programme by practicing and watching youtube tutorials.

I found the above tutorials very useful, but also found that just messing around with the programme also helped a lot in terms of getting to grips with menus, options and video editing.

Here you can see rendering in-process, and colour grading in the background. As I don’t really have any white or grey in my clips it was quite difficult to match the white balance correctly. But hopefully I can get some feedback on this in the tutorial on Tuesday.

I also need to plan the sequence thoroughly with the use of story boards rather than just randomly slotting in clips to create a sequence.

Here is my latest sequence. I believe the quality, focus and light has improved so much more than the previous recordings I had done. (Although uploading to vimeo seems to have distorted this, but this is something I can fix when exporting). I believe this is down to the improvement on lighting and my improvement with the Canon 6D. However, due to the fact that Shane is holding his iPad in a lot of the shots, I believe this is conveying a message that more revolves around a technology barrier in a relationship which is not something I want to explore. I think I may include the use of an iPad in one shot, but not the majority of them - as mentioned before I think it doesn’t come across correctly, but this is another thing I will discuss in the next tutorial to make sure it is not just me that can see this message in the above clip.

#majorProject

MAJOR PROJECT - VIDEO DEVELOPMENT

(One clip of many to show technical footage)

Above you can see the amount of clips I shot in the second shoot. I much prefer the lighting and quality in this shoot. However Shane appears to be using his iPad throughout these clips which I’m not sure I like, I would have liked to mix up the usage so that the project does not come across as technology boundaries within a relationship, which is not what I wanted to aim for. I was not going to reshoot but after analysing the clips before creating a sequence in adobe Premier Pro I have come to the conclusion that I might need to in order to attain the correct message in the clips.

#majorProject

MAJOR PROJECT - VIDEO DEVELOPMENT

(preview of a clip)

Here are all of the unedited clips of my latest shoot. I believe I’ve managed to capture the lighting well here, although some colour correcting may need to be considered due to the skin tones perhaps being too warm. I am going to reshoot before I take the kit back to the kit room. As some of the clips myself and my boyfriend are both talking and I’m not sure this would work once edited into a new sequence. Although in these clips he appears to be rather fidgety etc. and this could read very nervously to viewers and would be a really good element to the work. As you can tell from one of the unedited clips above, Shane is rather twitchy and nervous in the way he constantly “taps” his legs and “shakes” them in anticipation.

According to Psychology Today “splaying your legs out carelessly in front of you sends just the opposite message. You want to seem open, relaxed, and comfortable, but not so much that you look sloppy and so relaxed that you’re ready to fall asleep”. They also suggest that “anxiety can translate very directly into an unconscious leg-shaking or foot-tapping”. Another area they look into is feet and the tapping of feet. Psychology Today suggests “tapping your toes is one way to show that you’re in a hurry and anxious to get moving. You may want to tap your toes if you’re trying to get someone’s attention and don’t want to say something rude. It’s a little way of signaling that you’re feeling time pressured without yelling or engaging in sarcastic eye-rolling”.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201206/the-ultimate-guide-body-language

#majorProject

VIDEO DEVELOPMENT

Before reshooting again I made sure I received feed back from Adam, Lydia and Daniel.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I no longer want to see the visibility of mine and Shane’s clothing. I’ve come to this conclusion as rewatching my previous videos has caused me to think it would not work or read the same, although I should still try to do it - depending on my technical skill to be able to show the differences without being over exposed.

In the next filming I am going to use LED lighting in the hope to capture natural skin tones against the black material. I am also going to attempt to do in camera cropping (i.e. zooming in on area’s I want to capture of detail). I’m going to ensure I have a low aperture to gain a larger depth of field. This will also be beneficial in terms of capturing the blackness of the scene.

#majorProject

WEBSITE DESIGN: www.libbydavies.clickgarden.net

I knew I wanted to keep my home page really simple, yet directive. I wanted viewers to know how to navigate throughout my work. To achieve this I had to remove a large image banner that used to showcase imagery from each of my projects. I felt it was important to distinguish what was personal and what was commissioned, having felt rather “lost and confused” when looking at other photographers websites and only guessing a project was personal and not really having clear direction.

It became apparent to me that I often work in diptychs and therefore decided to redesign two projects’ pages: Instinct & Alteration. In Instinct I worked with my mother creating similar poses and imagery of our bodies, therefore this was quite easy to represent in diptych form. In “Liminal” our second year exhibition I presented my images as diptychs so it seemed only necessary to present them online in that form. Alteration was a photobook I had created. Although never exhibited, each image had a page therefore it was also rather easy to show this project in that format and the reason why being that it reads as each page of the book.

I wanted my website to have a personal, yet clean design therefore I decided to have my name in a “hand written” font (also my home button) but have all other text as Century Gothic. Although a basic font, I feel that century gothic is a rather “creative font” that will not distort if viewed on different platforms.

#workexperience #workexpresearch

RESEARCH

Industry Art

http://www.industryart.com/info/

Industry Art is a London-based independent agency that represents a select group of photographers and filmmakers who work across fashion, editorial and advertising.

Founded in 2014 by Marco Santucci & Bianca Redgrave, the agency focuses on supporting its artists in the development of their individual practices while also balancing the demands of a successful career within the industry.

Industry Art offers a full production service & has experience producing fashion shoots, digital content & feature films.

Working with strong image-makers, Industry Art is committed to supporting creativity, promoting new ideas and developing productive relationships.

Industry Art is another agency I have researched into that represents artists that work both commercially and personally.

http://www.industryart.com/artists/lorenzovitturi/

http://www.lorenzovitturi.com/

Lorenzo Vitturi is just one of the photographers represented by Industry Art, and like William Abranowicz from art+commerce, also has his own website. However you could suggest he is presented completely different on the two platforms. His own website home page does not appear to be very visual, containing of only text (and non about his projects). His projects are listed down the left hand side from a-g. On his Industry Art page he is presented exactly the same as each other photographer. A short description, personal and commissioned imagery.

#workexperience #workexpresearch

RESEARCH

Art and Commerce

In order to carry out appropriate research for my work experience module, I needed to look specifically at photographers and how they represent themselves, what work they show and if they include personal and commissioned work (similar to what I show on my own website).

Art + Commerce was founded in the early 1980s by partners Anne Kennedy, Jim Moffat and Leslie Sweeney. Their concept was simple yet surprisingly unprecedented to create an agency capable of supporting image makers within the realms of both art and commerce at a time when there was renewed interest by artists in working for the printed page. The agency has grown to represent photographers, stylists, creative directors, hair and makeup artists and an illustrator for assignment, special projects, and image licensing. Additionally, Art + Commerce Production offers casting, location and specialized services. Art + Commerce offers long term guidance and support to our artists and helps to build their archives of published work and digital files for perpetuity. We offer support and development for our artists exhibitions and publications, and for educational projects that extend the discussion of image making in general.

http://www.artandcommerce.com/the-agency

Because Art & Commerce represent artist who make work both for art purposes and commercial purposes (hence the name) it was only crucial that I researched this agency and the photographers within the agency.

William Abranowicz is just one of the photographers currently represented by the agency, unlike many other agency-based photographers that I have come across, William also has his own website.

As you can tell from the screen grab of Williams portfolio on art+commerce, he not only shows editorial and commissioned work, but also personal projects that he was perhaps not employed to create. It is important for me to look at photographers doing this on their own websites and on agency websites as running my own agency is something I want to do. However as I cannot fully show this in my portfolio, it is important to ensure my portfolio consists of appropriate work for the appropriate field.

#workexperience #workexpresearch

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