REFLECTIONS: Photography Evaluation

Above you will find the rest of my reenactments that I had created from old photos I had gathered from an old photo album.

The first photo is a reenactment of my little sister. I didn't run into any difficulties with the photo, due to the fact that the location where the old photo had been taken from was my garden, and my little sister also had a similar jacket in which you can see her wearing above.

The second reenactment was also taken back at home. The person in the photo is my cousin, in which the old photo was taken in the year 2001, and what made the production value of the photo even better is that we still had the equipment at the back of the old photo sitting around in the cupboard.

The third photo consists of me, my two younger sisters, my brother and cousin. The photo was taken roughly at the same year as the second photo, 2001, and was a photo that had brought back memories. I used face paint in order to create the image all over. With the help of a tripod I managed to capture what was needed.

Overall I have four images all together. The reason being is that I had accidentally deleted the fifth photo while reviewing you all the photos, and didn't have time to go back to London in order to re-enact the photo all over again.

I believe that creating these reenactments brought back memories to the people that had helped me reenact them, I could tell through the feedback and reaction given during shoot, and even had a few stories told about things that had occurred before and after the photos where take.

As you can see all the old photos where not scanned though, but rather presented through a picture of the old picture, and the reason I chose to do this as I though it would give the old photos that we reenacted an old look. I want people to see that we have this photo sitting at home, and for them to think about old photos sitting around at their home. Whether this small intention was successful or not I liked the look it had give the overall presentation of the work.

Even though I am happy with the overall result and presentation of the work I believe I could have done more editing with the photo with photoshop. I have learnt a lot on reenactments with this project, and would happily re-do reenactment again, but next time I would bring the skills and experience taken from this project onto the next.

REFLECTIONS: Video Evaluation

Pre Production

Pre-production was extremely smooth when it came to organising and planning shoots. We had several group meetings and also had a closed Facebook group, in which we communicated, shared files, photos, and videos.

Facebook group

Pre Production

During production we had roughly a week filming, which included re-shoots, and our major problem during this was over exposed shots. We overcome this by re-shooting all the scenes which where over exposed, and kept a keen eye on the lighting in order to get it all right. 

Overall I believe we worked well as we all had participated, and all played our role whilst all giving our opinions. Even though we came into problems we had worked as a team in order to overcome it. 

Post Production

Overall our post production was less organised compared to production and consisted of a few problems, in which we didn't have time to re-shoot, and had to deal with what we already had. 

One of those problems was editing the music store scene, in which we had music playing over dialogue and that made it difficult to cut. Ulysses had overcome this problem for the group by editing the sound in a experimental approach. 

With the text I believe more could have been done in order to give the film a better look, and this is where the problem comes into place, but not all the scene would open on After Effects. When I managed to open the files, and for some reason, they didn't play properly which didn't allow me to edit the scenes. 

When it came to the fonts that was being used in the film I was sent a list of fonts via email. As you can see from the image below we had quite a variety of fonts, in which I believe we could of had more, and one other thing we didn't really take into consideration is matching the text with the sound. 

Fonts that where chosen

Ulysses and I should have work together more on the edit in order to compose the two together, in which I believe would have made the film better. 

I have learnt a lot from this stage of film making in this project, and will use a more organised approach into editing.  

TIME ART: Overcoming a problem (Evaluation)

So after several attempts on my time freeze I was ready to start shooting. I had several actors lined up, and equipment ready, but a day before the shoot a couple of the actors dropped out. I had rescheduled multiply times in order to attempt and create my Time Art piece but after each reschedule a couple of the actors had dropped out, and there had been days where the weather had been terrible which also stopped me from shooting. It had now got to the point where I couldn't reschedule but instead had to come up with something else for my Time Art.

I had come up with a fresh idea but not as good as my previous idea. I was really struggling with inspiration as I had my mind set on the time freeze. However, after days of brainstorming, late nights and random filming I managed to produce something. The idea was completely improvised and as a result to that the meaning behind it isn't 100%. Instead I want the audience to interpret the piece in terms of finding out how it can relate to time and why.

After the screening I'm pretty sure that a majority of you where confused in what you had seen. It's nothing amazing I know, and contains little after effects, but each screen consists of two composed 1 minute long footage of cars driving down the dual carriage way at early hours of the morning. The footage was then merged together and the opacity turned down to 50% in order to give it that confused, ghostly look.

Overall pre-production was pretty successful compared to production and post production. I believe I could have dealt with the problem better and earlier, in which the overall outcome would have been better, but due to other assignments and work it has led me to produce something that I don't feel proud of. It is a mistake that I have learnt from and wont repeat.

TIME ART: Time Freeze (RE-DO)

So after a failed attempt in the first time freeze with the test shots I had previously done, I decided to re-do my test shots, and re-attempted the time freeze multiply times in order to improve.

This time round I had considered more on the angles and the positioning, and made sure I did not make the same mistake as last time, in order to create a better time freeze.

This is what I have achieve.

(For some reason the videos will not upload. I will find the source or another route and will upload soon)

During this attempt I encountered some new small problems in which I hope to fix before going out and filming my main time art piece.

As you can see from the above video

Another attempt

Time remapping: Adding keyframes at the selected points

Rotoscoping around the subject

Ready to mask the path

Masking the path with some quick adjustments

Another Attempt...again.

Making better adjustments this time round...but still didn't work for me 100%

SOUND EXPERIMENT: Foley Recording and Final Piece

FINAL SOUND PIECE

Okay so there is one thing I have realised while producing this blog post. I have accidentally handed in the wrong Sound experiment piece. The one above is my final piece, and the one I have handed in was the piece I had posted in my previous blog posts. So that was a stupid mistake to create. Moving on... 

On Thursday 27th March I had a chance to record in G21 (Foley Booth), and had the chance to experiment with many different sounds, in order to play around with my sound piece.

Foley Booth and some of the props used in the recording process.

It was a very successful lesson, in terms of expanding and experimenting with foley, even though I didn't use any of the sounds recorded in this session for this assignment. But the sounds did come in handy for my reflections assignment. 

I did use the sounds recorded on Wednesday 2nd April in room G23

Foley recording studio (G23)

This session was also very successful as I managed to record and experiment a lot for my assignment. 

During my time in room G23 I had shared the room with Andre and Diallo, in which Im grouped with for my reflections assignment. We needed some female dialogue for our reflection assignment, and I needed the same for my sound piece, so Diallo had found random female students in the room next door in which they where happy to help.    

Another recording session also took place outside. I had hired out a Roland recorder and a fish-pole, which helped me to capture better footstep sounds.

Another sound I wanted to capture was the natural sound of a Bee, which was hard to capture at first as every time I managed to get close they had the tendency to fly off. After several attempts I managed to capture the sound I needed. Even though I didn't get the chance to use this sound within my piece as it didn't fit well with the piece, I was still happy with the accomplishment, and instead managed to find some royalty free sound of Bees. 

After a few recording sessions I was now ready to put my piece all together. With the practice piece I had created, shown in my previously blog post, I had a better understanding of how my piece was going to be placed together and how to use the software. 

Overall I had found this assignment interesting as it was a good experience learning and recording different foley sounds. I believe I could have done a bit better with my sound piece as I had wanted the piece to be more vivid. Because there was some sounds that I could not capture, and could not find through royalty free recordings, I had to improvise which changed the perception of the story a little bit. Regarding the fact I had handed in the wrong sound piece I hope you take the time to listen to my real final sound piece posted in this blog. 

REFLECTIONS: Photography reenactment (FIRST REENACTMENT SHOOT)

So I have managed to create my first reenactment photo in order to see whether or not I could approach this idea. After seeing what I had achieved through this photo-shoot I believe that I could create an effective series of photo re-enactments.

This first reenactment I tried to stay away from a photo that was personal to me. Instead I have created a reenactment of a childhood memory/photo that is personal to someone else, in order for them to re-live that memory again, and hopefully create a more effective photo.

Childhood photo

Photoshop: Creating the purple Whale.
In order to get full effect I even created the purple whale that is featured in the old original photo.

Various sizes of Whales

Preparing the shoot

Original picture - set for reenactment

Overall I have taken over 200 pictures with a variety of positions and facial expressions (Smiles and grins), in which we all help towards finding the right photo to add to my reenactment series, and after i've finish reviewing each photo I will decide on one photo to bring forward and edit in photoshop.

I will be using the burn tool to help darken the sides of the photo. This will create a better reenactment and help the photo match the original.