Recent Happenings

Well, since the last post, the group has come a long way. We have developed the idea for our drama short considerably, and we are currently using the working title "The Addiction of Truth". While this is only a temporary title for now, we needed to have one in order to register the project on talentcircle.org, which is the website we are using to assist with our casting. So far, we have had some positive response from various actors and actresses, but unfortunately none of them have been able to arrange an audition slot with us yet. Our initial script has been completed and we are currently in the process of editing this.

Today we worked on a digital storyboard, which involved taking digital photographs of all our proposed camera shots. This will make drawing up our final storyboard much easier.

Other recent developments include our group purchase of a Herbert Gallery membership card, which will enable us to hire some cameras that we do not have access to via the Ellen Terry building loan shop. Next week, we are planning our second recce, where we aim to maybe complete some of our sound effect shots.

Final Project

Has been a while since my last post. An update:

Final group is sorted out. I will be working with my good friends Mike, Tom and Dave.

We have finalised our idea as a “light-hearted drama short”

We had another inital idea that we were gonna go with, but we ditched it because it wasn’t so original and we kinda hated the idea. We were going to do a documentary about battle re-enactments and the culture associated with it. During our inital research for this, we started checkout out websites, which you can find links to below, if you’re interested:

http://www.debec.org.uk/
http://www.debec.org/
http://www.regia.org/

So anyway, on Friday we did our interim crit and got some pretty good feedback for that. We are all meeting up in 20 minutes to watch some short films online in order to get some inspiration about our plot outline. We have currently about a month to get our plot finalised, get a script finished, and then start our fundraising scheme and then FINALLY get some actors sorted. To help cope with our ever-growing budget issue, we may use my brother and maybe some of his contacts to help us in acting roles.

The general theme for the short is an idea that I came up with myself about 9 months ago, which is basically a student-based comedy/drama/mock-documentary. We have retained the basic ideas about this for our final idea, but we are also trying to strip it down and build it back up so that it retains some sense of originality.

I will be setting up a group account on wordpress so that we can dump research and thoughts individually on there, and we will also provide links to individual blogs so that one may pry into the personal thoughts and ideas of group members.

Updates to being coming thick and fast from me from now on. Keep your eyes peeled.

Final Images

Well, here they are. What you’ve been waiting for. I took these images this afternoon. The images are all in black and white because I wanted to capture the stereotypical CCTV look. Originally, I was going to edit the pictures to include a time and date in the bottom corner, and make the images blurrier too, but decided against it because I thought it would look cheesy.

The pictures have had no editing done to them at all. I chose my locations carefully, where there was height. This was because I wanted to capture the public from a distance, like real CCTV, and so that I wouldn’t get any trouble from people who don’t like being photographed by strangers. Fair enough.

My locations were all around Coventry city centre, where the most people are. There are firstly exterior shots around the high street, and then there are internal shots from inside the mall itself, where I could get nice and high to take the pictures. Security guards had to be avoided, but I got the shots I wanted in the end.

One thing to remember when looking at these images is that because this theme is spectacle, I think it makes the images deeper if you try and work out which figure in the image is the most interesting to look at. After all, my idea for this project is that security cameras make us all spectacles.

Here they are.

Ok, this image got chosen because I like how the light of the sky contrasts against the darks and shadows of the actual street. The lights involved here along with the perspective work well, I think.

This picture has a lot more people to look at. I am pleased with this image because considering there were a lot of people around, none of them noticed the photograph was taking place, (a lot like CCTV) which I think would have ruined the picture.

I like this picture because of the lighting effect on the man’s jacket in the bottom left, and how it contrasts with the lights from the shops at the top and the left of the picture.

This image has a lot more to look at. Again, I liked the lighting effects on the shops and also the perspective on the lights.

The ledge on the left hand side was one of the key factors in my choosing of this image. This is because actual CCTV cameras often do not have a perfect clear view of the public like a lot of my images do. I also like the trees in this picture, along with the whites of the telephone boxes.

Along with the light blurs on the escalators in this image, I also like the blurred face of the woman in the bottom left, who I like to think of as the spectacle in this picture.

Again, the lighting and anonymity of the people in this picture helped me choose it for the final cut.

This picture was a bit of a wild card. I wasn’t going to originally choose it for the final cut, but after looking at it for some time, I decided to choose it. My reasons for this are that firstly, I think it highlights the feel of a CCTV camera perfectly, and secondly, I was so inspired by David Lynch’s film “Eraserhead”, that I think the feel of the film is replicated very well in this picture. My review of the film is actually in this blog, under ‘Power’ I believe.

This picture is the first of the images taken in the mall. You can see the height that I went to in order to get a decent bird’s eye view of the interior. I love this image because of the multitude of levels and layers present within the image. It is because of this that the viewer is able to almost search for the people within the shot.

The reason I chose to include this image is that it provides a stark contrast to the darkness of the highstreet pictures, and provides a sense of warmth, while at the same time giving the viewer a hunt for activity. You can see a person on almost every level within the mall in this picture.

The multitude of lights are presented more evenly in this picture. I have also included the escalators again in this picture because I liked how they overlapped and zig-zagged across the image.

So there you have it, the final collection. If I were to do this project again, I would have liked to have found some more interesting locations other than the highstreet and the mall. But overall, I am happy with the images I have taken and I think they capture the original theme of “spectacle”.

The shots that didn’t make it…

Well, the photos were all taken today, and below you can see the images that sadly didn’t make it to the final cut. 11 images are in the final collection, and these will be included in my next post.

I won’t bother writing about why I chose NOT to put these in with the final selection, but I will instead write about why I DID choose the images in the next post.

Idea

For my idea I have decided I really want to try and capture the public as a spectacle. For this I will take photographs from realistic CCTV perspectives. I want to remain totally anonymous because anyone looking or noticing me taking the pictures could cause problems. After the photos have been taken, I may do some editing to make them look grainy, black and white or even put a time code at the bottom of the picture. I am in two minds whether this would be a good idea or not yet, so I will wait until the photos are taken and then see how I feel.

I will go on the shoot tomorrow (Thursday 27th November) and take my photographs.

I am feeling very relieved that I finally have an idea!

Research 2

Whilst doing some more research, I came across this article on the guardian’s website.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1539700/Race-row-as-Big-Brother-sinks-to-vile-spectacle.html

The artical talks about the Big Brother race row involving Jade Goody and Shilpa Shetty. After reading this article, I realised that these people are only made a public spectacle of because Big Brother is filming all the time and then edits the footage for entertainment purposes.

This idea of being filmed while only half being aware of it got me thinking about the idea of CCTV. We walk around every day aware that we are being filmed, and this in itself makes us a public spectacle. The idea of a public spectacle is that only the direct people around us are witnesses, but we still remain blissfully unaware that of course, nearly every public area is under surveillance. Be it for our own safety, or the fact that ‘they’ want to keep an eye on us is not the point. My point is that these public spectacles on any level are most likely to be captured on film, and are viewed by an anonymous person.

So, I started looking at photographers who have captured the public from places where CCTV may be installed. I found two images that I liked by two different photographers.

Wernher Krutein

This first image is by Wernher Krutein. It shows an image of London. Everything that we see in this picture has no idea of the photograph taking place. The photograph in itself is a spectacle because it is meant to be viewed by us, the consumer.

Miklos Gaal

Finally, this photograph is by Miklos Gaal. This image is a bit different, choosing to make use of space and emptiness as opposed to the busy metropolis of a city like London. I like this photo because the people, the spectacle in this picture are slightly blurred, making them seem totally anonymous. This photograph seems again a bit like a CCTV image. I like the idea that this place is like a public park or recreation area, and that even we are still observed in what is deemed to be a safe and tranquil environment.

Research

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/54/140744533_038205ce69.jpg

This is a very famous picture taken by Eddie Adams in 1968. The picture shows a street execution of a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon. The photograph not only captures the spectacle of a public execution, but also was taken the very moment before the bullet was fired.

This short video shows a public execution in Pakistan. The taliban are executing two Afghans. Don’t worry, you don’t actually see any the deaths or execution. My point about this video is that the spectacle here is widely received. From the video you can see maybe a few hundred people who have come out to watch the execution.

This video shows Harry Houdini escaping from a straitjacket. Back in the early 1900s, Houdini’s shows were indeed a public spectacle. Afterall, they were memorable, and Houdini was one of the most famous names in the western world. Many would flock to see his shows thus making his abilities that of a public spectacle.

http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/pub-domain-kiss-ww2-197-l.jpg

Finally, this is another famous image that I have chosen as it depicts another public spectacle. This one, however, is a little more light hearted. It shows two people kissing passionatly in public. I feel like this image is just as shocking or memorable as the other images because public shows of emotion on this level are not often seen. If you see a child crying in the supermarket, you don’t think much of it, but if you saw a middle-aged woman on the floor crying in a supermarket, you would remember it for a long time. (For the record, my mum actually did see a middle-aged woman crying on the floor of tesco’s. Apparently she had an emotional breakdown or something.)

Progress

I am becoming more and more consumed by the idea to do another photography artefact for spectacle. I have been thinking a lot about this project and I am finding it the hardest by far out of the other two themes.

So I looked back to my previous post and read the wikipedia quote about how a spectacle is something that is memorable. With these two ideas in mind, I am thinking that I want to take photographs of social situations where there is something memorable about it.

Spectacle Initial Thoughts

While beginning my research for the theme of spectacle, I thought it would be best to really understand the ideas and definitions associated with the term first. The idea of spectacle is the one which I am least looking forward to because I at this time, have no idea what I want to do for the project.

According to Wikipedia: “spectacle refers to an event that is memorable for the appearance it creates.”

This idea initially sparked some ideas, and I found this article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/joan-smith/when-dying-becomes-a-public-spectacle-530155.html

This deals with the topic of dying in public, or rather, dying in the public eye. It led me to think, “what could be more memorable than actually seeing someone die in public? Surely that would stick in one’s mind for ever…?”

After reading this article I have thought of some initally ideas.

1) Short documentary about a David Blaine-type figure, who uses himself for arduous and seemingly impossible conditioning in public.

2) Audio piece with still image. The images would be of public spectacles, but memorable and definitive images. The audio would enhance and capture the raw emotion of these images.

3) (Yes, another) Photography project. I know I have done both of my other projects in the medium of photography, but I feel like my photography work has come a long way recently. I would like to replicate and then capture examples of memorable public spectacles. This could break taboos in public in order to shock and provoke a memorable image.

Just inital ideas for now, these will be explored further.

Final Cuts

Here are my final chosen images.

"Family"

I chose this image because I believed it to represent a unity within a particular group. It reminded my of social divisions, and pride, like that of the IRA, for example.

I was unable to translate what this says, but I chose this photo because I think it fitted in with the foreign graffiti theme of Paris 68. It is interesting to see how Polish people are expressing themselves in their own language in a foreign country like England. Again, to me this shows unity of a minority.

"The Roaches have arrived"

Like all the images in this final cut, I chose this picture because it carries a message meant to be seen by other people. I have no idea what “The Roaches have arrived” means, but it is obvious that someone knows the meaning behind it, and there are probably others that do too.

"Respect your elders"

This image is one of my favourites. It carries a clear, if not slightly sarcastic message. This reminds me a lot of the Paris 68 graffiti in that it hits back at the authorititive figures of society.

"Whatever Next?"

Another piece of graffiti that poses a rhetorical question. You might expect to see this kind of graffiti during the ’68 riots, I like to think.

"Long Live the Ripps"

This picture may seem bland and dull, but I wanted to simply put across the message it carries. Another symbol of unity within youth, holding together no matter what problems they may face.

"We are trash"

A bold and self-derogatory statement. I chose not to edit this photo because I like the juxtaposition of the bright and vibrant green colours of the trees above and the dirty, gritty appeal of the wall message.

"Support..."

This is another dull and basic photograph. I chose it because I think even though the bottom part of the message is missing, and has faded away, I think the ideals associated with the piece are still relevant. Someone at some point wanted other people to support something, which is the basic ser of ideals associated with Paris 68.

Untitled

This image clearly shows how people can use graffiti to hit back at or condemn other graffiti. Again, the message is very clear and is intended to be read by other people. These are the reasons that I chose to use this image in the final cut.

"Che"

Although technically not graffiti, this is still public art. I reason I chose to use this picture is because I felt like it fitted in perfectly to the whole theme of Paris 68. Che Guevara, famously was a freedom fighter in Cuba. The reason I loved this image so much was because the security camera is looking right at ‘him’ and Che is looking right back at it. This addresses a modern day theme about whether or not we should be watched all the time. After all, is it for our own safety, or to keep tabs on us?

Anyway, that is why I chose this image.

"Che 2"

This is my final image. It is also effectively the same as the last image, except that I chose to take the photo from behind a chain link fence. This is because I wanted to capture Che being watched by the camera still, but I think that seeing it all behind a fence suggests a feeling of imprisonment. I was unsure whether to pick one or the other, and so in the end I decided to use both images, because I liked them both so much.

And the main theme behind Paris 68 was the theme of freedom and revolution, and who better to represent those ideas that Che Guevara? I hope you enjoyed looking at my final shots, and I look forward to hearing your responses.