Reflections Photography Evaluation

This project has been an interesting one for me, as the contrast from where I started with my idea to see what I ended up with is stark. From my beginning of thinking about image glitching art to represent broken memories, and my experimentation with that type of photography I knew I wanted to do something along the lines of that:

However I got stuck in a dead end trying to figure out what to shoot, and how to develop the idea further. After a conversation with Rosie I found that my idea had stemmed mostly from my own experience of confusing layouts of houses I have lived in, having moved around a lot. From then I found inspiration came quite easily. However I still think there is something in image glitching, and feel I could do something more with that in the future.

Once I had my idea, everything came quite naturally, and I didn't really have any problems until I came to shoot. I had access to houses I used to live in, but I didn't manage to get around to them all as I only had just over 24 hours to get to around 8 houses, so I had to compromise in some areas of my photography work, using photographs I already had of those houses, and taking photographs of a friends' house which was very similar to one of the houses I wanted to photograph. In hindsight I think I should have either gone back to shoot, or taken more time out to go and shoot my photographs fully.

In post-production is where I spent most of my time, and I felt that part of the project was the part I enjoyed the most, as I have already lined out in a previous post (which can be found here) I found playing around with different settings really interesting in terms of how different they could make the photographs look, and I spent a good number of hours just trying to get something I was happy with. One thing I thought was a particularly good decision on my part was shooting in RAW, so I could take the photographs into lightroom and adjust the photographs to make them look quite similar. It really made the whole post-production side of the project much easier, and less stressful than it could have been.

Having yet to hang my work in the assessment space, I can't really comment on the arrangement of the work too much as I have yet to see how they will be perceived. However, I do think the blueprint I fashioned added something to the piece, another layer of understanding which I think was essential for the audience to know to fully appreciate the photography. Saying that, I don't think the photographs are too dependent on the blueprint for understanding. They just provide information about my thinking behind the photographs, though I feel they could easily insert their own meanings to them as well.

Overall I was pleased with what I managed to come out with at the end of this project. The only real regrets I have is wanting more time to shoot, and spending so long on trying to figure out what I wanted to do for the project. Although I am happy with what I have done, I feel as if maybe they could have been even better had I realised sooner what it is I wanted to do. What I've learned from it, is that I mustn't get stuck with one idea, and explore other areas surrounding that idea too, so I don't miss something that could potentially be quite a good idea.

Displaying My Photography

As the assessment for this project includes hanging the series in my own arranged wall space, I needed to think of a way to hang them. I also felt that I could use something to accompany the photographs which would make more sense of them for an audience, as you can clearly see what I've done in the photographs, but there is a lack of knowing why I have done it.

I thought of the idea of creating a blueprint surrounding the rooms, to create a small floorplan of a house which takes into account the layout of each room I have created, and then perhaps using annotations to describe particular elements of that house, describing memories I have associated with elements of each individual photograph. After discussing this with Rosie she felt it could be a strong part of the piece as a whole and so I went ahead with it.

my original desire was to actually make blueprint paper, using some chemicals to treat paper in a darkroom like environment, and then exposing it to sunlight with my design on the paper. (Tutorial for this can be found here.) However, I decided to keep it much simpler and less technical, so I bought a large sheet of blue paper and some white pens and started drawing the floorplan out myself. I firstly did it on paper much smaller, to plan out the layout of my house and then I transferred this on a much bigger scale to my blue paper.

After adding some small features of each room I was quite happy with how my technical drawing turned out.

My annotations then consisted of small personal excerpts of my memories or knowledge of each place, to provide context.

All I need to do now is consider how I'm going to arrange my photographs, which are mounted on foam board with to the floorplan.

Photography Post-Production Results

After working in post with my photographs, I have come up with 5 final photographs for the series that I feel happy with:

As this was so heavy on post production, I spent a lot of time in photoshop just trying to get the overlaying right. Most of which came down to just choosing the right blending options of individual layers, and playing around with the opacity, and fill opacity of each one as well:

I also sometimes found that the underlying image had objects which obscured the image I was trying to lay on top, regardless of how I tried to blend it, and those occasions I mostly used the clone tool to create a roughly block colour background that matched the rest of the image, which made it a lot easier:

The incorporation of the older images was surprisingly easy as the underexposure of some photographs often made it easier to blend the images in the way I wanted, and created a really nice effect on the edges of the photos too.

Overall I found the post-production mostly just a process of playing around with each image to see what worked for each one, and it was actually very enjoyable to see what effects I could create by doing different things to the image.

Places in Memory: The Shoot

After my experimentation on the overlapping idea, I discussed it with Rosie and she thought it could be quite strong as well. So as I was going home for the weekend I decided to shoot my photography work.

My idea includes shooting around various houses I used to live in, some of which I still have access to and shoot all the rooms so that I can overlap them to create 5 new rooms out of them. I also thought it would be a nice idea to use old family photographs from the inside of houses as my family luckily was very big on taking photographs when I was younger, and much earlier too.

A few results from my shoot:

I shot them all in RAW so I could take them into lightroom in post to do some basic colour correction on them so that they all looked fairly similar, just to make it easier to blend into each other. I wanted to make it a little easier for myself as I had no control over the condition of the old photographs I wanted to use, and so would be spending a lot of time on those elements of the photographs.

Reflections Film: Final Review

This project was always quite conceptually difficult from start to finish. With my research into the initial spark of an idea I had to pitch, and then working with Nick to develop it. However I think in the end it turned into something much more interesting than I ever expected.

The idea surrounding illusions and coming up with the illusions that we eventually went to create required a lot of experimentation just to get our heads around the science of what we were actually doing (As seen below).

Working with mirror illusions has been an interest of mine for quite some time, and what we came up with was interesting twist on that I think, although initially quite confusing, once we had our heads around it we found some flexibility with it. It also made it a little easier to come up with ways of helping the audience understand that in the film. The only wish I had was that we had more time to really get to grips with what we could do with the project, but before we knew it we had to go and shoot something.

Similar to the set-ups above, we decided to take our illusions out into the world and try and use the environment, people and architecture to confuse the space and present our illusion to an audience. Working in a two man team was difficult, but we tried to keep as organised as we could, and the set was very lighthearted. We also enlisted our classmate; Rob to film our experience on set in the hope that we could use that in the film. I felt that we worked really well together on set and it was a very enjoyable experience shooting it, not only because of that but because we could see what we were creating and were quite happy with how it was turning out for us.

Once we were in the edit and could see what footage we had, we were happy with what we had and didn't feel that we needed to do anymore shooting. The only problem we faced was trying to convey what we knew about the illusions to the audience, without totally giving it away. This took some planning, and we spent a bit of time discussing it and how much time it would take to get to a rough cut so that we could keep to schedule as well as make the best film possible. A lot of initial time was taken by organising the clips, as both of us were novices in editing multi-camera work so we tried to keep the workspace organised. Our plan for the edit was generally to start with some short shots of each illusion, and to show some clips of the process and then to slow the illusions right down to give the audience some time to look at them and understand them, as well as showing more clips of the process of making the film to give some further insight. We felt this was the best way to let the audience experience the illusion, then to help them understand it, which we felt more confident about after Anne suggested the same to us in her tutorial.

Overall after the film was finished I was really happy with how it turned out. With all that's left is to display the illusion in a gallery space with the photography work, which I think will provide a better experience for the audience, I felt that we achieved what we set out to do. If perhaps we had a bit more time then we could have done more with the illusion, or set it up like an installation to begin with, but considering the time we had I think we did something that fit the brief quite well, and we had a good time making it which made it so much more worth the while.

The Film and the Peer Group Assessment

After a last hectic week of editing to get the film to a point where both Nick and I were happy with it, we had our peer group assessment, and last tutorial on our films with Rosie. After she had watched it, she commented that she liked the illusions that we had created, but almost didn't get what they were sometimes and felt that the audience needed more time to look at them. Although we are going to be setting up our illusions in a gallery space with the photography work, where people can come and view it, she felt it needed to stand up on its own as a film as well.

She also said that there were some shots in the illusions that she felt weren't necessary, and didn't add anything to the film. I disagreed as I felt that each split on the screen offered a different perspective on the space the cameras were showing, and so helped the illusion a little more.

There were a few other little things we discussed, like editing choices and titles, which I will be going back into the edit suite to change later.

Overall I think Rosie saw that both Nick and I were quite attached to the film, and we told her how much fun we had making it and how we felt we worked well together, so I hope that she saw that we really felt we gained something from the project.

Tutorial with Leah Gordon

After working with the comments Anne made about our work in our last tutorial, we now had Leah view our work and make some comments of her own. After watching the piece, we had a short discussion about the film and our intentions for it. She suggested that we try and figure out what we were trying to say with the film in terms of memory. She seemed fine with the film in itself, but felt that we needed to just try and be firmly settled in what we wanted to say with it, and then let that reflect in the piece as well.

I feel as if we do know what we're trying to say with it, but Leah made various references to different artists for myself and Nick to research for a perhaps educational purpose more into the theory behind what we are trying to create with the film.

Experimental Sound: Final Comments

After the screening today of my sound piece, I am doing the same here as I am for Time Art, and just giving a few points of reviewing the project.

The main thing about this project that was significant for me was the creative aspect of using solely sound to create an environment. I have never really underestimated the importance of sound, and I've always understood its necessity, however I never saw it as much more than a necessity. There is a bigger creative and more complicated aspect to what you can do with sound than I had ever really thought about, and this project has really opened my eyes to that, and I really enjoyed that process! I am proud of my project, when I got the piece Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it, and being able to, for the first time, put all of these odd sounds I had recorded into Audition and come out with something that sounds half decent is a big achievement for me.

Using the recorders also was something I had never done before, and for this project I mostly used a Roland recorder which took a small amount of figuring out, but I definitely got there in the end. At one point I recorded a couple of sounds and listened back to them only to find there was some unwanted gain on there, so playing with settings and modes helped me get the result I wanted, even if it took a bit of time.

If I had to do this project again, I know there are some sounds I would re-record, or spend more time on getting right. For example, the footsteps of the person weren't right for the character I was portraying, the sound of the door as the character entered the diner, and the conversation in the piece stand out to me as things I would definitely do again. My main issue with those sounds was being on limited time to record them, or deciding very late on to record those sounds either again, or for the first time in the case of the conversation. Now that I have a bit more experience in sound design I think my organisation of it would be better in future projects.

The final thing I would like to mention is the use of separately sourced sounds in my sound piece. A few of the sounds I sourced from either YouTube or FreeSound.org and I think it is right to link where I got those sounds from:

Newsreel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj_btks99p4
Car noise: http://freesound.org/people/juskiddink/sounds/77096/
Music: Stardust- Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey
Background conversation in diner: http://freesound.org/people/Corsica_S/sounds/165238/
Fabric Movement: http://freesound.org/people/Yuval/sounds/188222/

Time Art: Final Comments

After the screening of my work (although mine did not play for unknown reasons) I feel I should give a few quick last comments about my experience of making the piece.

Overall I feel I did really well in achieving in this project. My matte painting idea was quite ambitious, and something I had never done before, so I used a hell of a lot of things to help me. I spent most of my time in Photoshop just trying to create the world I wanted to portray, and despite it taking a long time I think it was worth it. My process in making the matte painting involved a lot of just looking at the work other people had done, which was something similar to what I wanted to do, and then finding a way to re-create it in After Effects or Photoshop. A couple of tutorials I found most helpful can be found at the URL's below:

http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/create-a-realistic-underwater-scene-in-photoshop--psd-28309

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjdmXYRzAWg

http://www.photoshoplady.com/tutorial/create-a-destroyed-city-scene-using-photoshop/2718

My idea was conceptually quite good, relevant topic to use as a basis for my work. My two screens on either side of my matte painting I think got the message across, although this is something I found particularly difficult to judge. One of my main weaknesses in my work is not knowing whether the audience will understand what I mean when I show them something, purely because I know more in terms of the meanings behind what I am doing than perhaps they would. I got around it somewhat by showing people my work, but with this project in particular I struggled with the balance between giving the audience relevant information, and being too obvious about it.

The only other thing I could say about this project is that if I were to do this again I think I would possibly develop my idea a little further and change it somehow, just slightly. I am happy with the result I got, but I feel that the subject matter I was talking about was so rich that there could have been something so much more interesting to explore within it.

Time Art Review

Following my tutorial I followed quite a few suggestions I highlighted in the previous post.

I created that transition on the matte painting, which definitely made the whole piece more effective:

I also found that because I had the light transitioning from lighter to darker I didn't need to make the painting less murky as it never truly reaches the darkness it did before. 

Secondly, I had some of my images on the left and right screen coming off the sides of the screen so that I could integrate them into my matte painting using an overlaying effect. It creates something slightly ghostly about the whole piece, and it helps create a connection between the images and the painting itself.

I improved on the uniformity of the images on the left and right screen, and it certainly looks a lot cleaner and easier to look at as a result. I also found a way to time it better which helped create an end to the piece, and as such helped it flow a lot easier:

I tried adding a brick texture underneath my footage to see if that created a connection with the images and the building/construction theme I was going for. However I felt it was too much for the audience to look at, with the images changing on both screens as well as the matte painting. Also I felt my footage was enough of a giveaway and I didn't want to make it too obvious.

The final major change I made was including more footage that highlighted the environmental impact humans and construction make on natural events. Also, adding more footage on the construction side of the piece to include more about the desire and wonder of these large and magnificent structures that nations are seemingly in competition to build. 

Overall, I feel these changes have made a significant difference to my piece, and I feel it is a better piece overall for it.

Simon's Tutorial Friday 11th April

After my complete export fail for my official Time Art review, I organised a tutorial with Simon to discuss my work. I made the improvements he suggested to the matte painting side of things and did a lot of work on that during the week to make sure I had enough time to do anything else we discussed in this coming tutorial. This is what I showed Simon:

The main comments he made and that we discussed were as follows:

1. The Matte Painting is too murky, the audience should see the bottom.
2. The images overlapping each other is quite disorganised and should perhaps be more uniform.
3. There could be something underneath the images.
4. The matte painting could interact with the images in some way.
5. There needs to be a loop.
6. Maybe there could be a sense of change in the matte painting itself.
7. Include more footage that highlights desire with building large structures.

I agreed with the matte painting being too murky, and on my computer it looked a lot brighter than it would on some others. I also liked the sound of creating a transition in the matte painting, and new of a way instantly to do that. 

The only thing I was really unsure about on that list was putting something underneath the images. Although I suggested it, I feel like it might be too much for the audience to take in, and may be quite distracting.

Audition Skills

Now having completed my experimental sound piece, I just wanted to give a review on the thing I found most difficult and the skills I think I gained the most out of this project.

Being quite familiar with the Adobe package I found it quite easy to pick up the layout and tools in Audition as Adobe layouts regardless of program tend to be very similar. However there were a plethora of effects and tools I could explore and use in my sound. Having learned the majority of the basics in our class tutorials, I tried to stick to those as much as possible so that I had a solid leg to stand on when building my sound. One effect I really had a good time exploring and playing around with was the 'Convolution Reverb' effect:

Using this effect to put my sounds into a space really made a huge difference to my piece, and I spent a lot of time trying different settings and different sliders to see what effects they could give. Mostly I found that changing the room size and the mix sliders were the ones that had the biggest impact on my sounds. Especially when it came to editing my diner sounds together. Changing the room size a lot of the time could help me create a sense of different distances from the point of audition. Although I found I was battling a lot with the reverb already on some of my audio purely because of the place they were recorded in. For example, some of my sounds were recorded in a room which ever so slightly echoed, and it really affected what I could push my sounds to do in the film.

Another thing I found really quite difficult was volume levels of individual sounds:

Since I was trying to create a sense of space, but still wanted the audience to be aware of certain vital sounds, I found myself changing volume levels, then changing them again just to try and get the balance right between the sounds, and make it sound as natural as possible yet highlighting the sounds I felt needed doing so.

Project Development

After my experimental sound review, I did a hell of a lot more work on my sound project with trying to get my story straight as I was going for a narrative based piece. Simon and Joe's comments really helped and I found the elements I included as a result have made the sound overall a better piece.

For starters, Simon commented that I should try and place the piece in a particular time more to allow the audience to put themselves in a time as well as a space. As I know the piece was released just after the attack on Pearl Harbour I tried to place my setting around that time. To do this I put a radio news report playing the reel reporting the attack on Pearl Harbour at the beginning, as well as recording some voices crying and talking about the subject, as if it had just happened.

Also, Joe told me to have a look at films by Woody Allen as he set a lot of films around the American lifestyle, like the one pictured in the painting. After listening to the sounds in that and listening to the sounds of diners and restaurants on YouTube, I recorded some tracks of plates and glasses clattering, and sourced some sounds of people talking to try and create more of an atmosphere in the diner itself. I found this quite difficult as the diner is supposedly set really late in the evening, when not many people would be around. However I still wanted to make it obvious that it was a diner and so I had to play around a lot with the volume of certain sounds within the diner, as well as the amount of sound in the piece at any one time, also varying the distance of the sounds from the point of audition. All of which I think contributed to a better effect.

The final comment I found most helpful was Simon's comment of extending the story. In my original plan, the character I was using to guide the audience through the space arrived at the diner and then the piece ended there. Though, the diner is my primary location and I think Simon was right in saying that the audience needed more time there, almost just to revel in the atmosphere of the place and imagine themselves there. I wanted to keep it simple as well, so I simply created a short conversation between a man and a woman discussing the Pearl Harbour attack reel heard at the beginning of the piece. That way you get a chance to stay with the characters and the place for longer, and it also reinforces what the audience heard earlier regarding the time and place of the sound piece.