Exhibition Night:

My exhibition space is finally complete. The photographs look good, the audio quality is good, the divide looks brilliant, and tonight is the exhibition's opening night. Now that everything is done, I cannot wait until tonight. Looking at everybody's work, its going to be brilliant, and I can't wait to see if people take notice of/like my piece.

Divide:

On Friday (17/06/11), I took a trip to B&Q to find a piece of radiator cover that would be suitable to use as my divide. The only piece that would have been suitable was £25 for a sheet, and even though I have no problem spending money to make my exhibit look better, I found this to be extortionate. Therefore, I took to making one. This was extremely time consuming to say the least, but after drilling way over a hundred holes, finding that the holes were to small to see through, re-drilling the holes and sanding to finish, I am extremely happy with the way it looks and I think it makes my space look numerous times better. Its all coming together now, and so far, I couldnt be more happy with the way my exhibit is looking.

Exhibition Space:

My exhibition space is up, and although it is not the way I originally thought it would look, it fits into the space really well. I also have a piece of purple fabric that I will use in my space, as the light will reflect really well off it, and whilst covering the white walls on the inside, it should look good behind my photographs. I have high hopes that when it comes together it will look brilliant. Next steps, find a suitable divide and get my photographs printed and mounted so they can be installed.

Start Of Exhibition Work:

Over the next two weeks, we will be putting together our exhibition space. I know what I want my section to look like, however I know that it may not look exactly how I want it so I am not thinking too much until my space is allocated.
I do know however, that it will involve a form of divide such as those in confessions booths etc. I also know that I will have my photographs behind this divide, and that my audio piece will be played through headphones so that people can look through the divide and speculate as to which confession is made by each person.

Photographs:

Unedited

Edited

Unedited

Edited

I like the way these photos have turned out. With the help of Adobe Photoshop, I have made the background white and the quality of the lighting in the photograph look a lot better than it did originally. I have done this to the other twelve photographs and will use these in my exhibition.

Photographs:

Over the past couple of days, I have been working towards getting photographs of everyone who confessed. However, some of the people did not want their photo's taken, and there were a couple of people that I could not track down. Therefore, I took photo's of as many people as I could, and there is a total of fourteen. Most of the photographs are of good quality, but I took them in two different locations, and some of them have a yellow tinge. A trial of Adobe Photoshop is in the process of downloading so that I can work on the photographs and hopefully make them look they way I want them too with a white background etc.

Rough Edit + Tutorial:

I created a rough edit that gets across my idea today. This involved using Adobe Audition and its multitrack, etc. I thought this piece would be of a good enough standard to use as part of my exhibition. I then had a tutorial in which it was suggested that I could try and bring memory into the piece by making it seem as though the viewer is forgetting or remembering parts of the confessions. I tried this and decided that I prefer the first edit.

Edits:

Today, I went into college with a rough idea of what I wanted my piece to look/sound like. After today, I have seven experimental edits and know what I need to do tomorrow in order to create a rough edit. After I have created this edit, I will speak to tutors etc + go from there.

Adobe Audition:

On Thursday (02/06/11), I attempted to download a trial of Adobe Audition so I could experiment with the editing of my piece, but there was not enough room on my computer for it to download. So yesterday, I cleared down my computer and now it is in the process of downloading. This will hopefully leave me with enough time to experiment and to find out exactly how I want my piece to sound before I go back to college on Tuesday (07/06/11).

Recording Audio:

I started recording my audio yesterday. So far there is a wide range of material and I am already seeing numerous different ways that the piece could be edited. The main decision during the editing process will be whether I keep it serious and only include the confessions that will support this, or whether I include some of the humerous confessions and make the piece a lot more laid back. I am going to download Adobe Audition and experiment with this in due course.

Exhibition:

As the final part of my project, I must exhibit my work. For this exhibition, I will use an Apple Mac and two boards. On these boards there will be pictures of the people I have confessions from. On the Apple Mac I will have my piece on a loop. People will listen to the piece through a pair of headphones, to emphasise the idea that the subject is confessing something they have kept secret, possibly for a long time. As well as this, the images of the subjects will have no link to the piece so the viewer will be forced to guess as to which confession belongs to which person.

Audio:

Since my last post, I have decided to tweak my idea slightly, and now, instead of using video for my piece, I am going to use audio. This is because I have found that people are a lot more likely to get involved if it is just their voices being exhibited. As well as this, I am going to use photography to catalogue the confessions.

Second Test Shoot

Yesterday, I was planning to film more footage for my piece, however, due to weather problems I could not film at the same location. Therefore, I started to think about other locations that would not be affected by the weather, and I decided on the train station as it gets a steady flow of people walking through and even though people may be in a rush to catch their trains, it is a dry environment, so people are more likely to take the time to talk.
When I arrived at the train station, I found that there was work taking place on the building next door and therefore there was a lot of background noise.
After this, I decided to take a trip to the nearby town of Bolton as I have been before numerous times with family, and there is some nice architecture which I thought would work well as a backdrop for my piece.
When I got there, the weather had cleared up slightly and there was a lot less wind in the area. There were three main places that I looked at but only one looked suitable. This was outside the town hall and therefore right in the center of the town where there were many people walking etc.
All in all, considering the 2 hour return journey time to get to Bolton, even though The audio aspect of Bolton was better due to superior weather conditions, I found that people were more cooperative in Blackburn and therefore I think I will keep to my original plan to film my piece in Blackburn.

Test Shoot

Yesterday I went to shoot some test footage in Blackburn town centre. After finding a suitable place to film, I set up my equipment, and started asking people to be in my piece. The footage I gained on this day reflected how many people were reluctant to be filmed. After removing the answers that could not be used, I had a total of five answers for each question. This was enough for me to get a general idea of what my piece would look like depending on how I edited it, but not enough to show me everything I needed to know.
The questions that i asked got a variety of answers, ranging from unusable answers such as the worst thing ever done being 'this video' to personal accounts of leaving home and admiting sexuality in high school. I like the way the questions came across and how well the answers come together in the editing process.
I found the location of my piece to be very good, as it looked very well placed, and the positioning of the camera was clearly very central. However, I did not factor in the building work taking place up the road and therefore, during some of the answers, there was the sound of a pneumatic drill in the background.
Some of the answers I got, while very informal, were very enlightening and at times very personal. I found that, although many people weren't willing to confess anything on camera, the people who were willing to get involved had no problem talking about their lives and their feelings in a great amount if detail.

Experimentation

I now have sufficient planning and ideas to start experimenting. I think that so far, my ideas have developed really well and will make a great piece. I now know how I am going to get the confessions, and after much deliberation, I have decided that I want to try and take aspects of confessions in religion and confessions in law and bring them together in my piece. I have decided to do this because I have found both types of confessions really interesting and would like to use my final major project as a way of expanding my knowledge alongside making the piece. I now plan on taking the information I have found and expanding on it with new research, as well as experimenting with my ideas for the final piece.
Tomorrow, I will book some equipment so that I can start generating the material for my final major project and by the end of the week I hope to know which methods I will use in my piece. Let the experimentation begin!

New Visual Technique

I recently had a new idea of ways to show the confessions I get. I originally thought of it whilst watching the news, when I saw a piece on students from overseas talking againgst their home countries. In this piece, the faces of the people were not seen as the only light came from behind their heads. Although this has been done countless times before, I am going to look further into it and see if there are any ways that I can customise this and use it in my piece.

Possibilities

Since Wednesday, I have been thinking about different techniques I could use in the filming of my piece and so far I only have a couple of ideas. However, I am sticking at it, and I will hopefully come up with some more ideas in the close future.

Brief

I am in the process of writing my brief, this is going quite well so far, and I am quite happy with the way my idea is coming across. Since my last post, I have also had some new ideas that are quite simple and I think may help improve the way my finished piece will look.

Sorted

I have sorted out the problems I was suffering with yesterday. I now have a brainstorm about different types of confessions I have looked into. I now just need to think of the unique way in which I am going to gain the confessions for my piece. May brainstorm some more later.

New Methods

Due to the idea for my piece being strongly confessional, I have been trying to think of possible ways that I can collect confessions from various people. I think this has to involve more than just sitting people in a room and getting them to voice their confessions. Therefore, I need to think of an original way of gaining these confessions, something that has not been done before. I am still thinking this through.

Sky Atlantic

I thought I would show this as, in my opinion, it has everything. A great narrative comes together with the choice of location and audio really well and leaves the viewer with a sense of happiness, and therefore the advert stays in the mind of anyone who has viewed it. This of course is great for ratings, but I hope to do the same sort of thing in my final piece, to fuse a narrative, visual material and audio together in such a way that it envokes some kind of emotion in anyone who views it.

Pitch Complete

Pitched my ideas yesterday. As I expected, my tutors thought that my second idea had more potential. I have quite a few extra ideas after yesterday, I am going to get them brainstormed later today, after I have completed some preliminary research.

Pitch

Got my two ideas sorted, pretty much ready to pitch them. Slightly nervous about what people will think of the ideas, but as long as it comes across well in the pitch, I have high hopes! As well as this, the piece that I want to make most has changed! I think idea two will give me a lot more opportunities to experiment and possibly even to make more pieces depending on time constraints.

Day One - Continued:

By the end of day one of my final major project, I have spoken to tutors about planning my final piece, and have written brief outlines for two potential pieces. I am now slightly less certain of the piece I would like to create, but I am still going to develop them both for my pitch.
Tomorrow, I will create a brainstorm for each of the ideas, and possibly consider some drafts of an eventual storyboard.

Day One

Today, I start work on my final major project, I have a couple of ideas that I am going to work on and develop. By Tuesday 5th April, I must have these two ideas developed to an extent that I can pitch them to my tutors and fellow students. From the feedback attained via this process, I will decide which idea I wish to pursue for my final piece. I already have an idea which piece I would rather make, but I am going to develop them both fully in case I change my mind.

Final Major Project

Over the next few weeks, I am going to be working on my final major project, this will be where I keep my daily log of activity and post any experimentations/pieces I create in the time up to my finished piece. Feel free to let me know what you think!

The Charlatans - Studio Set:

The Charlatans Profile from Media Centre on Vimeo.

Edwyn Collins - Studio Set:

Edwyn Collins Profile from Media Centre on Vimeo.

Simon Aldred - Studio Set:

Simon Aldred Session from Media Centre on Vimeo.

Steve Mason - Location Shoot:

Steve Mason Profile from Media Centre on Vimeo.