Advanced Photographic Practice

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My Work - The Process

On the 21st of November I was booked for a corporate photography job back near when I originate in Cumbria. This was just a day job and I had scheduled the whole weekend back at home. I rang my grandma after returning from the commission and arranged to shoot the very next morning.

The shooting process was simple and fairly efficient. I ran my grandma through what I was planning on doing and got her to briefly talk about the memories she could think of around the room. For the narration, I didn’t want it to feel forced or scripted so every now and then I had to stop her from continuing the story and tell her to remember it for when I was recording. In hindsight I could have simply set the audio recorder off during these moments to allow these more pure tellings of the stories but I was conscious about having my voice and others in the recording. Although, this could have possibly been for the better, creating a natural dialogue between us both about the memories we both share, but that’s not what I envisioned.

Once I’d got a general feel for the objects being talked about and the key areas of the room, I spent a little while organising the room to hold these objects in a fairly evenly distributed fashion. In doing this, I was channeling the original 360 room tour uses for this kind of photography. It presented the room not as an immediately inhabited state, but more of a piece of art in itself. Similar to Tracy Emin’s bed project, the arrangement of objects, furniture and the general mise en scene plays a huge character in itself. The oddities of seeing how my grandma lines up the remote controls for the TV and her excessive use of picture frames and blankets is something that (although not directly related to my grandmas memory) could bring up ideas of peoples own experiences, relatives and habits.

I set up my tripod in the middle of the room and ensured I used a spirit level to make sure the head was level, I then did the same with my cameras in built spirit level - working using a gyroscope within the body - and span the head a whole 360 to ensure It stayed this was throughout the panorama. The kit I used was My Nikon D7000 with a Tamaron 10-24 at it’s widest setting. I used an ISO of 400, an aperture of f6.3 and a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second. This exposed the majority of the room (especially areas near the conservatory and windows) a little on the over exposed side. This was the look I was going for though, retrenching the work of Will Pearson. I shot in RAW and knew I could balance this exposure out better in post by retaining the shadows and bringing down the highlight areas as opposed to exposing for the highlights and having to try and drag detail back in the shadows. This often doesn't work and ends up with washed out shadows and an un natural and often unpleasing contrast. From this I set about shooting my panorama in normal fashion. Shooting wide open with at 10mm meant that I managed to get a lot of the room into each frame, I matched up easily rememberable points in each frame with the last (edge of chair on far right - next frame - far left) I ensured I gave plenty of leeway for this for when blending the images in post. This would hopefully mean that I had maximum coverage per photograph and minimise the amount of work in post. I rotated 6 times to create the complete panorama. I then panned the camera up and repeated the process to get the upper third of the room and once more for the lower. I also shot a single frame looking straight up and straight (or as close as possible) down. Due to the wide angle lens however, I would still manage to get the full coverage. To get this properly, I’d have to invest in a specialist panoramic head for the tripod that allows the camera to be raised above the plate situated on the tripod legs with an extra vertical plate to attach the camera. This allows the lens to point straight up/ down and often has degrees for precise rotation throughout. I’m hoping that the way I am shooting this time would be sufficient but depending on the outcome and my desire to continue the experimentation, I may wish to try one of these out.

After shooting the full panorama, I brought my grandma back into the room and set up two audio recording devices. As a ‘scratch track’ (so to speak) I used my DSLR and simply filmed my grandma traditionally. I also set up a shotgun microphone plugged into my iphone to record more detailed audio. Once I had both of these recording I sat down and asked my grandma to recite the information that she had talked to be about before hand. I often had to prompt her to remember certain things she had discussed but tried to remain silent otherwise and quickly cut myself off when she started talking. Although the microphone I used is directional. There would still be bounced audio and obvious discourse between us two so I wanted to minimise that as much as possible for more seamless editing. I repeated this exact process for both of the rooms I shot.

Post processing:

This has been the most difficult (as is often the case) of the whole process. I started off fairly simply by dragging all my images into Adobe Lightroom. From here I started with a fairly neutral image (one containing the most contrasting artefacts such as windows and shadows) I then edited this until the images histogram was a little more spread out and the image took on this HDR esc look so familiar with panoramic work. I then highlighted the rest of the images in the series and used Lightrooms handy ‘sync’ function. This syncs the develop settings with all of the selected images and because I had shot them all at the same settings they would all turn out with a consistent look throughout. It wouldn’t rid the image of its shadows or highlights but flatten them out and retain the detail in these areas. I then exported these images as high quality JPEGs with little sharpening into a separate folder.

I have used the photoshop action merge to panorama in the past to create panoramas and so I didn’t need much introduction to the process. However, upon using the script, it seamed to get a little confused with this level of files and detail. I tried selecting different settings such as the output from automatic to dedicated spherical and even perspective but all seamed to get confused and ended up stitching the photographs incorrectly. The only way I could get the script to work was to only add in one row of the images. I inserted the straight on images from the series and ran the script again and It worked fairly well with little artefacts or corrections. I was uplifted by this but this only left me with a  very tight panorama and would not work for a full 360 VR experience.

I thought that if I could keep doing this as separate photographs (straight on - upwards tilt - down) and then stitch these separate panoramas manually then I’d be onto something (obviously not as efficient as I would have hoped) but this was not the case. Once I deviated from the standard view and introduced frames with less points of interest for the script to stitch with, it fell apart and couldn’t create a cohesive image. It often ended up in a circular form or taking on an S curve shape. It became evident that this program was not going to work for the intensive workload that this project required.

I took to the internet to look for alternatives on image stitching software/ plugins and settled on a program I had tried in 6th form - Autopanno Gigga available through the French company, Kolor. This software is regarded as the industry standard for panoramic image making. It’s been used on countless groundbreaking projects including the worlds largest panoramic image - In2white. http://www.in2white.com/ This image is comprised of over 70,000 images shot over 35 hours using a specially designed motorised head. As a finalised product, the image “weighs in at a staggering 365 gigapixels.” and needed specialist software to host the image online. This is a fully interactive image with the ability to zoom in and see individual climbers and the details of the mountain range almost miles away.

If that alone isn’t testament to the capabilities of the software, then I don’t know what is. I decided to give it a go and upon downloading the software, I was a little intimidated. This is obviously a specialist program that needs time and dedication to perfect. The interface Is very technical, looking like the interface for a CAD 3D program as opposed to image processing software. I started reading a few posts on forums online on how to best use the software but this only confused me more. Being dyslexic, I often find it hard to digest information in this way and see the way this translates to my own application. Instead, I watched a few tutorial videos mainly on YouTube. This ability to see cause and effect of the processes and the situation of different features of the program made a whole lot more sense and made my grasping of the program much quicker. I of course referred back to theses often more in depth articles and forum threads on the software but in connection with this more visual tutorials. This video was probably the most helpful in my understanding - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ntRoV97k9o - very condensed and straight to the point.

Firstly, I loaded the exposure adjusted exports from Lightroom into the program. I then select all of these images and runt hem through a 3rd party application through the Autopanno Gigga program to remove geometric artefacts and adjust the from radius on the images to help the program in finding the stitching points. These are then exported into the same folder as the Lightroom exports for future use and are place into a separate project file within Autopanno. I then adjusted the panorama settings to output as a spherical 360 image and to adjust the amount of control points available for the smoothest output. I also optimised the render settings for best quality and compatibility by rendering as a TIFF format with no compression. I then ran the program’s script. This was an automated process and i selected the files to be automatically rendered and saved during this to save time and my need to be sat at the computer so I could continue with other elements of the project. This took roughly an hour and a half to complete but it was worth it. The finished product was a lot smoother and exact than the outcome of the photoshop script. I was very pleased with the results and although it still took a couple of attempts to get a result as seamless as I’d have wished, it was still a lot less work intensive than the Photoshop rout. I could have used further processing tools within the program to adjust each image layer (similar to working on a photoshop document) to perfect these outcomes but that required hours and hours of work that I simply did not have. Finding time to look at these tools outside of the course is something i’m very much excited about and maybe would wield a better result in the future.

As you can see from this finalised output from Autopanno Gigga, the result  is not without it’s faults. Some of the lines along the walls have been skewed and can not be matched perfectly. This may be due to the fact I used a wide angle lens and the geometric distortion caused by this. This is part of the learning curve however and is something that my tutor discussed in our group tutorials this week. Taking more photographs with smaller increments might have also alleviated this somewhat but also by using a longer focal length such as a 35mm or 50mm which has less distortion attached to it. Of course this would have slowed down the workflow by introducing maybe double or triple the amount of photographs and the time taken to physically take these but could be worth it in the end.

This all being said, I have a panorama that contains 360 degrees of a room and matches up perfectly. These small artefacts can be minimised in photoshop and are a small price to pay for (what I consider) an impressive image already.

I then took this uncompressed TIFF (1.11gb’s in size) back into photoshop and adjusted these issues to the best of my abilities. I also masked over the tripod legs seen in the shots lower half. This created my final image  which I then slightly adjusted the saturation and levels of till I had an image with a little more punch. It took till seeing this finalised image to feel the need to introduce this slight contrast and saturation because viewing all 30 odd images as one is a different experience than viewing them individually. This is what’s exciting about panoramas and VR photography, the sense of scale and grander alters how we read the image even down to a tonal sense. Once I was happy with the image I exported it as another uncompressed TIFF.

I tested the images effectiveness using an app I downloaded for my phone called Looksee. This is a VR app for displaying photographs and allows for control over the image in 3D using the phones gyroscope and the users movement. I made sure that all areas of the photograph matched up and there was no blank or stretched areas. This included the poles of the image.

From here I imported the image into adobe premier where I’d set up a project best for internet usage. due to the fact I wasn’t using moving image in my video, the fps didn’t matter too much. I made sure to set the frame size at 1920x960 for the highest quality output that fits the panoramic shape. I had the audio bit rate set to 44000 for sharp and uncompressed audio giving a good tonal range. As I was rendering out the other panoramas I set about editing the audio files to cut out dead space and unnecessary talking etc. I then exported this as one MP3 track for each video and dropped it into the timeline along with the corresponding panorama. Then it was just a matter of making the time the panorama was on screen match the time of the audio. I then exported the video using the h.264 codec under a preset for YouTube 1080 playback. This added black bars to the top and bottom of the video but this won’t matter once the video is uploaded to youtube and set to the 3D viewer inside the headset.

In order for YouTube to understand and project the image as a 3D viewable video, I needed to alter the files metadata. To do this I used a very simple program called Spatial Media Metadata Injector. All that’s required is to upload the video into the program and select 2 out of the 3 options “My video is spherical (360)” and “My video is stereoscopic 3D (top/bottom layout)”. The third option is for if the video contains 3D stereoscopic sound which did not apply to my project at present. Once this has been exported from the program it’s set to be viewed in most VR players. Youtube being my chosen one. To do this, is as simple as uploading any regular video to the site and YouTube will automatically display the video to best present the 3D aspects. For desktop, this means allowing the user to drag the photo in all axis using the curser or using the up/down/left/right controls on the top right of the video. For mobile and VR headsets, the video is controlled using the mobiles in built gyroscope and the users movement.

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Exhibition ideas and Bjork Digital

As I’ve mentioned in the past, VR photography and video is still very much in the hands of the individual and because of this, displaying VR content for a larger audience is a fairly new and unexplored idea. Most of the time content made for VR is simply sent out onto the web via many different hosts in the hope that a media/ arts blog or magazine will pick up on it and give it the mass exposure it deserves. However, there has been one exhibition that allows this tangible and communicative experience of VR.

The Bjork Digital exhibition at Somerset House in London is an art installation conceived for and by Icelandic singer Bjork for her new album. The singer, songwriter and actress is known for explorations into cross media promotion and exhibition. For her previous album she released mini games for mobile devices for each song on the album. These were even introduced by Sir David Attenborough. These games were related to each song and often quite complex in nature but still very visually striking.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dikvJM__zA4 - a collection of the apps in use.

For this latest body of work, Bjork has commissioned a series of VR films to accompany songs. This is a never-been-done body of work because of this. I’ve seen other musical endeavours within 360 video/ VR but it’s usually only a 30 second clip of some electronic DJ playing to a crowd. Instead, Bjork has embraced this new technology and produced more conventional (yet still artistically stunning) videos. One of the videos is set on one of Iceland's idillic beaches with Bjork singing her song Stonemilker. Throughout the video, multiple versions of Bjork join each of the last and continue to sing the song together. It’s quite an intense experience and for lack of a better word is rather ‘trippy’. 

Another video in the series is more in like with a lot of VR content at the moment being a digitally produced piece. It seams that Bjork has undergone some kind of motion capture process in order to translate this into a 3D digital world which seams to be falling in around her. These videos seam to have a very earthly element to them which is almost counter intuitive to the ideas of VR.

The interesting part about this project however, is the way it’s experienced. As it stands, viewers can still access Stonemilker and teasers for other videos but it’s the touring exhibition that sets this work apart. At the exhibition, there are 3 areas of interest, two conventional cinema screenings of past and present work (featuring other more conventionally shot videos for the album) and the VR work. Audiences are allowed to sit - almost randomly - within the space on stools and don the not so familiar headsets. Once they have done this, a continuous loop of the videos is available to them. A fair majority of people often complain about the headset being cumbersome and distracting from the experience. This has not been the case for me, I find it to be completely immersive. Perhaps viewing content in this very public arena would heighten/ lessen this feeling. 

This is the idea for my work. For this project, I want it to be viewed as a micro exhibition idea. Given a larger timeframe and budget, I’d like several little areas to be available to the public, each with their own room inside it. This could be in the shape of a ‘mock up’ room mimicking the room inside the headset or simply indistinguishable stands that all look the same. Going with the first idea though makes the viewer feel as though they are stepping inside of an alternate reality of the room / space they are already inhibiting and hearing another persons experiences within this time line.

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Will Pearson - 360 Interactive Photography

Will Pearson is a London based interactive photographer who creates 360 degree photography, interactive tour based photographs and high detail panoramas. Some of his clients include Virgin Media, National Geographic, BBC and WEIRD magazine which has given him good standing in future projects and funding applications.

http://www.willpearson.co.uk/360-panoramas/

His 360 degree panoramas are designed to be viewed on a desktop browser but he also includes an option for split view vr for use with headsets and google glass type products. This means that his work can be taken as both an innovative interactive piece and also a more traditional photographic print. The nature of his work mirrors this, having a coexistence between natural landscapes and metropolis cityscapes.

The images all have this almost hyper realistic high dynamic range aesthetic to compliment the subject completely. This will help fully immerses the viewer in the situation especially when viewed in a VR headset or within a 360 projection dome. The colour pallets are very easy on the eye featuring a wide array of pastels and soft tones. Pearson’s must shoot very early in the morning or late at night to achieve these beautiful saturated colours and soft lighting. The cityscapes are usually shot from a high angle giving an interesting perspective, one that would be unique to most audience members.

Pearson’s only has two interiors in his portfolio. One is of Battersea Powerstation’s control room and one of the main living rooms in Buckingham palace. Again, these projects are meant to give the most realistic, life like experience of places otherwise hidden from the general populous. Obviously both of these settings are almost polar opposites in terms of function but both are as interesting as each other. 

The powerstation’s dark and dingy control room is a wash with dull grey tones and hard lines form the consoles and dials. Because of the way 360 photographs are shot (often with one camera taking all 360 degrees at once) there is no room for lighting as the set ups will be visible in the shot. This means only natural lighting is available for the shots. This is another reason Pearson chooses to shoot in the morning as the light is still very soft and delicate. Lighting the subjects well without blowing out the highlights in the windows and causing high contrasting shadows. This natural lighting problem is why a lot of photographers choose to used HDR photography techniques within their work to get the most detail in the shadows and highlights. Again, this only adds to the sense of realism so desired in VR media.

Buckingham Palace in contrast, mirroring it’s decor, is bright and colourful. The gold and white walls reflect the bright light streaming in from the windows. These are left with blown out highlights - almost hinting at the mystique of the royal family and it’s roles within modern culture. 

Again, it looks like HDR photography has been used here as there are very little shadows and even fewer true blacks. I brought up a screenshot of the image in photoshop and the histogram showed a gradual fall off towards the black end of the spectrum, containing only the blue channel - to be expected. The power station in contrast falls off quickly within the first third of the histogram with a very tight spread of the colour channels.

This retention of detail in the shadows is something I aim to achieve in my own photography and has been something I’ve been aware of perfecting for a little while in my personal practice. It’s a look that I find very pleasing and reminds me of certain scenes in David Fincher’s recent film Gone Girl where low contrast lighting was used to mirror the couples seemingly ‘perfect’ lifestyle. A similar technique was used in Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu’s early film Amores Perros to appear like a Spanish telenovela - a daytime sitcom genre - that also comments on this idea of a ‘perfect’ lifestyle. This could be what Pearson’s trying to say with this image, although I feel it could simply just be a product of the workflow.

Another ‘interior’ that’s worth mentioning using this 360/ VR photographic technique is Pearsons car interiors. He has shot for Jaguar, Range Rover and Ford with this technique that showcase the elaborate and beautiful interiors of a car as if you are already sat in the drivers seat. This allows potential clients to immediately invasion themselves in the drivers seat of the car and see themselves with the product - something that’s key in influencing consumers to purchase products. 

Hyper realistic detail and dynamic range is used on these projects too to give the best and faultless view of the product. One thing to note about these projects is that the views outside of the car are of the car in situ (in the city/ out in the wilderness etc) but it’s obvious due to the slight glow around the edges of the windows that this is post production. I’m not sure if this was due to limitations put in place by the companies themselves or a technical decision on the photographers part. It does allow however for a completely accurate exposure throughout and the possibility of lighting the car from outside (due to the fact that they are going to be edited out anyway. This means that two 360 panoramas have been produced - one of the cars interior and a location based exterior. This wouldn’t really be applicable for my project however as the interior is all that really matters and being able to see outside is not of great concern but it’s definitely something to keep in mind for future projects.

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https://medium.com/the-mettaverse/analogies-history-and-innovation-thinking-about-thinking-about-vr-4b5ed9d0b6b9#.kf71sp6wp 

This article is an interesting foot hold into a more in depth look at the world of virtual reality. The author - Ceci - relates VR film making to the past and how we can learn but innovate at the same time from these post endeavors. 

“Chris Milk is VR’s first auteur. His VR film Evolution of Verse features a CGI train that rushes headlong towards the viewer in a way that makes first-time VR viewers avert their gaze and squeal with fear. Milk’s train is an unabashed callback to one of the most repeated founding myths of the history of cinema: the moment when Parisian cinemagoers were allegedly so terrified by the Lumière brothers’ 1895 short-film of a train that they screamed and ran to the back of the movie theatre to avoid being struck down.”

What’s intereting is the discussion that VR could be the next big innovation in the way we as a mass public interact and receive media. We know that VR is kicking up a lot of fuss in the media, but more within the cult and gaming forums that seems to be the most accepted use of this new technology with Sony Playstation being a forerunner in this. We also have the PC based system Oculus Rift which was bourn out of a Kickstarter campaign and now Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has bought the company, who knows where the future of VR will lead. Facebook have talked about moving away form the gaming elements of the technology in the future and focusing on a social media platform and other media outreaches.  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/25/facebook-buys-virtual-reality-gaming-firm-oculus

Having only started the company in 2012, this is a huge leap, not only for the company but for virtual reality as a whole. 

https://insideabbeyroad.withgoogle.com/en 

Inside Abbey Road is a huge project in collaboration with Google and the historic Abbey Road studios in London. I first found out about the project through physical advertisement and posters, which shows you the level of funding going into the project. The VR experience allows viewers unparalleled views inside all three of the recording studios. The specially designed software builds upon the known and loved google streetview system in conjunction with one of a kind 3D mapping tools to create seamless and very natural transitions between rooms. This takes one of the early applications of 360 photography to a new generation. It was originally used as room tours for estate agents and contractors alike to showcase rooms and show every angle and space available. 

With your smartphone and Google Cardboard (googles own vR headset) the viewer can walk amongst the studios whilst listening to the narration of the late Beatles producer Giles Martin. On the desktop site, a simple click and drag interface allows similar 360 degree usability but with the addition of little games and applications such as virtually mixing a song through a mock sound desk. Like most VR technology I imagine this kind of project appeals more towards the younger crowd. The acceptance and ability to understand new technology seams to cut off somewhere in the 30′s, not to say that demographic are nul and void completely. 

The images themselves are comprised of 6 layers of HDR photography. Each panorama is ‘up to 110 megapixels’ in detail with over 1000 panoramas throughout the project. The technicalities, when you think about them, are outstanding. Both in aesthetic qualities and execution. This sized images allow up to 5x zoom with little to no distortion so the viewer can even zoom right in on the gaffers tape on the board and see what channel is which. 

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Draft Project Proposal

Name: Sam Price

Working title: Forgotten images

Précis

I aim to explore the popular and emerging virtual reality media subgroup as a medium to explore themes of memory. More specifically, false memory and how the human mind can be ‘tricked’ into creating it’s own memories from experiences the individual may not have experienced themselves. This might also be applicable to exploring work relating to dementia and more therapeutic uses for photography. I want to blur the lines between photography and video, without a focus on one or the other and rather create an immersive visual experience. Portraiture will be the focus of my practical work with an idea of recreating scenes from by-gone eras.

Rationale

I wish to create this body of work for many reasons. Firstly, I find the idea of false memories interesting and the psychology behind memory and how the brain is not a perfect organ and can be jaded and altered, sometimes without reason. Although practically this might not be evident, it’s something that will inspire my research and will be prominent in my mimd when producing the work. Secondly, the medium of virtual reality is a very interesting one for me. I have no prior experience in the field and wish to understand it’s advantages and limitations as a format. This is very much an experimentation for me with the idea of transferring the knowledge and skills into my own personal and professional work. Initially I want to look at more stills and audio based work but with the idea for eventually creating fully immersive video pieces and even more sensory work that combine more of the senses available.

Aims & Objectives

Outline of what you hope to achieve and who the work will be aimed at?

Give the reader some context by outline your approach and intended audience.

I aim for this work to be exhibited in a gallery space as a series of 4-6 realised outcomes. These will (in theory) be displayed on their own virtual reality headset with attached earphones. For presentation immediately I aim to provide one headset that an iPhone can be attached into to view the images in succession. I think ultimately displaying all the images on their own device will give weight to the project and more significance to the idea that these are ‘false memories’ or a ‘alternate universe’ the audience can briefly inhabit. I think, although i am using a very modern and high tech idea, the work will be intended for a slightly older audience. Due to the nature of the subjects (portraits depicting past eras such as 80’s/70’s/60’s etc) the age 35 - 65 market may be the ideal range to have in mind. I feel the fact that these ages may have lived through these eras themselves or have had a more true experience of what they were like (possibly false memories handed down from their parents etc) will mean the work connects on a deeper level. This being said, It will be interesting to see how the younger audience members react to the work with this idea that we create a different idea of the past by how closely we have experienced it. Other media portraying these eras (for the younger audience) may have more of an influence as opposed to actual memories and reliable data from that era.

This was my original draft project proposal. After taking in this proposal to the group tutorials on the friday, I was advised to rethink my project. Firstly, the biggest issue with trying to do the proposed project (although still a solid idea that’s worth re visiting) is the time frame that we have for these projects. Each project only lasts 6 weeks and to achieve even any decent communication with a dementia clinic would take even longer than this, never mind to gain clearance, build a relationship with and interview some of the patients. It just wouldn’t be possible. 

We talked about my idea of using VR as a format to produce these portraits in and how this was originally used as a means for showcasing rooms and homes. During one of my cohort’s discussing their work about their childhood home, this made me recall some memories from my childhood and specifically my grandmas house. I was reminded of this print in my grandmas living room of a Rudyard Kipling poem and how it was my grandad’s favourite poem. I was sure there was many other objects of sentimental value in that room. With discussing this with Lawrence, I decided to merge these ideas and create a 360 degree virtual tour VR experience discovering these sentimental pieces around the room. 

I was told to look at the ‘roman rooms’ system for memorising data. In this system used by the greeks and romans, you assign a story of walking through (typically a house or street with many rooms) an easily rememberable geographical location and assign different bits of knowledge to different areas that you may find yourself walking through. This was interesting to tie in with the idea of these rooms holding many different memories, possibly not all accessible in one sweep. 

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Thursday 30th September

Briefing. 

Today we got our briefing document and a more in depth look at the module ideas as a whole. Lawrence started by going through the ILO’s and what was expected of us to gain from within the module. 

Knowledge and Understanding On successful completion of this module students will be able to: LO1: Identify an awareness of key debates associated with contemporary photographic practice and delivery models LO2: Demonstrate an ability to respond to the issues of photographic practice involved in the production, distribution and consumption of images through different modes LO3: Reflect and demonstrate interpretative skills for critical analysis in visual, written and oral forms

Transferable/Key Skills and other attributes (as indicated on MS1): LO4: Understand various forms of advanced photographic practices and delivery models LO5: Critically evaluate and reflect on current digital image creation practices LO6: Apply knowledge and problem-solving skills to inform the delivery of independent projects (visual, written, oral) LO7: Make a self-assessment of learning progress

This highlighted the important aspects of what the module is teaching us in order to focus our work and research.

This module encourages engagement with expanded media, with a particular emphasis on digital, convergent and trans-media modes of dissemination.

This is the key point for this module. Expanded media and modes of dissemination. What we are going to produce and how it’s going to be shown to an audience in a gallery environment. The fact that this module is trans-media is very appealing to me. I take a lot of inspiration from and my practice includes a lot of video and moving image anyway so looking deeper into this is not something that worries me. 

Who’s this work being produced for? How’s best for them to interact with the work? Why? These are very important questions to ask in pre, during and post production. I like the idea that memories on a whole (other than collective or cultural memories) are very individual. I think that whatever the work is that I choose to produce, it will be exhibited in a very intimate setting, not just a large format print on a gallery wall. Possible a darkened room or booths with single monitors and headphones. I’ve seen this mode of exhibition over summer as part of the Liverpool Biannual, where a monitor with a set of two headphones allowed a very intimate viewing of filmic works. This draws you in and makes you forget about the wider space that the work inhabits. Another interesting idea for viewing video is if it was projected, what could the image be projected on? Would it be suitable to look at projecting over top of a more textured / 3D surface? 

But what kind of work would suit this kind of intimate and individual experience? Video would be the obvious answer. This would allow for some interesting things to be experimented with in relation to sound and picture and how these correlate. Another option (and something that I’ve been thinking about for my professional work) is experimenting with virtual reality film making / photography. It’s become very accessible and cheep to produce in the last 2 years and is a very engaging and exciting medium. That begin said, as I am new to the technology, is there enough time to produce the work and create an expansive theme to underpin it? 

As we learnt on the Monday, this is a module about memory so Lawrence gave a talk about certain fundamentals of psychology and the basics of memory. We learnt that Salford is leading research into dementia and that Lawrence is working on a visual aid in the form of a game for people with dementia within the Salford Dementia Society. These would be great contacts to have if following a project based on loss of memory or specifically dementia. 

A couple of things that I thought were interesting was the way we can produce ‘false memories’, an idea first researched by Freud. A common way that this is seen is in peoples memories from childhood. A fake memory can be caused by your parents/ relatives telling you about an episode in your childhood which you take on board and claim as your own. You remember the details they told you but not the memory itself as it happened. False memory is also seen in victims of sexual assault, especially when they are of a young age. They form memories of the events to come to terms with the trauma and especially during therapy can falsify information to please the therapist. This could be seen in conjunction with ‘amnesia’.  Amnesia can present itself in two different ways; retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia. Amnesia is caused by a traumatic experience, brain injury or even excessive drug use. Retrograde amnesia is the inability to remember memories from before the incident that caused the amnesia and anterograde amnesia is the inability to form new memories after the incident. 

I think this lack of memory or inability to create memories is something that could lead to a very powerful visual project. The idea of using dementia as the foundations for a project is not something that is new to photography or visual practice but it’s definitely an important one to depict, being such an misunderstood and complex issue. I had the idea of exploring what memories dementia patients do still recall and producing a semi documentarian piece based from this. The idea of producing situational portraits is something that interests me and something I feel I don’t do enough of in my practice. Collecting stories first hand would be an equally gratifying process as it could be upsetting - for both parties. 

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Video for Workshops

As discussed earlier I decided to look at the work of director Edgar Wright and in particular the scenes he (and his director of photography at the time) devised for Shaun of the Dead and continuing into the rest of the cornetto trilogy. These montages visually show aspects of the story often left out by other directors in order to save money and time during production. They often contain mundane actions that otherwise wouldn’t be visually exciting to show in a conventional way. This is the reason I thought it was applicable to this workshop test. The mundane actions performed in a new building with its oddities and new ways of working cause these actions to be exciting, confusing and even irritating. 

Before going home one night I decided to look at the practicalities of doing one of the key aspects of these montages - a whip-pan. This is a way for transitioning between shots and more often, scenes. at the end of a take the camera is quickly panned in one direction and in the start of the following take the camera mirrors this by completing the pan quickly in from the opposite side. This creates the illusion that the cameras simply spun quickly to the right/left to frame the next set as though it’s physically next to the last one.

In this test, you can see the two takes next to each other without any editing followed by the two edited seamlessly. This could have been achieved by doing the pan quickly to the computer as I was technically sat in the same place but you can see the way it can be applied to transitioning between one place and another. I think it hides the cut very well, especially if the pan is in the direction/ out of a similar shade. Going from light to dark then light to dark again / one colour to another within the pan would cause a very distinct cut between the two shots. This is something to take into consideration. This was just shot hand held on my iPhone so the quality isn’t what it could be either. 

This is the final video from the workshop sessions. It remains uncompleted as I had other priorities within the course and the time needed for this video is more than I can dedicate at this time. The video files are all there, it’s the just audio that requires more work. I think, for a quick shoot, this has come out pretty well, theres obvious shakes in the hand held footage but that’s ok, it adds to the POV nature of the shots. I also haven’t colour graded / corrected the video whcih was shot on a flat colour profile for the greatest dynamic range. This means that some of the shots are un matched tonally and un-natural. 

The other consideration for this project was the audio. In the Edgar Wright montages there are non diegetic sounds that accompany the actions. I tried to replicate this by layering different ambient sounds (heard in the opening contextual shots of the film) and then with more abstract foley to accompany the camera movements. 

I started with these different sounds and the idea was to layer these up to create a deep and abstract sound effect to create the idea that the camera is making these juxtaposed sounds. Sadly I didn’t have enough time to delve into this as much as I would have liked. Maybe I can re visit this in the future or if the project requires it. 

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3:2 and beyond

Looking at Wes Anderson’s work and his use of different aspect rations within The Grand Budapest Hotel made me think about my own work and how I could use aspect ratio to aid my images. There’s a tendency as photographers I think to stick to the 3:2 aspect ratio that comes out of the camera. It’s a pleasant looking image that’s very natural. It gives plenty of space to allow for detail but isn’t constricted by being too narrow or two square which defers from the natural way we are used to looking at things. 3:2 mimics the eyes natural field of view, which is probably why using a 50-70mm lens in conjunction with this is so popular and pleasingly natural. I know for a fact that when I edit images, I even feel uneasy in cropping a little off the vertical without reducing the horizontal to match. It’s maybe just something that’s become almost OCD about my workflow. 

As an experiment, I took one of the film scans I had lying around on my computer and decided to look at how different aspect ratios would look and alter the image. I did this by cropping and adding black bars (a common cinematic technique to convert 16x9 footage into other ‘letterboxed’ aspect ratios) to the image. 

This is the original 35mm film scan that I will be working from. 

I have cropped this photo in a couple of different ways and in doing so, each replication has a different feel to it compared to the original. The square crop feels like a family’s picture album snapshot as it looks similar to that of the instant polaroid camera’s images. It looks warm and reminiscent. We also manage to keep the sky and foreground in too. The second crop is 1.78:1 or more commonly known as 16x9. This ratio is the standard for HD video and TV so it’s a very familiar format for people to view. Aesthetically, we loose a little off the vertical of the image but it retains plenty of area to work with. Then we build up on this and switch to a 2.39:1 crop. This is the most used ratio for anamorphic cinema projections. Obviously when shooting true anamorphic, this is the image we get regardless but it can be faked by adding black bars such as the ones i’ve used here. With this super long and wide crop, we instantly have connotations of big Hollywood films. It alters the way we read the image from being a family photograph to possibly a still from an action adventure film. 

The question is, what does this mean for my work? When is it applicable to either crop this way or (in the case of anamorphic) shoot this way. Like with everything, it is down to the project in hand. You wouldn’t choose the 2.39:1 ratio if the work you are producing demands lots of detail or needs to feel personal but you wouldn’t necessarily just choose 3:2 for a project that demands grandeur. It would also need to be taken into consideration for how the work is going to be presented. If it’s a gallery piece then a series of 2.39:1 images  might look our of place, if it’s a projected moving image piece then maybe it is, that being said, does the image need to be letterboxed or would it make more sense to go with a lesser crop or maybe leave it at 16x9? Maybe a square format book is more appropriate for the work. 

When researching into aspect ratios I stumbled upon a moment within cinema called vertical cinema http://verticalcinema.org/ . This movement is in reaction to the backlash created by people creating content on their mobile devices in portrait mode. A lot of arguments have occurred over the years of why this belittles the work  and one famous video described the work as “crap”. 

Vertical cinema flips the traditional way of framing on it’s side. The work at the moment mainly consists of experimental video which a lot has been created using analogue photographic techniques but a few more classical films have been created to be shown in this format. Either way, the work is still decidedly cryptic. The work is projected using specially modified 35mm projectors onto a curved vertical screen. This lends itself very nicely to being shown in very tall, grand buildings, often churches. Because of this (and the aesthetic of the work) the movement can be considered more of an art form than classical cinema, being an installation piece rather than being purely about the visuals. It’s a definite experience.  

Famous Special Effects coordinator and director, Douglas Trumble (who most notably worked on the ‘star gate’ sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey) was quoted on saying a few words about vertical cinema:

'SINCE MUCH OF OUR WORLD IS VERTICAL – CONSIDER THE PRINTED PAGE, FOR EXAMPLE – IT’S ACTUALLY VERY COMFORTABLE TO FRAME SHOTS IN THE VERTICAL FORMAT, AND VERY NATURAL TO WATCH. I BELIEVE THERE ARE STILL MANY OPPORTUNITIES TO CONTINUE TO EXPLORE THE VERTICAL FORMAT FOR SPECIAL PROJECTS, THEME PARKS, RIDES, AND OTHER PROJECTS THAT WANT TO OFFER A UNIQUE MOVIE EXPERIENCE.'

Again, this comes back to the fact that we need to think about the application of out work, who it’s for and why we are creating it. This art form would not work for a corporate video, it’s just not widely accepted enough. But a more contextual piece maybe. 

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Practitioners research 1

After the Mondays lesson, thinking back on the task of filming for editing the next week, i was thinking about movies and directors work that inspired me and how this could relate to my work. I started to think about how the new building, new course and new peers made me feel on that first day, Hectic and Daunting. 

The day seamed to be over in a flash without me getting any sense of grounding within the course or the building, I still felt as much of an outsider than I did 7 hours earlier and that was exciting. To mirror this I needed something quick paced and kinetic. Long shot’s wouldn’t work for this as it gives the audience too much time to gather their thoughts and make sense of the images. 

This made me think of the time-bending montage sequences in the films of Edgar Wright - most prominently, Shaun of the Dead. The first in the trillogy (dubbed The Cornetto Trilogy) is probably his most noticeable use of this element of his auteur style, something that has been developed since his early works (again featuring Nick Frost and Simon Pegg) such as the TV hit, Spaced. 

This montage from early on in the film is a mirror to Shaun’s hum-drum lifestyle and the 9-5 grind that most people encounter. Instead of cutting out the mundane actions of getting ready, the director could have simply cut between “Haven’t you got work” to “I’m not saying it was you” and have a visual of the character finishing his breakfast already dressed. The audience would have pieced together that he must have gotten dressed in that time but adding in this montage does that in a much cleverer way. It’s hectic to the point of being comical. 

Later in the film we see this scene of the two protagonists contemplating their plan of escape. Again, this could have been shot simply with a over shoulder - reverse shot set up but that wouldn’t have been as engaging as cutting together visuals to accompany the dialogue. Having the overly comedic acting and rose tinted view of their plan played out provides great comic relief for a film about a zombie apocalypse, whilst still being relevant to the narrative. 

The second instalment in the trilogy (Hot Fuzz) builds on these time bending montages once more. The application in this film is similar but altered to fit the narrative. In the sequence above, we are shown Sgt. Angel’s move from London to his new position in the country. Not only are we shown his physical locations with the wider shots of the train stations, carriages, taxis and hotels but also in the close up inserts of his phone. As he gets further and further away from London, his signal goes down and eventually is lost. This is a clever visual metaphor for the characters story arch. Within this film (and in a wider context) this technique could also be seen as a play on the ‘gearing up’ style montages seen in action films where the characters are arming themselves with guns and gadgets, in this case, peace lilies and arrest forms. Again, this could have been filmed simply as in one scene the Sgt discussing leaving and in the next him stepping off a train / out of a taxi in a new location. This scene only takes a few seconds longer and adds much more dimension, comedy and visual interest in what could be seen as mundane. It’s this comedy in tension that appeals to me in my own work. This new building is daunting and somewhat stressful but it’s playful and an exciting place to be all at the same time. 

Another feature of Wright’s auteur style is his camera movement into and or out of frame. This can be seen most predominantly in the second montage from Shaun of the Dead. After the action is played out, the camera pans up quickly and at the start of the next clip the camera pans up from the bottom of the frame to match. this lends to a seemingly non existent transition between the two scenes and heightens this time and space bending feeling. This again, is something that I think could work for my work. 

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Monday 26th September - Afternoon workshop

The afternoon furthered our look into interactive media. Initially we were tasked with shooting video for the next weeks session. The idea was to introduce us with creating a narrative with moving image and sound and was to be about our new building and workspaces, in whatever style or technicality we wished, it just had to represent our feelings towards the new building. 

For the tutorial we had an introduction to Adobe InDesign. I have used InDesign briefly during my second year to produce a book design to be printed but that was a very brief and simplistic attempt at using the software. We started of basic with selecting our document size to work from. If I chose to use InDesign in the production of my work this will depend on the device I will be displaying on - Ipad, Iphone, 16x9 monitor, 4:3 projector etc - so that there’s no black bars or unnecessary blank space. Ultimately, this will lend to greater engagement in the piece. The idea for this try out was to create a simple document showcasing images from a gallery, similar to that seen on portfolio websites and the such. I chose to use web standard size as that was the most useful and most widely used for this application. 

We then looked at the importance of setting up a master page. Having a master page ensures that once we navigate to a different page (to show another image in this case) that the formatting would stay the same. This meant that the content areas that our photographs, navigation and buttons would be placed into would remain the same throughout the document. We created these content areas and placed our chosen photographs inside them. Each photograph (for displaying in a large window) had to have it’s own page. Once we had done this for all 4/5 of our photographs we added more content areas for the thumbnails. These would be applied on the master page to remain the same in every page.

Once we had also placed the images in the thumbnail holders, we assigned these points with buttons. This would allow navigation through the images by clicking on their corresponding thumbnail. To make sure they worked however, we had to go through each page with the enlarged images on and added a bookmark in order for the action (what happens when the ‘ Button’ or thumbnail is pressed) to work properly. Effectively naming these pages and buttons ensured that it was a quick and easy process. Naming them as ‘Button1′ or ‘Image3′ etc would have gotten confusing, especially for larger projects and more complex applications. Once we had done this, we created small forward and backwards arrows to do a similar job. These again needed buttons and actions applied to them in order to cycle through the images. Once this was done, we previewed it in one of three supported formats within the InDesign - EPUB Viewer, PDF Viewer and. For this test, I simply exported my pages as a PDF, I chose this as I wasn’t going to be uploading to the web and PDF’s are a fairly versitile file with easily understood controls. 

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Monday 26th September

Coming back from a year out of university has brought a new enthusiasm for my practice which I hope lasts and enriches my third year work. Taking the time out has also given me time to step back from the course and evaluate the direction my professional and personal work should be heading and as this is my final year, I want it to be an experimental one. This may be to my detriment but I think I need to make the most of the creative freedom university offers. 

In our morning session John briefly described the ideas behind this module and what kind of work he will be aiding us in producing. This wasn’t a full briefing tutorial however. We learnt that the theme of the module was to be Memory which was a little daunting for me at first, often I instantly get ideas circulating around in my head but I was left a little stumped by this one. John went on to say that one of the aims of the course was for it to look closely at convergent and interactive media as an art form. For example, moving away from stills and looking at how stills/ video and sound can be used to tell the same narrative. I have been pushing myself in the last two years (especially in second year university) to look more in depth at video and it has become the main focus of my practice so this was perfect news. As an example, John showed us the opening title sequence from the HBO series Band of Brothers. I had seen this show in the past so I was fairly familiar with it’s style but surprisingly, had not considered the title sequence. 

In this sequence we see CGI, both video and photographic reenactments, possibly real photographs from the war and, text, music and video, all interlaced. Although based on historian Stephen E. Ambrose's novel of the same name, the effect this has when watching it is that this show is almost documentary like, not a scripted drama. If the opening scene was purely video footage of reenactments then the audience would be pulled out of this idea that what they are seeing is real based on the fact that all the images would be crisp and featuring known actors. Once we see those stills (almost stop motion esc) of the characters in the field of battle, it takes on another meaning. It feels like we are viewing a war photographers account of the men as opposed to a film makers. This is exaggerated with the found photograph effects placed over the images with visible film scratches and paper folds and aged colouring.  This jittery frame rate / use of stills was similarly used by one of the shows producers (Stephen Spielberg) on one of his most memorable projects, Saving Private Ryan. In this film however, the effect was used in conjunction with muted/ softened audio to portray the horrors and mental torment of the D Day landings on the young men. (4:36 - 5:33) 

This was a good way of getting me to think about the effects of photographs or stills within the cinematic medium and although at the present I’m not thinking of using this idea as a vice in my own work, It’s something useful to consider for future projects. 

From this we looked at a short presentation on the basics of video production. This covered many technicalities that I was already familiar with such as frame rate, frame size, shutter speeds and audio. However, the idea of aspect ratios caught my eye and led me to thinking about how using (or mimicking) different aspect ratios could be used in my image making. This got me thinking about an article I had read about the use of aspect ratios in Wes Anderson’s film The Grand Budapest Hotel - http://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/film-studies-101-aspect-ratios/ . This article addresses the idea within the film aspect ratios are used to signify different time periods that the narrative covers. For instance, the narrator (or present day) is shot in the common 1.85:1 ration. When we flip to a scene in the film from the 60′s it is shot in 2.35:1 which was popular at the time, then flipping back to 1.37:1 (or ‘academy’ aspect ratio) for the majority of the film. This subconsciously engages the viewer and pulls them into the time period by reminding them of old films and their aesthetic. 

Other films such as 500 Days of Summer use aspect ratios to mirror the characters ethos and the mood of the film. 500 Days of Summer uses square 1:1 ratios to mimic polaroid images which ties into the films theme of love and the argument as to its manufactured connotations. 

This idea can be furthered by the mimicking of 16mm / 8mm film footage which tells the audience that what they are seeing could be a home movie or found footage, either way, amateur in production.  

Photographically we are used to working in 3:2 aspect ratio which is what 35mm film is. What if we (like Grand Budapest Hotel) used a slightly more jarring and contrasting aspect ratio, how would this effect the audience?